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LaCie gets terrible reviews on apple.com, why?
- Thread starter Aniej
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Thanks for the info, Lone Deranger and jsw.
I would never have considered a LaCie drive myself, due to all the problems I have heard about over the years. I currently have an external FW400 250GB drive, which is very good but has an amazingly bright blue light on the front and makes a little bit of noise so I cannot leave it on all the time. Plus it is getting rather full.
What I ideally want is one case with two drives in and FW800, set up as RAID0. Found a suitable and cheap enough case a while ago but forgot to save the link. Tsk.
I would never have considered a LaCie drive myself, due to all the problems I have heard about over the years. I currently have an external FW400 250GB drive, which is very good but has an amazingly bright blue light on the front and makes a little bit of noise so I cannot leave it on all the time. Plus it is getting rather full.
What I ideally want is one case with two drives in and FW800, set up as RAID0. Found a suitable and cheap enough case a while ago but forgot to save the link. Tsk.
Lord Blackadder
macrumors P6
Best option IMHO. You can choose exactly what you want, and it may even be cheaper depending on what you're looking for.
jsw
Moderator emeritus
This seems unfortunately to be the de facto way to show people the drive is on nowadays... seems like 90% of them come with blue lights that could double as spotlights. However, almost any case is accessible enough that you can either tape off the light or color over most of it with a permanent marker (allowing some light to escape).
These are nice and, I think, available as cases only as well. We have one in our lab downstairs. Works quite well, but, of course, has that blue spotlight built in....
Lord Blackadder
macrumors P6
Blue LEDs look very cool...but unfortunately they are way too bright most of the time. I have a PCI slot cooler fan in my G4 tower, which unfortunately has blue LEDs in it. If I turn the room lights off everything is bathed in blue from those two little LEDS...🙄
The PS2 had a pretty small blue LED in it that wasn't too bad. Surface mount LEDs are smaller so not as bad. Of course if you are a decent hand with a soldering iron you could always replace the blue LED with a smaller, dimmer one or another color.
The PS2 had a pretty small blue LED in it that wasn't too bad. Surface mount LEDs are smaller so not as bad. Of course if you are a decent hand with a soldering iron you could always replace the blue LED with a smaller, dimmer one or another color.
Lone Deranger
macrumors 68000
Hi Allotriophagy,
yeah, I know what you mean in regards to LED strengths. Unfortunately the G-Tech is no exception. It's very bright. It is white however, so it matches rather nicely with Apple's LEDs. 🙂
One thing to keep in mind with those dual enclosures is that they'll inevitably be noisier. Two drives generate more heat than one and will probably require active cooling (the G-Tech's are passively cooled btw). So be mindful of that when you shop around for a Raid enclosure.
yeah, I know what you mean in regards to LED strengths. Unfortunately the G-Tech is no exception. It's very bright. It is white however, so it matches rather nicely with Apple's LEDs. 🙂
One thing to keep in mind with those dual enclosures is that they'll inevitably be noisier. Two drives generate more heat than one and will probably require active cooling (the G-Tech's are passively cooled btw). So be mindful of that when you shop around for a Raid enclosure.
Nuc
macrumors 6502a
I have to say that after having bad luck with enclosures from several different manufacturers that I started building my own. I would find the best enclosure and then find a good deal on a hard drive. I haven't had any problems since.
I suggest this enclosure: Link (this keeps the drive really cool and isn't loud at all. I have another dual enclosure that works really well that has FW 800 it's rather loud so I only use it for backing up my system and storing iMovies.
Nuc
I suggest this enclosure: Link (this keeps the drive really cool and isn't loud at all. I have another dual enclosure that works really well that has FW 800 it's rather loud so I only use it for backing up my system and storing iMovies.
Nuc
LaCie drives
LaCie drive can really be hit or miss as they change their drive manufacturs so much. the only ones worth looking at are their d2 and extreme cases, as these are all running the Oxford 922 or 926 chipsets depending on the model, which are the best in the biz. I have a 500gb d2 Extreme triple interface that started clicking about a year and a half after I got it. I opend the case and found two Maxtor 250gb drives (from experience more times than I would like to admit, avoid Maxtor at all costs), one of the drive mechinisms was shot so I just poped in a pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.10s and now I am screaming in an awesome/ georgeous case!
If you dont want to risk it with a LaCie, go with a OWC Mercury Elite, they also use Oxford chipsets, and if you call them, you can usually specify you drive brand of choice. You sacrifice a bit in the looks depart (unless you go for the AL cases), but great cases, and amazing company to deal with.
Just my two cents.
LaCie drive can really be hit or miss as they change their drive manufacturs so much. the only ones worth looking at are their d2 and extreme cases, as these are all running the Oxford 922 or 926 chipsets depending on the model, which are the best in the biz. I have a 500gb d2 Extreme triple interface that started clicking about a year and a half after I got it. I opend the case and found two Maxtor 250gb drives (from experience more times than I would like to admit, avoid Maxtor at all costs), one of the drive mechinisms was shot so I just poped in a pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.10s and now I am screaming in an awesome/ georgeous case!
If you dont want to risk it with a LaCie, go with a OWC Mercury Elite, they also use Oxford chipsets, and if you call them, you can usually specify you drive brand of choice. You sacrifice a bit in the looks depart (unless you go for the AL cases), but great cases, and amazing company to deal with.
Just my two cents.
I, knock on wood, have not had any problem with my Porsche drive that I got in August. I've had a few times where my iBook would not recognize it, but other than that it's working fine. I just wish I would have done dual partitions (FAT32 and HFS+) so I wouldn't have to worry about 4GB+ file sizes. It's also noisy when it spins up, which is about every five minutes. I wish I could stop that.
I had a 250GB d2 Extreme. Unlike the other posters, it was the housing that failed - specifically the ports board. The reason being that LaCie did not see fit to include any fans inside more or less a sealed unit with no real ventilation. Presumably, LaCie thought the unit would function like an oversized heatsink drawing away heat from the HD. Inside the unit, the ports board with all the electronics is pressed hard against the HD so cooks slowly over time. I started getting mount delays, then failures then the unit would not mount at all. I could hear the unit spinning up, so I extracted the HD, which was a Maxtor. Nothing wrong with it at all. I wil not be buying any more LaCies. Their engineering design sucks.