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LaCie Fuel Offers 1 TB Wireless Storage with Hotspot Sharing for iOS Devices and Macs

Wow, lots of hard drive fanboys in here. Well, the data suggests Seagate is less reliable. I've owned a lot of different drives since my first computer when I was a kid in 1996, and I used to build PCs for myself, friends, and family. Seagate and Maxtor were the only drives I've ever had fail. Guess who bought Maxtor in 2006? Seagate. My most recent drive failure was a LaCie, which was a couple years ago. At the time I wasn't aware of what drives were inside these machines and picked it up for a good price. Luckily I had a backup on a WD drive. Funny that people point to the 4TB Seagate drives as not failing as much. Well guess what? The 4TB drives are the newest and haven't had time to fail. The failure rate may or may not go up, but given the history I would bet they'll get worse. When it comes to data security, why risk it? Just buy the most reliable brands: WD and Hitachi. I like higher end Hitachi drives for everyday use because they're fast, and backup to cheaper WD drives. This isn't like Mac vs. PC where the experience of one isn't easily comparable to the other. These are hard drives! They're a commodity, people! Just buy the best component. It's quite a logical decision—especially when prices are similar.
 
Jetfire said:
I have a problem with that.

I'm just seeing everyone here taking a dumb on Seagate when I have had nothing but good dealings with them.
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Facts and statistics get in the way of warm feelings.

Taking a "dumb" on Seagate implies it's unwarranted and baseless. That doesn't seem to be the case.

It's nice to see those statistics back up my own experience. Every LaCie drive I've ever owned crashed and crashed hard. One went in for repair 3 times. They kept fixing it under warranty (and then the warranty on the repairs), but there was no way to trust it. They seem to be well known for a "click of death".
 
Razeus said:
Lacie is owned and made by Seagate, which means unreliable. No thanks.
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What R U talking about??? :roll eyes: I have a LaCie external hard drive and father has another, BOTH work PERFECTLY, zero problem what-so-ever, and it has been close to two years.
 
HyperDriver just released this after about 2 years of waiting.

$160 + $90 for a 1TB
So you're paying $50 more

I'd swap in a 1TB SSD when the prices drop another 50%, should help with battery life?

Newegg has some referbd 512s going for just below $270

EDIT:

The Mini is kinda cool, specially with how big USB thumb drives are getting! Can easily pop an entire TV series on one of them!
 
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batchtaster said:
Facts and statistics get in the way of warm feelings.

Taking a "dumb" on Seagate implies it's unwarranted and baseless. That doesn't seem to be the case.

It's nice to see those statistics back up my own experience. Every LaCie drive I've ever owned crashed and crashed hard. One went in for repair 3 times. They kept fixing it under warranty (and then the warranty on the repairs), but there was no way to trust it. They seem to be well known for a "click of death".
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Sorry, Dumb was meant to be dump.

How are my facts and statistics warm feelings? Fact I have had WD and Maxtor drives fail on me alot. Seagate drives have failed on me rarely. I have a Seagate Goflex 1.5TB that I carry with me everyday for my Macbook Pro for over 2 years now.

Maybe I just having good luck with Seagate and bad luck with WD. But those are the Facts for me.
 
With 1TB of storage on a $199 LaCie Fuel, accessible by all our iDevices and laptops, my next iPad will have 16 GB of storage (or whatever is the lowest amount then) rather than 64 or 128 GB, at $200-$300 premiums.

Unless I'm missing something, that seems like a no-brainer.
 
Nothing but good experience with Seagate for me. I've had two WD external drives fail on me so I switched. I currently have:

-Custom 12TB RAID
-Portable 500GB drive
-Portable 500GB slim drive
-Portable 1.5TB drive
-Desktop external 4TB drive
-Thunderbolt adapter for portable drive

ALL Seagate, none have failed for a 3+ years now.
 
macs4nw said:
With 1TB of storage on a $199 LaCie Fuel, accessible by all our iDevices and laptops, my next iPad will have 16 GB of storage (or whatever is the lowest amount then) rather than 64 or 128 GB, at $200-$300 premiums.

Unless I'm missing something, that seems like a no-brainer.
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I've found that similar alternatives work great with my 16gig iPad since most of what I need storage for is media. Not all apps can access the drive though (needs smb file browser or the like, my app of choice is nplayer/documents by readdle), but I have found it fits my uses well.
 
I've stuck with Seagate for decades, never had a problem.

But as someone mentioned before though SCSI ftw! Was a Huge fan of Plextor, I remember laying down $900 for a 2x scsi CD Burner, gee back in 93/ 94? Never made a Coaster again. Think I blew a paycheck (or 2) on a couple of 10GIG drives too.
 
CodexMonkey said:
I have three Seagate drives - two pocket and one desktop and I’ve had them for years. Each is written to daily, esp. the desktop as I back up to it. I’ve had them all for over two years each and never had even a slight problem. Years ago I had a "Lacey" and that too performed flawlessly. Where are you getting your information?
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Did you even read my post or my follow up posts?

----------

Since some of you still insist, even though I posted a study, here's another one buy Google:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Of course, you're free to trust your data to whoever you wish. Smart people will do their research before purchasing a hard drive which is trusted to hold your data. Of course, backups are always a must. But if your first point of defense is Seagate, you're asking for trouble.

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xPad said:
That's one data point. And if you look into it further, you'll see that the 4TB Seagate drives have the same failure rate as WD. What does that say? Did Backblaze get a bad batch? Did Seagate change something in their newer drives?

This data is meaningless without a p value.

Thanks, though, for the citation.

----------



Thanks for the citation. Your anecdote is meaningless. Statistics state that some people will get failure after failure. I've had plenty of WD drives fail, and no Seagates (I even had one of the bad batch where the heads fell off, and didn't have it fail).

My anecdote is also meaningless. Which is my point.

I'd be interested to hear more than just the one Backblaze report. It's more comprehensive (which is fantastic), but still mostly meaningless.
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Then why ask me for a citation. Are you that dense such that cold hard numbers stare you in the face you still turn up your nose? This isn't the first study Backblaze has done.

Seagate drives are always on sale for a reason.
 
@Razeus while the numbers show a higher failure rate, in the citation you link to, they still prefer the Seagate drives. So our choice couldn't be all that bad. Also, they state they buy the cheapest drives available that work. I'll assume, the higher the price, the higher the quality, although price does not always guarantee reliability.
 
CombatCaptured said:
@Razeus while the numbers show a higher failure rate, in the citation you link to, they still prefer the Seagate drives. So our choice couldn't be all that bad. Also, they state they buy the cheapest drives available that work. I'll assume, the higher the price, the higher the quality, although price does not always guarantee reliability.
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No. They HAVE to buy Seagate drives because Hitachi and WD don't supply enough drives in the market for them to consume. If Seagate wasn't around, they'd have a hard time offering unlimited backup service.
 
Onboard storage is important to me. The convenience factor is worth paying the premium. I don't think I'd ever be interested in this.
 
Razeus said:
No. They HAVE to buy Seagate drives because Hitachi and WD don't supply enough drives in the market for them to consume. If Seagate wasn't around, they'd have a hard time offering unlimited backup service.
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No where does it say they HAVE to buy Seagate drives because Hitachi and WD don't supply enough. They quote high prices as the main reason.

"The Backblaze team has been happy with Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB drives. We’ve been running them for a long time – their average age is pushing 4 years. Their overall failure rate isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either."

"our current favorite is the Seagate Desktop HDD.15"
 
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macs4nw said:
With 1TB of storage on a $199 LaCie Fuel, accessible by all our iDevices and laptops, my next iPad will have 16 GB of storage (or whatever is the lowest amount then) rather than 64 or 128 GB, at $200-$300 premiums.

Unless I'm missing something, that seems like a no-brainer.
Click to expand...

It appears to be little more than a repackaging of the Seagate Wireless Plus 1TB drive. I've got one, it's handy.
 
Infinitewisdom said:
Onboard storage is important to me. The convenience factor is worth paying the premium. I don't think I'd ever be interested in this.
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Same. I'd inky but if there was a way to access music through the iphone app and not through their shoddy software
 
Infinitewisdom said:
Onboard storage is important to me. The convenience factor is worth paying the premium. I don't think I'd ever be interested in this.
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Agree with onboard storage being an important (and well worth it) premium, however having 1TB of music/movies/TV would be great for traveling, for those that do it a lot. Would make you a favorite on a long plane ride too, that's for sure!!



@Razeus

Aside from our disagreement, I checked out your Flickr page and your work is spot on man! Great mix of work!
 
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musio said:
Same. I'd inky but if there was a way to access music through the iphone app and not through their shoddy software
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It supports WebDAV and DLNA, any iOS app that supports WebDAV to get at files should be able to see it.

I use mine (the Seagate version) for photo backup and sharing when I travel, Photosync supports WebDAV and works great with the drive.
 
Wow, Apple could easily do this natively with all devices obviously.

Would be cool to access all that stuff from ATV/iPad. But then I guess it would be just like a cheaper Mac Mini.

So maybe they should make TimeCapsule just like this.
 
Razeus said:
Actually from 2009. Two of them to be exact.

Then as recently as 2011 within the first 6 months of use. That's 4 drives and more than enough for me.

I've written them off and will only buy Hitachi or Western Digital (who are both the same company these days). I stand by my claims.

Citation? Sure, here's one that only reinforces my thoughts of their sub-par quality. This is the 2nd or 3rd report from them that shows Seagate still hasn't fixed many of their quality control issues. At least they're consistent.
Click to expand...

The problem is that with hard drives, there are two main failure types: "quick failure" and "long term failure".

"quick failure" are the kind that get replaced under warranty. As the name implies, they happen quickly - generally within weeks or a month or two of first entry in to service.

"long term failure" are, as the name implies, the long term death of the drive.

The problem with drawing conclusions is that quick failure is generally not a huge deal (you *DO* back up, right?) and if even 2% of a manufacturer's drives suffer "quick failure", you STILL have a 98% chance of getting one that makes it past this threshold. Because you had two "quick failures" in 2009 means nothing for the current line of drives.

Long term failure has the problem of being difficult to model in a lab - I have three of the dreaded "IBM DeathStar" series drives still in use, 24/7. Yeah, they're on an unimportant system, but they're still in use. I keep waiting for them to die, but they don't. I had one purchased at the same time that DID die quickly - but their long-term reliability has been excellent. By contrast, I have a few Western Digitals that have been steadily dropping off since purchase in 2001. I started with 8, and lose one every year or two. I'm down to two left, and have no trust that they'll make it another two years.

And I have a large number of Seagates - nearly all in great shape. Ranging in age from nearly-new (early 2013) to over 15 years old.


So unfortunately, even if they *DO* have a batch of bad ones right now, if they make it more than a few months, they're likely to stick around for a while.
 
WHAT? LACIE IS OWNED BY SEAGATE?? UGH

backblazedriveafr-v3-596x837.png


A test by ZDNET for all the people who think seagate doesn't suck. Go to hardforum.com, where we build our pcs and use the hard drives, and people hate seagate.

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-best-disk-drives-7000025375/
 
well… I'm one of the few with bad luck with external LaCie or Seagate drives. Almost all of them are out of the cases and I've been using them with an external Drive Dock. Bad bad bad experience.
 
HD failures in IT

I'm an IT admin, so I deal with hundreds of computers/servers, which means even more hard drives. Drive failures are rare, but they do happen.

In the past 5 years we've had about 7 drive failures, and it's less than .02% of our installed units.

However, out of those failures, 1 drive was a Western Digital, and the other 6 were Seagate. The comments here about Seagate failures are not unfounded.
 
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