LaCie 250GB d2 External Hard Drive Extreme with USB2.0 and FireWire 400/800 Interfaces (Model 300770)

Rating:
Summary: No problems so far
Review: I ordered this drive with trepidation because of occasional bad reviews. So I just wanted to mention that I have had no problems. Also, it is far superior to my previous drives (both from Micronet, both had to make trips back to the factory). Feels more solid, makes fewer strange noises, works better (wakes up, goes to sleep, mounts, dismounts when it's supposed to, etc.). Seems fast, doesn't require new drivers at least for me. (I'm using it with Mac OS 10.2.8.) The triple interface will come in handy.

I made one call to tech support so far -- right after I installed it, it wouldn't dismount. The tech guy was very helpful. Since then, no glitches or problems. I've been using the drive for a month or so. If things stay this way, I will buy another.

Rating:
Summary: OK when it works
Review: I own two of these drives, having purchased the second when the first one failed. This seemed to be a very nice drive. Nice appearance and very fast, especially when using the firewire 800 connection. However, a hard drive is something that can't be nice just when it works, which is the case with this drive. Now that I own two of these with no real solutions to get them to work all the time I am on the verge of trashing both of them. The amount of time I have spent trying to determine what is wrong with these drives is totally unaccceptable. The LaCie tech support people are all very nice, but I still have 2 LaCie drives that do not work. The problems started shortly after purchase of each. Even though the older of the two drives has had the same problems unresolved now for over a year, I was told by LaCie tech support last week that they will have to charge me to repair that drive. That simply adds insult to injury. I have four other external hard drives from different manufacturers and have had no problems with any of them. Having had a major problem with both LaCie drives seems to indicate an intrinsic problem with these drives. There is also the problem of firmware updates. They had an update for the drives to be used with Windows XP service pack 2, yet did not send out any notice to customers even though they have customers name and email addresses. I only found the update by accident when checking the LaCie site. This is another catch-22: YOu need the firmware update for the drives to work with service pack 2 but the update must be done on a computer without the service pack installed. I tried to do the update as the LaCie tech recommended, but it failed on both hard drives. Essentially I have two large drives that are only recognized by Windows occassionally. If you don't mind a hard drive that only works a little bit of the time, then this is a good drive and will look nice. But if you happen to need a reliable hard drive that you can depend on, then stay away from these LaCie drives at all costs.


Rating:
Summary: Do they Test these things?
Review: I'm on my way to returning the second of these drives. The first LaCie 250gig d2... wasted five billable hours and a trip to the AppleStore-it had already wasted 3-4 hours of my client. The replacement drive has worked fine for two months. So I bought another one yesterday. Instead of going to work with it, I first tried to back up my Apple G4 internal HD. It failed twice bringing down the whole system both times.
I ran Norton Utilities several times but it could not complete a check. The Apple OS 10.3.6 utility said it was OK but it wasn't. I couldn't erase the disk-who wants to drop off a harddrive with files still on it at a computer store?
My opinion: Reliable when they work but probably not properly tested at the factory.
LaCie at this point owes me 10 billable hours. I've had a lot of LaCie products over the years but haven't had or even heard of this level of failure for harddrives in ten years.

Rating:
Summary: Industrial strength
Review: LaCie's d2 Hard Disk Extreme series is available in 160 GB (= 149 GB), 200 GB (= 186 GB), and 250 GB (= 233 GB) capacities. The series use sturdy aluminum enclosure with USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800 interfaces (plus an extra FireWire 800 interface to daisy chain another FireWire 800 device). It uses 3.5" Parallel ATA hard disks so you can replace the hard disk later on if you wish. The enclosure houses Oxford 912 bridge chip, which is faster than Oxford 922 bridge chip that most enclosures use. My enclosure came with a Western Digital's WD25000JB hard disk, with 233 GB capacity, 8.9 ms access time, and 8 MB cache, rotating at 7200 rpm.

Pros:
- Very fast. 61 MB/sec read and write performance when used with FireWire 800 connection; 40 MB/sec with FireWire 400; 34 MB/sec with USB 2.0.
- Includes all the common interfaces and cables: FireWire 400 (includes both 6-to-6 pin and 6-to-4 pin cables), FireWire 800, and USB 2.0 (backward compatible with USB 1.1).
- Fan-free design for quiet operation (only the hard disk noise).
- Industrial-strength aluminum chassis.
- Can be used both horizontally and vertically (comes with a vertical stand) and is stackable.
- RAID 0 compliant. Add another drive (ideally identical) for even faster performance.

Cons:
- Does not use nor support Serial ATA (then again, nobody offers SATA-to-FireWire/USB enclosure at the moment, only SATA-to-SATA).
- Only 1-year warranty.
- More expensive than single- or dual-interface enclosures.
- Somewhat bulky external power adapter.
- Replacing the hard disk is undocumented and is not supported (it is easy enough to replace, however).
- No frills (e.g., one touch backup button, multifunction memory card slots).
- No extra USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 interfaces (only FireWire 800).

The enclosure is very heavy, with sturdy aluminum built. While its design is not going to win any beauty contest, it is innocuous looking enough and blends in pretty well. A blue power button serves as an activity indicator.

Having another drive for backup is important (although RAID 1 or RAID5 configuration is recommended for more reliable backup) and the drive is significantly faster than built-in 2.5" 4200 rpm hard disks on each notebook. It is great for storing DV video files and other large files.

The drive is initially formatted for Macintosh, so Windows users will need to use the Disk Management (or included CD-ROM software) to format it into NTFS. At 233 GB capacity, it will take awhile to format.