I dont know how many dozen times I have read about LaCie drives breaking down, it astonishes me that anyone buys ANY of their products. Once again - they buy the cheapest drives they can (to make them extra $) and stick them in a cool looking but badly designed case (no fans= hot drives) and charge premium prices for them by clever marketing.
Please dont buy their crap: AVOID LaCie.
buy Seagate or WD or just about anyone but them.
make sure you have a fan in the case. or is well vented. if it must be ruggedised try one of the notebook external drives like Seagate, up to 200Gb these days, perpendicular heads and all you could need in reliability.
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You have to bear some thngs in mind. LaCie sells A LOT of hard drives, so it's natural that you would hear of more problems with their drives. Their is no evidence that they buy the cheapest drives (to make extra $, as if that was some sort of sin). In fact - and this may have been implementd recently, not sure when it started - they actually do have hands-on quality control procedures with their drives, which is something not all drive solution sources have in place.
In our experience, LaCie drives have been about average in reliability overall. The "fancy" ones like the Porsche series, etc tend to be less reliable. The d2's have actually had a pretty good record with our customers. You have to remember that most drives have a mtbf of 24 to 36 months. So, saying you bought 6 drives and within 2 years experienced 2 failures is not bad performance. All drives will fail. If you have drives that have not failed, you've been fortunate.
Something else to keep in mind. Manufacturers are not static entities. Things change. LaCie is very aware of some of the reliability issues they've had on some of their products in the past. They have made concerted efforts to improve reliability and support with the QC procedures and they now offer 3 year warranties with optional hot swap warranties.
I think they have responded to some of their issues.
I'm not saying they're the best, I'm only saying they've had some issues, they are repsponding, and the fact they sell so many drives can make their products seem like unreliable choices given the amount - not the rate - of failures.
Steve Hendrix
www.ppratlanta.com/digital.php
