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What do you think about Lacie HDD?

Have no experience with Lacie drives, but I picked up a Western Digital MyBook Studio 1TB - and so far so good. Looks great (silver, just like my MBP), and has this slick status light indicator thing-a-ma-jig going on in the front that displays how much space is left on the drive, and to let you know when its being accessed. Also its USB/Firewire 400/800 compatible and turns on and off with your MBP.
 
CrownSeven said:
Have no experience with Lacie drives, but I picked up a Western Digital MyBook Studio 1TB - and so far so good. Looks great (silver, just like my MBP), and has this slick status light indicator thing-a-ma-jig going on in the front that displays how much space is left on the drive, and to let you know when its being accessed. Also its USB/Firewire 400/800 compatible and turns on and off with your MBP.
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I'm properly going to get that external hard drive as well. How is it? Is it quiet?
 
I have 2 LaCie 1TB drives. One is about 3 years old and works fine, although it is a bit loud. The other one is just a few months old and works well too; it's quiet as a mouse.
 
I am not the only one on these forums who have dealt with many Lacie drives over the years in work environments who are vary vocal AGAINST them. I've seen close to 70% fail rate at my most recent place of employment. They have great industrial aesthetic, but sell really cheep power supplies which I believe are the cause of the failures. Even our replacements failed within months.

It's a shame, because they are some very beautiful enclosures.
 
I've got a number of Lacie drives of different sizes and vintages and have had no problem with any of them. Basically I reckon if you get a new drive and it's gonna fail it'll fail in the first month or two. If it keeps going after that it'll last years. But that's just my opinion.

So perhaps keep a back-up of your back-ups to begin with just in case.
 
I can give you only my personal experience. My LaCie drive died. My MyBook has not.
 
Poncho said:
I've got a number of Lacie drives of different sizes and vintages and have had no problem with any of them. Basically I reckon if you get a new drive and it's gonna fail it'll fail in the first month or two. If it keeps going after that it'll last years. But that's just my opinion.

So perhaps keep a back-up of your back-ups to begin with just in case.
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haha.. thats funny.

ill see what the store warranty is.

Anyone see anything else from http://www.csctoronto.com that you like for an external?
 
I have both LaCie (2) and Western Digital Drives (2) external. I have no problems at all with the LaCie. I have had a WD fail and basically lose the ability to transfer with FW.

The wisdom about surviving the first few days is pretty much correct.
 
will it run well with time capsule? im thinking about g-tech now
 
I have a LaCie Triple Interface 500GB Rugged Drive and it works really well. I'd recommend LaCie. I like the Rugged Drive since I can take it around and its really sturdy.

Plus they have a pretty awesome warranty.
 
I've had 5 different LaCie drives over the past 6 years. All are still in fine working condition.
In a month our two I'm going to invest in the awesome LaCie 2Big Quadra 2TB RAID drive.

2big-Quadra_drives.jpg


I have nothing but praise for LaCie. And you've got to love their designs (have you seen their new cables?).

Concerning the drive you've selected I think it needs to be reformated in HFS+ if you're going to use it with Time Machine (concluded from the fact that the drive is not listed on LaCies "Time Machine Compatability list".
 
dannyboxer said:
I'm properly going to get that external hard drive as well. How is it? Is it quiet?
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Sorry for the late reply.

So far I have had no issues with the drive, and I would say it is quiet as far as external drives go.

I like it so much in fact, I just ordered the WD 500GB MY PASSPORT STUDIO. I got a very sweet deal - used the Microsoft live search 30% off promotion and bought it off of BUY.com's ebay storefront.
 
I avoid Lacie at all costs. Out of the 3 Lacie drives I have owned none have served more then 18 months before dieing, taking all my data with them.

No brand is going to be free from the occasional bad drive, but after 3 I decided to stay away.

Also not to say that I have not had problems with WD or Seagate. I did also have a Mybook Pro fail after maybe 2.5 years. I have never owned an external seagate drive, but I have had problems with a few internals.

Like all drives they have mixed reviews as well, but may I suggest looking into the G-Tech drives. They tend to not go on sale like other brands, but they are good. I use them as Time Machine Drives. I have a G-Tech mini 250 for my Macbook Pro and a RAID2 1Tb for my Mac Pro. So far no issues (knocks on the closet thing to wood)
 
flottenheimer said:
(have you seen their new cables?)
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Niiiice. I have a flat, blue ethernet cable which looks similar, bought in Japan.

To the OP: whatever you get I recommend: a) firewire 800 + b) HDD that comes with encryption software.

I have a Freecom 500GB HDD which looks like this:

87971_freecomharddrive500gb.jpg


I almost don't want to endorse their product because of the installation of encryption software process, but since I finally got it working its been smooth sailing. When I want to access the encrypted partition, I press a lock button on the HDD, then I get an on screen prompt on my Mac to enter the password.
 
ok so i still have no idea.

If you use an external for Time Capsule does that mean you cant use it for anything else?

I really like how that Black LaCie looks. So will it work with Time capsule once i format it? And how do i do this?

Should i get two seperate externals, one fore TM and the other for file storage and program boots?

Im looking to boot final cut studio off of it and maybe some adobe programs.
 
CrownSeven said:
Sorry for the late reply.

So far I have had no issues with the drive, and I would say it is quiet as far as external drives go.

I like it so much in fact, I just ordered the WD 500GB MY PASSPORT STUDIO. I got a very sweet deal - used the Microsoft live search 30% off promotion and bought it off of BUY.com's ebay storefront.
Click to expand...

I did the exact same thing. $100 on eBay...best deal out there. Amazing drive, I love it.
 
I would like to retract anything nice I said about Freecom above. If you need an encrypted drive solution, don't buy Freecom for your Mac. Their software sux!!

It was a convoluted mess to set up an encrypted partition. Once I got it working I thought everything would be fine, but as of today I cannot even access my encrypted partition, which has my only and entire Time Machine backup!

I had to futz with Freecom's crapware which requires reboots, etc. I realized how exposed I was during a reboot since I could no longer access my encrypted Time Machine backup...what if something else went wrong in parallel, I would have been screwed.

So now I have to figure out how to uninstall their crapware. There is no uninstaller and it must have modified system files, but because of their crapware I cannot go back to a prior backup!! I have to backup what I have now. Then I may have to do a fresh install of OS X restoring personal files and /Applications from Time Machine to cleanly remove everything.

Does LaCie offer a decent, reliable encryption solution for OS X?

EDIT: now I am trying to uninstall Freecom's data tank software. There are uninstallation instrux in the Windows section, but not in the OS X section. Companies that are incompetent with your backups deserve to be sued.
 
I would recommend LaCie. I've owned them for years and the only thing that comes up is sometimes they like to be disconnected from power overnight. Very rare though.
 
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