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OWC vs Lacie

Everyone will have their opinions but my experience with Lacie has been bad. Their poor customer service has prevented me from ever wanting to buy another one of their drives. All drives can fail but combine that with piss poor customer service, that's where I draw the line.

With that, I recommend the OWC.
 
OWC, hands down.

I'd like to add I love my Elite-Al Pro Quad.

Also, as you said, if you buy the all in one instead of the case, it comes with a 1TB 7200 RPM 32 MB Hitachi Deskstar revision C drive, which is pretty decent.

Personally, I went overkill and got the bare case and a 1TB Caviar Black since its going into another computer eventually.
 
jessica. said:
Everyone will have their opinions but my experience with Lacie has been bad. Their poor customer service has prevented me from ever wanting to buy another one of their drives. All drives can fail but combine that with piss poor customer service, that's where I draw the line.

With that, I recommend the OWC.
Click to expand...
i concur here jess. LaCie has terrible custom service, terribly made drives and similiarly terrible hard drives internally. you have no guarantee on which brand of hard drive you will recieve.

you are better to go with OWC + custom hard drive.
 
So buy an OWC case and get a separate drive is what I'm getting? Please keep note that I'm on a budget.

If so, which external enclosure? I can find the drive on my own, if buying them separately is my option.
 
I've got over a dozen external drives around here and the OWC drives (I've got 3 Mercury Elite Al Pros) are without a doubt the best built of the bunch. And I'd never again buy a drive in a case that you can't remove to replace on failure. Most of them, including the two Lacie drives I own, are sealed or have tamper-proof screws. I'll be buying several more OWC drives before the summer is over.
 
What kind of drives are in the OWC case? The last LaCie drive I bought over two years ago had two Seagate drives in it and they are still working to this day.

Find out what kind of drives are included and base your decision on that.
 
hzamani said:
So buy an OWC case and get a separate drive is what I'm getting? Please keep note that I'm on a budget.

If so, which external enclosure? I can find the drive on my own, if buying them separately is my option.
Click to expand...
tbh they all have the same sort of internals. its probably a good idea to buy what is pretty for you. were you after a dual or single enclosure?

hexonxonx said:
What kind of drives are in the OWC case? The last LaCie drive I bought over two years ago had two Seagate drives in it and they are still working to this day.

Find out what kind of drives are included and base your decision on that.
Click to expand...
i doubt they would tell you - which is why i only buy the cases then buy the HDDs myself. much safer imo
 
OWC wins

I have had 2 1TB and 3 2TB LaCie's for over a year and none of them have ever failed.
From what I have read about LaCie's costumer support I suspect that if I ever have a failure, then I will end up with a nice doorstop.

I have 2 2TB OWC Drives and 3 8TB OWC Raid Drives and none of them have failed after I put them in production. however I did receive one DOA and I must say dealing with OWC's costumer support is about the best experience I have had. They went well beyond bending over backward to accommodate my every whim. Furthermore when a software update for the RAID drives came out they contacted me and upgraded the drives for free.

All drives preform very well. wire speeds on FW800(~80MB/s) and 150MB/s on eSATA (the RAIDS on a modified Mac Mini)

Hope this helps
 
I went with that exact LaCie model last December and have had no trouble with it. It includes USB, FW 400, FW 800 and eSATA cables in the box, a nice perk, and is very fast and quiet. The fanless operation is a plus as well.
 
Is Hitachi a good brand? What drive comes in the OWC that i posted?
 
Beware LaCie!

From their warranty information:
LaCie (“LaCie”) warrants, to the original purchaser, that this equipment shall be free of defects in materials and workmanship for a period of one (1), two (2), three (3), or five (5) years, depending on the model, from LaCie’s date of original shipment...

So their warranty counter starts when it leaves the LaCie warehouse, NOT at the date when you bought.
 
Lacie...
Forum Users Expressing General Support
cmcbridejr, dpaanlka, LethalWolfe, mpsrig, UltraNeo*, iPhoneNYC, chocolate632, Hellhammer, HBOC, Cinematographer (six-seven drives without failure), romanaz & macfem (4 TB drive).

Forum Users Not So Happy
surfmadison (not a big fan), accacc57, dave12345 (Little Disk), jaysmith, Jerkfish, auero, mperkins37, dfs, harddriveowner, jessica, eRondeau & sishaw. Forum user cluthz has mixed reactions regarding the (d2 and Neil Poulton).

Rarely do I hear/see a bad thing about OWC.
 
I think the drive in the OWC is good enough, if I can find a comparable drive at a cheaper price, i'll go for it, but if not, i'll just buy the 1tb one.

Good plan of approach?
 
What about Seagate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148359

I have one of those and it's great.
Both my brother have one of these and my father have two older seagates, all in perfectly shape!

I also have a LaCie D2 which have been great for almost 5 years now!
I never had to deal with LaCie tho.

OWC is a great company as well, although I've never bought one of their drives, all my other experiences with them have been good.
 
cluthz said:
What about Seagate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148359

I have one of those and it's great.
Both my brother have one of these and my father have two older seagates, all in perfectly shape!

I also have a LaCie D2 which have been great for almost 5 years now!
I never had to deal with LaCie tho.

OWC is a great company as well, although I've never bought one of their drives, all my other experiences with them have been good.
Click to expand...

I tried looking for the specs of the actual hard-drive in the Seagate and couldn't find any...
 
cluthz said:
I'll check what drive mine contains when i get home, I have the 1TB usb2.0/Fw400/Fw800 version.
Click to expand...

Couldn't find out which Seagate Drive that is inside, and I don't wanna tear it apart.
Anyways documentation says it's a 7200RPM drive with 32MB cache.

edit: Seagate has a 5 yr warranty!
 
I have the OWC 1.5TB version and no complaints whatsoever. I have spoken to customer Service a few times about various things and they were always prompt and friendly.

I also own their Voyager Dock which I can daisy chain to the Mercury Elite Pro with the fireware 800 cable. This accepts hard drives both 2.5 and 3.5". I use the Voyager with a few hard drives to clone my data and macs. I think everyone should have one of these as they are somewhat future proof and very cost effective
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock
 
It seems that each drive I find to put in the enclosure is already in the corresponding storage space.

Any other recommendations?
 
hzamani said:
It seems that each drive I find to put in the enclosure is already in the corresponding storage space.

Any other recommendations?
Click to expand...

It appears by lack of response that I'm not the only one confused by "corresponding storage space". You mean you can't find bare drives? Both Newegg and OWC in your original post list them.
 
DoFoT9 said:
i doubt they would tell you - which is why i only buy the cases then buy the HDDs myself. much safer imo
Click to expand...

Read my original post. OWC lists EXACTLY what's in their enclosures; I know the 1TB Mercury Elite-Al Pro is a 1 TB Hitachi Deskstar rev c 7200 RPM 32MB drive, which is why I went bare case and got a 1 TB Caviar Black instead, so I can use it later.

When you go to the OWC store, click on the case you want, then scroll down the page; usually near the bottom right they have a bare drive option.

Here's the quad Elite-Al Pro bare case option:
Here
 
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