Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: woof75 on February 06, 2009, 11:15:49 am
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I have one myself and it's so great, rugged, never misses a beat. No power chord, big capacity, cheap and... It seems virtually no failures, I have searched the internet and can't find a single case of one failing. Is this the drive many people have been waiting for?
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I have seen great reports as well. But it's still just an enclosure with a hard drive from Seagate, WD, Hitachi or Samsung. I think there are only 4 or 5 hard drive manufacturers left.
Lacie has done well to make the bridge components top quality and that's the reason these have done so well.
The rest of their products are so-so at best. They lost my trust. Out of six D2 drives, 2 have failed from bad bridge chipsets, 3 power transformers have failed. All out of warranty and practically useless as an original product. Now I have taken the drives out and put in other enclosures (OWC) and things are fine. Remember they are just a fancy "repackager", they make the products look cool though.
There is a video floating somewhere within the "internet tubes" that demonstrated the Lacie rugged drives to be THE most damage resistant of any within this class of externals. They threw the drives up to 25 feet and let them crash on concrete and only then did it fail. Falls from up to 15 feet and the drives would keep working. Impressive.
Nothing wrong with being a repackager so long as the final product works. I think failures usually are power source related, I wonder if not having a power supply other than the firewire is helping reliability. I have had drives of all makes fail on me so I view them all with equal nervousness.
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I always recommend my friends and colleagues from NOT buying Lacie products but last year I needed a portable drive for a job. Samys had some Ruggeds there so I went against my own word. Well, within a few months it died. Luckily it was only for location work and there was nothing on it that wasn't backed up somewhere else.
I called tech support and it was almost like they were waiting for my call. They asked for my credit card number so they could do an advance return.
product . . . .sucks
service . . . . .works
but i want a product that I never need to call for service
r
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I have a couple of them, one newer and one around 2 years old and both have been faultless.
(knocks on wood.)
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Mine even had an accident, falling to the hard concrete studio floor, and survived with flying colors. I strongly recomend.
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I Have two for location work. One died for no apparent reason, but I had used them for about 2 years before this happened. I never dropped them, so I can't comment on how they stand up to that. Seems like just a piece of rubber on the edges of an aluminum housing.
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I Have two for location work. One died for no apparent reason, but I had used them for about 2 years before this happened. I never dropped them, so I can't comment on how they stand up to that. Seems like just a piece of rubber on the edges of an aluminum housing.
Yes, I think it is. When you look through the amazon reviews for them, out of loads of reviews theres only a couple from people saying the drive went down which is far better than any other drive. (at least that I know of)
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We have two of them & they are still working. I have been building my own drives now & will do the same with the next portable, at least I will know what type of drive is in the case.
Denis
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LaCie just OEM's everything, there's nothing really that special here. I had two, they were fine, didn't fail. Needed larger drives, like the G-Tech drives but they are more expensive. They run really cool which I think is useful in terms of longevity.
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LaCie just OEM's everything, there's nothing really that special here. I had two, they were fine, didn't fail. Needed larger drives, like the G-Tech drives but they are more expensive. They run really cool which I think is useful in terms of longevity.
Whats OEM and why is it bad?
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Whats OEM and why is it bad?
Original Equipment Manufacturer. LaCie buys from other, pretty much everything and slaps a label on. First, its not necessarily bad but it means that full control and specifications over the product quality isn't assured. So a LaCie Blue display is an NEC or some other display they purchase from the original manufacturer. Sometimes an OEM get, lets say, less then the cream of the crop off an assembly line for a reduction in price.
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Original Equipment Manufacturer. LaCie buys from other, pretty much everything and slaps a label on. First, its not necessarily bad but it means that full control and specifications over the product quality isn't assured. So a LaCie Blue display is an NEC or some other display they purchase from the original manufacturer. Sometimes an OEM get, lets say, less then the cream of the crop off an assembly line for a reduction in price.
I see what your saying. The results seem to speak for the lacie rugged drives though. The way I evaluate hard drives is I simply look at the amazon reviews, how many people have had them fail and the rugged so far seems to be the best. Maybe it's the lack of a power supply?
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I see what your saying. The results seem to speak for the lacie rugged drives though. The way I evaluate hard drives is I simply look at the amazon reviews, how many people have had them fail and the rugged so far seems to be the best. Maybe it's the lack of a power supply?
I don't disagree. I have (had) two of the drives, they were fine. I suspect whatever motion detection production system, bla,bla, is something you'd find in other drives, that was my point about OEM. IOW, I don't think this is anything unique in terms of durability here with the drive that LaCie doesn't make. Maybe the orange rubber case is useful as they suggest. Or maybe its all marketing.
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I don't disagree. I have (had) two of the drives, they were fine. I suspect whatever motion detection production system, bla,bla, is something you'd find in other drives, that was my point about OEM. IOW, I don't think this is anything unique in terms of durability here with the drive that LaCie doesn't make. Maybe the orange rubber case is useful as they suggest. Or maybe its all marketing.
Or lack of power supply? I hear thats where a lot of problems originate?
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I suggest that you check out Other World Computing's Mercury On-the-Go Pro 2.5" portable drives. They offer a variety of sizes and interfaces, but I like the triple interface FW 400/800/USB 2.0 version. They took the awards in recent tests for speed. a 320GB/16 MB Cache unit is $149 and includes a carrying case and cables.
I have 2 of these and they have been 100% reliable and fast. www.macsales.com
They also sell the enclosure only so that you can "roll your own" if you have a spare drive left over from a laptop HD upgrade.
I ditto other posters' experiences with Lacie - too many failures of non-drive components.
Cheers.
Bud
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I always recommend my friends and colleagues from NOT buying Lacie products but last year I needed a portable drive for a job. Samys had some Ruggeds there so I went against my own word. Well, within a few months it died. Luckily it was only for location work and there was nothing on it that wasn't backed up somewhere else.
I called tech support and it was almost like they were waiting for my call. They asked for my credit card number so they could do an advance return.
product . . . .sucks
service . . . . .works
but i want a product that I never need to call for service
r
I have about 24 of the orange lacies and had only one failure, which looked like someone droped a bowling ball on it as it was so bent. Still it tried to run just made a lot of noise, but I can't blame lacie for that.
I love the fact they have fw 400 and 800 as it allows me to free the 400 port on the computers for tethering, and use the 800 port for the drives. We jump drives and when tethering shoot straight to the first drive, using chronosync or just manually backing up depending on the need so at the end of the day we are only about 5 minutes away from two backups.
If we are on the road we backup to a third drive that evening and fedex that to the retoucher, so three copies are now in two places.
I love em, hope they continue to make them.
fwiw; I used G drives (they came apart, owc, the controllers went out on three of them, and weibetch when we use to build our own. Too much trouble, when you can just buy the lacie and get to work.
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I have a bunch of Rugged one's as well, no issues.
I think what makes them 'rugged' is the size of the enclosure, and the inner and outer shock protection (rubber).
The aluminum enclosure itsself is the weakest one you can find, though, dents easily.
The interface is just some good old Oxford controller, without the tricks they try to teach the desktop models.
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I have a bunch of these as well and so far no problems. They spend more time in the post than they do on my desk and while a couple have been retired due to banged up cases they all still work.