fixing LaCie 1 TB drive

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firestarter

New member
I've got a LaCie 1 TB firewire drive, and it just recently started having problems. At first it would mount (I'm using a mac) but then it would randomly unmount itself. Now it won't show up at all - at best only one of the 4 250 GB drives (the 1 TB is made up of 4 250 GB drives) shows up in the disk utility. There is important video data on the drive. Does anyone have any experience fixing these LaCie drives? I've researched having the data professionally recovered which runs for $3000 to $9000 depending on the success. I'd like to avoid that if possible - esp. if I can just put the drives in a new chassis. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
i agree, try that... putting them in new cases that is. failure of all 4 at once would be astronomically improbable. So just find another case, or put one in your computer and find out if it's just the case.
 
I've done just that with other external drives but this one is different - the four drives are striped (it writes data across all four of them at the same time) so I would have to actually buy another 1 TB drive and put the old drives in the new case. I'm wondering if anyone has ever done this successfully? Furthermore, I talked to LaCie and they think that it is a problem with the "bridge" in the drive - the part that somehow connects the four drives.
 
This is the typical LaCie problem I've often warned about... I din't know it affected the RAIDs as well. With a single drive, yes, you can keep restarting and restartting until it mounts long enough to copy some of the data, and repeat until you've got it all copied (before tossing the poo pooing thing). But the likelihood of all the RAIDed drives mounting at the same time seems pretty puny.

The best suggestion I have (and I feel really perverse and sad about this: Buy the exact same LaCie drive, and swap the actual drives (in the same exact pattern, of course). Then copy all your data off, and throw 'em all away. This way, you get your data, and LaCie gets all your money! And you'll have to buy a third set of drives to copy it all onto. Make that one a Glyph (www.glyphtech.com), and ask yourself, why didn't I just buy one of these in the first place?

Sorry! But if they've got a hardware raid controller in there, it seems best (and still cheaper than recovery) to attempt using the same unit.

And I'll stress again for anyone listening: DON'T USE LACIE FOR ANYTHING IMPORTANT!!!! This same problem happens far too frequently.

-Barry
 
This is why i stick with SCSI racks and individual hard drives. I have a 120gig that i used for part of a project that i did in october and it started acting up then. so i have it all backed up, i can dump the drive and buy a 300 in its place for $70 while the case is still good without having to pay for 4 hard drives and a new case.
 
The main problem with LaCie is they use Maxtor drives for any of theyr big / bigger disks and well Maxtor drives suck. Sadly I know this because 15(!!) off them died on me in the past 8 years. (yess that makes me really stupid, I know)

I asume these are IDE / ATA drives? It is possible to test them indevidually for bad blocks and keep the RAID intact, but you got to know what you aare doing and use the HDtoolbox in the right way. Hardware check only and no rewriting of MBR or whatever bootblocks.

Do the disks spin up at all? This sounds like a pretty horrible delimma, sending it to LaCie for repair and getting it back working and getting a happy-techie telling you "oh yeah we justt formatted it again noww it works perfect"

Hooking the drives up with a cheaper raid controller is probly not a good idea either. It depends on the raid controller they put in, perhaaps its a common one sold on PCI cards as well. Have you tried using USB if it has USB?


The only thing I can tell yyou is: get a NETcell based controlled raid next time. It will tuurn 5 drives into a 4 disk raidd witth 1 drive ffor redundancy keeping everything safe when a drive fails. Got one off these in my Mac (stupid G5 does nott have enought power to boot it..) and my PC. the nice thing is you have the high speeeds of 4 striped disks and the security of RAID 1. It aalso takes complete control of all disk aactions unloading your CPU. Just like SCSI :)

G-tech has a nice new version for external use:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAIDpro.cfm



sorry I can't be much help, hope you solve this problem, loosing os much work is a nightmare.
 
Last edited:
visualbrother said:
The main problem with LaCie is they use Maxtor drives for any of theyr big / bigger disks and well Maxtor drives suck. Sadly I know this because 15(!!) off them died on me in the past 8 years. (yess that makes me really stupid, I know)

I asume these are IDE / ATA drives? It is possible to test them indevidually for bad blocks and keep the RAID intact, but you got to know what you aare doing and use the HDtoolbox in the right way. Hardware check only and no rewriting of MBR or whatever bootblocks.
Click to expand...

The LaCie problem is (usually, in my experience) not the drive, but in the FW bridge. The drives tend to work in other enclosures. But since it's RAID, I don't know that you can just plug 'em into a different brand of RAID enclosure... hence my sucky suggestion.

Has LaCie offered to do anything to help? What about the retailer? Do you have a friend with a (currently) working LaCie RAID yoiu can put the drives in temporarily?
 
Any idea as to how much these G-Raid Pro's go for? i looked at all the UK dealers websites & cant see no price mentioned :(
 
Maxtor drives can be hit and miss but the Lacie maxtors are pretty good, that being said, anything but the LATEST Lacie drives have SEVERE heat issues that cause CRC errors. Check out the Amazon reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cu...4899151?_encoding=UTF8&n=172282&s=electronics

I have had this EXACT problem and it is heat related. In order to get the data off the drive you need to put it in the freezer for 15 minutes, then pull off data for 15 minutes... I am 100% serious. You can also try wrapping it in ice packs (be careful with condensation) but GET THAT DATA OFF THAT DRIVE!


ash =o)
 
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