rsilves Posted May 4, 2008 Share Posted May 4, 2008 Hi. I have a 250GB LaCie D2 Extreme External HD (firewire), and it's been doing some strange things during the last month... Sometimes when I come home (I leave the computer on all the day) I see that the drive is not on the desktop. Its blue light-button is on, I turn it off, then on again, and it appears on the desktop. It works fine, no problems. Checked it with DiskWarrior, TechTools Pro and obviously Disk Utility and it is fine. I use it for video edition, and it works fine. This never happened while using it. During the last days, I started noticing that sometimes while I'm editing and moving the playhead fast, it freezes for some seconds and then works again. Something similar happened to me before, but only when leaving Final Cut Pro open and leaving for more than 15 min, the drive goes to sleep and when I come back I hear the disk turning on. But now I don't go away, and the disk does not turn off, but it freezes that way. A friend of mine had a disk problem on these days, and the people from the service told her that its mechanical system was working bad. Some days ago, her disk turned off after 15 min of using it. Then it turned off as soon as Windows loaded, and now it's dead. My brother told me that that's a sign of a dying disk. I'd like to know if this problem I'm having might be related to that, or maybe to a firmware problem (I have the latest firmware anyway), and if there is any specific way to recognize a dying disk. Thanks, Rodrigo Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/103120-250gb-lacie-external-hd-working-strange/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
vaporATX Posted May 4, 2008 Share Posted May 4, 2008 It's probably getting ready to fail. Lacie drives are all pretty on the outside and garbage on the inside. One of the all Mac design shops that I service finally gave up on Lacie after they had six Lacie fw externals fail within a six month period. Lacie blamed them and told them they must be abusing the drives. The Lacie tech support people started to get downright nasty with them. That was enough for the boss. The now used OWC Mercury Elites and haven't had a lick of trouble. No failures at all in over a year. I have a friend who is a regional manager for Best Buy. If you go to Best Buy you'll see they stopped handling Lacie products. You know why? The return rate on them was so high and dealing with Lacie was such a pita that it wasn't worth their while any more. Same story with Frys. I hear stories like that all the time about Lacie. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/103120-250gb-lacie-external-hd-working-strange/#findComment-735127 Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsilves Posted May 5, 2008 Author Share Posted May 5, 2008 Wow. So I'm gonna buy a 500GB drive tomorrow. My LaCie has a Western Digital drive inside (opened it some months ago to try another IDE drive). My Hackintosh has a (newer) 250GB Western Digital (internal, SATA2) and it works OK. Should I buy a Western Digital or a Seagate? I heard that Seagate drives are noisier, but better? Would a Seagate work as good as my WD on my Hackintosh? (no compatibility problems?). Will the 32MB buffer of the Seagate will make any difference compared to the 16MB of my WD? Thanks, Rodrigo Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/103120-250gb-lacie-external-hd-working-strange/#findComment-735772 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vaporATX Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 You'll never know what you'll find in a Lacie drive. I've seen seagate, WD, and samsung drives in their products. I'm guessing they buy whatever they can get from the lowest bidder. Probably old stock that's being phased out. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/103120-250gb-lacie-external-hd-working-strange/#findComment-735775 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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