Rating: 
Summary: Big Disk lost its Partition Info
Review: After some months of reliable operation, I powered up my triple interface LaCie Big Disk 500 gb and it had lost all the partition information. Partition Magic and Norton were no help. Since it wasn't my only copy, I didn't lose data, but it sure make me cautious about relying on this disk again. I was using a Dell and an Orange Micro USB2/firewire 400 card. Both interfaces worked equally well before, and neither after losing the partition.
I'm not sure I could recommend using this drive in any application that didn't have reliable frequent backups on other media.
Rating: 
Summary: Chokes on Win XP SP2, customer service is lacking
Review: Although I'm a registered user and LaCie has my e-mail address, they did NOT notify me that the drive is not compatible with Win XP SP2 -- I had to find out the hard way. I have to return the drive in order for them to upgrade the firmware (their field upgrade failed on three different machines), and they won't do a swap where they send me a replacement first -- so I have to find a way to back this whole thing up before I return it. A big pain that they could have avoided with a single, simple e-mail -- but they don't do this as a matter of policy (per their support staff). Ugh. Thanks for nothing, LaCie.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly advise AVOID Lacie products
Review: AVOID THIS PRODUCT, unless you like losing all your work without warning, when the drive directory suddenly disappears, and the disk reads to your computer as empty and unformatted. I bought the "porsche" 250GB hard drive, and was happy for 3 weeks, then lost 12GB of video editing work without warning or any sign of a cause. Tech support from LaCie gave me two options: 1 - get Norton Disk Doctor (I did, and it did not help at all) or 2 - send it to a disk recovery service at an estimated $500 charge (in no way reimbursed by the company). Other than that, the company offered ZERO support. Buyer beware. This is not likely a company that will last.
Rating:
Summary: AVOID THIS DRIVE AT ALL COSTS
Review: Believe the other reviews written by people who have lost data! We bought 3 of these drives and have lost data on all 3. Two worked poorly out of the box (read times of 30 minutes per megabyte across firewire with data access errors). The other one one worked fine for 6 weeks then unexpectedly went belly-up with no recovery possible. LaCie technical support is completely unhelpful. The best warning to everyone is that they post new FIRMWARE updates on their site almost every week. They know they are having real problems with these drives but don't acknowledge it to users. Don't buy these drives unless you want to participate in La Cie's beta testing!
Rating:
Summary: 400GB lost...
Review: I am a big fan of LaCie drives, but this drive...not so much.
In less than two weeks I had to use DiskWarrior3 at least five times to rescue the drive. The first time I lost about 4GB of data (though I later discovered that some of the other data was in fact corrupted). Obviously, there is something wrong with at least some of these drives as the problems described by others are too similar to be coincidence.
Realising the drives (this drive is actually a hardware RAID 0 consisting of two 250GB drives inside the enclosure) were about to tank, I ordered myself two 250GB LaCie drives and disconnected the 500GB less it tank again before I could do a file transfer. Well, after receiving my new drives the 500GB did tank again, but this time even DiskWarrior was useless. Drive Recover X was able to find the vast majority of the files, but I actually opted not to bother transferring them since I would then have to go through every file to check for corruptions. Since 90-95% of the data is backed-up on other drives and discs (and the other 5-10% will just require some extra work to replace) I just wiped the thing and sent it off for my refund.
I will continue to buy LaCie drives as this is the only problem I have ever had with their products, but I'm going to steer clear of these hidden RAID drives (which is a shame because I was really looking forward to getting one of the 1TB drives...). I'll stick to daisy chaining the smaller d2 drives.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor
Review: I have been considering buying this drive for a few weeks now and was about ready to pull the trigger when I read the reviews. After all the research I've done this is the first I've heard that this is actually 2 250MB drives in a RAID 0.
It is totally unacceptable that LaCie does not disclose this fact. I won't bore you with the details but RAID 0 increases your chances of losing data.
Rating: 
Summary: So Far, So Good
Review: I have been using three 500GB LaCie drives for three months with no problems. I will need three more within a month and, based on my results with the drives I have, I will purchase LaCie hard drives again. I, too, am interested in the terabyte drives coming out in May, but will probably settle for the Big Disk Extreme drives. I've been using multiple LaCie CD Burners for over a year with zero problems and have a number of clients who are successfully using LaCie monitors. Based on my interactions, I'd have to give their products high marks. I've used their customer service departmant only once, satisfactorily, so I can't comment on the quality of the CS.
Rating: 
Summary: Works great on a mac
Review: I have the 500GB drive and use it both with a 1.25GHZ G4 15" powerbook and a dual 1GHZ desktop. It works great with both. It's fast, convenient and reliable. I haven't found noise to be a problem. I've been using it for over 6 months with no issues at all.
Rating:
Summary: LaCie Makes Great Drives
Review: I own several LaCie Hard Disk drives and have never had a problem with them. I sympathize with the other reviewer who is angry (understandably) over having his disk die on him (I had a HD die on me too, but it wasn't a LaCie), however for him to say that this product is terrible because he was the one unlucky guy this happened to and saying this company won't last is ridiculous. LaCie has been around for decades already!! So they have already lasted! I am running my Mac G4 computer from a start up disk now that is a LaCie and it has been performing perfectly for me for some time now. Don't believe that their products are bad just because the guy who wrote a review before me happened to be the one in a million who gets hit by lightning. 'nuf said.
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Summary: Some Info for Folks Having Problems
Review: I purchased this drive and also experienced the drive disappearance issue. It happened 7 times during the first month I had it. (Somehow or the other, it hasn't happened for the 4 months since then, but I am attributing this to luck and nothing more.) But anyway, when I was having the problem, I was able to recover the drive 6 of the 7 times that this happened. The fact that it happens at all is absolutely unforgivable, but just to help those having this problem: Use a disk utility like PartitionMagic to recover the partition. Here are the steps:1. Go to Manager (right click My Computer, click Manager). You will probably be presented with an option to write the signature to the "newly-found" disk, i.e. the Lacie drive that has disappeared. Go ahead and write the signature. Close Manager. 2. Open PartitionMagic (I use version 8) and click on what appears to be the blank Lacie drive, and right click to choose Recover partition. (It seems that if you don't go through the process of re-writing the disk signature in step 1, PartitionMagic won't recover the drive.) As I said, this failed once and I had to spend hours and use some other utilities to get parts of the partition back, so I am not very pleased.
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