Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

[Weizy]

I just received a new Lacie 1TB external hard drive in the mail today. This is the first time I have purchased a Lacie product. Are these things the real deal or is it just another drive? They look amazing and very compact but i want to be sure it's not just a cool looking drive...

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11062

Any opinions are much appreciated...thanks!

[Corven]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

i had a couple of Lacie drives which are less than a year old that died on us at work recently .. might be just bad luck or mere coincidence but compared to HDDs that i have running at home for a long time i would say their failure rate is kinda high imo

[Steve Graham]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

tigerdirect.com

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Hard Drive
Combining proven components, state-of-the-art technology and expertise in volume manufacturing, the SeagateŽ Barracuda 7200.11 drive
Only $149.99

[Weizy]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

tigerdirect.com

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Hard Drive
Combining proven components, state-of-the-art technology and expertise in volume manufacturing, the SeagateŽ Barracuda 7200.11 drive
Only $149.99

This is what you swear by, Steve?

I found some rather negative chatter about the Lacie drive in question so I am returning it. I can't afford to lose everything on one drive...

Thanks for the recommendation!

[|Thrax|]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

a video editor exec just lost her lacie 1tb..
what a piece of shit.

I used to think they were superior, but its still just a crummy hdd in a shiny metal case.

[Santa]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

LaCie is just a case manufacturer. The quality of the product depend 100% of the HDD that is inside.
Years ago, they were using Seagate (and my firewire 60Gb is still running), but now it seems that they use Maxtor in all their products (I also have a 1TB LaCie).

So, if you just need a big disk to do your backup then disconnect it and put it back in a drawer until next backup, I would say it's ok.
If you look for a secure way to save data and have access to it all the time, then look for a RAID1 or 5 device.

But in any case, if it's sensitive data, never trust any harddrive. Makes backups.

edit: ho yes, and format it in something else that the old clumsy fat32

[Weizy]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

Sorry to get basic on you Santa, but can you explain what a RAID1 or 5 is? Much appreciated!

[Santa]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

Raid 1 is mirroring, so you need 2 harddisk and one is a copy of the other. If one blow, you replace it and you're ready to go. You only see one of them, the copy to the other is transparent.
Down side: you can only use 50% of the total amount as 1 is a copy of the other.
Raid 5 is stripping your data. State of the art, it need 4 harddisks and it distribute on all of them bits of your stuff, while always put on another disk the checksum of what it has written. That mean that if you have like 4x250GB harddisks, you see them as a unique disk of 800 GB. If one of the disk blow, you just put a new one, the raid recalculate all the data (on some of them, it's even transparent, so you don't loose time to do it).
Down side: You need 4 disks to be optimal, some cards don't support differents size and always use the minimum.
I'm also keeping an eye on the Drobo, as it's a stand alone box and don't need a whole computer to run, as opposite to RAID cards. But cards are cheaper.

If mirroring is ok for you, and you need an external device because you use a laptop, maybe the Linksys NAS200 is for you.

It's really depending on what you want to do with that disk and the architecture of your network.

[Corven]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

i'm using one of these babies

]

http://www.stardom.com.tw/sohotank_feature.htm

[Weizy]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

Raid 1 is mirroring, so you need 2 harddisk and one is a copy of the other. If one blow, you replace it and you're ready to go. You only see one of them, the copy to the other is transparent.
Down side: you can only use 50% of the total amount as 1 is a copy of the other.
Raid 5 is stripping your data. State of the art, it need 4 harddisks and it distribute on all of them bits of your stuff, while always put on another disk the checksum of what it has written. That mean that if you have like 4x250GB harddisks, you see them as a unique disk of 800 GB. If one of the disk blow, you just put a new one, the raid recalculate all the data (on some of them, it's even transparent, so you don't loose time to do it).
Down side: You need 4 disks to be optimal, some cards don't support differents size and always use the minimum.
I'm also keeping an eye on the Drobo, as it's a stand alone box and don't need a whole computer to run, as opposite to RAID cards. But cards are cheaper.

If mirroring is ok for you, and you need an external device because you use a laptop, maybe the Linksys NAS200 is for you.

It's really depending on what you want to do with that disk and the architecture of your network.

thanks for taking the time to explain this for me Santa!

[Santa]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

You're welcome. I needed my message counter to go up a bit... Haven't write that much in 4 years

And if you wonder about Corven's box, JBOD means Just a Bunch Of Disks. It's not secure but allow you to put several disks in it and see them as a single harddisk on your computer.

[Corven]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

^^ it depends on the number of bays on the enclosure and because its JBOD and raid on the same enclosure its easily customizable .. you could raid the 2 bays into 1 drive and a backup or u could use it as 2 separate drives and its easy swappable with a pin so if one of the drives is full in a JBOD configuration you could easily just take it out and swap with a new HDD

[slim shady]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

I'd prefer to see both discs separately instead of seeing them as a "big" one... Btw, RAID1 or RAID5 is the only way to go if you want to protect your data...

[Kamal]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

iirc, in RAID1, if you lose 1 drive, both drives will fail because of how RAID1 mirrors the data.

[lilsensa]

Re: Lacie 1TB External Hard Drive - keep it?

Dear Santa,

Could you please send me on a cruise for Christmas? I need to use up one week of work for a vacation. Thanks in advance.

Your friend,

Lilsensa