Lacie Hard Drive, not working

Wezoin

I bought a Lacie hard drive a couple days ago, the 1tb version. I hooked it up to my PC laptop first to let it format. Then I plugged it into the USB port on my wireless router (using dlink shareport), which I installed on all my computers. After a minute or two it disconnects (even when in use.) I assumed maybe it was a problem with the router, however even when hooking it up directly via USB to either of my PC laptops, or my brand new Macbook pro (like literally just opened today, no chance in hell of any viruses or anything interfering) it does the exact same thing.

Any ideas on a fix? I thought about returning it but I'm not sure where my receipt is (though I could probably find it)

Jasconius

Connect it to your PC, hit up Computer Management -> Disk Management and make sure everything is in order.


All I can say is that Lacie drivers are pretty OK but they do have a track record for catastrophic failure... I know a guy who has a small army of them, half of which are dead.

Ruckus

Does the Lacie drive have an external power supply? Are you using it?

Some PC's and laptops can't always provide enough power via the USB ports to run a full size external drive.

Wezoin

Yes it has an external power supply, and I'm using it. When I went in I saw a Comstar drive for about $20 cheaper, but had heard pretty bad things about Comstar so figured going with Lacie (which I see marketed as a more "premium" drive) for that little bit extra money would be worth it. I'll see what drivers I can do in terms of drive management stuff when I get home from work.

Jasconius

Lacie's are actually just Samsung drives in a pretty box. Most of what you pay for Lacie is just the design of the box.

So what I am saying is: they are "premium" only in the since that the wrapper is pretty, that's the only thing that separates them from a Seagate.


While on the subject, I've heard decent things about Western Digital USB externals, I've used one a couple of times and it seemed a bit more solid.

Topweasel

Wezoin wrote: »

Yes it has an external power supply, and I'm using it. When I went in I saw a Comstar drive for about $20 cheaper, but had heard pretty bad things about Comstar so figured going with Lacie (which I see marketed as a more "premium" drive) for that little bit extra money would be worth it. I'll see what drivers I can do in terms of drive management stuff when I get home from work.

Lacie is a premium if your looking into Home SAN usage with their 2-3 drive external raid setups. Their single drive units are more of a middle of the road type drives. I always had issues with them not always being compatible with certain default usb drivers which made it a pain to capture images to the drives. LACIE isn't the best choice but not necessarily a bad choice.

But as for the issue have you looked in drive management yet on a windows PC? It could be that the drive is seen but that it can't a partition. You just might need to make one from there.

Topweasel

Jasconius wrote: »

Lacie's are actually just Samsung drives in a pretty box. Most of what you pay for Lacie is just the design of the box.

So what I am saying is: they are "premium" only in the since that the wrapper is pretty, that's the only thing that separates them from a Seagate.


While on the subject, I've heard decent things about Western Digital USB externals, I've used one a couple of times and it seemed a bit more solid.

Not true. LACIE has been a big external drive manufacturer for a long time. Prior to Samsung they used Maxtors. Their big business though is on the external RAID setups not these cost effective single drive boxes. I have never had good success with WD. I even had to get a Raptor replaced. Seagate is probably the best bet.

Count Funkula

We had a Lacie 1TB USB drive that failed at work. It turned on, but it wasn't recognized by any of several computers we tried. We called Lacie and they said the power supply could be faulty and they would replace it under warranty. I was skeptical. I mean, the drive had power, after all. But, I decided to trust them and exchange the power brick. When we got the new one, we plugged it in and connected the drive. Sure enough, it worked fine. So, long story short, you may have a bad power supply. Return the unit if you can find the receipt. Contact Lacie tech support if you can't.

Wezoin

Yeah I found the receipt and everything - I'll return it once the weekend hits and do a swap.

When I return it, should I just do a straight exchange or go for a different brand?

This one is also near that price, but I've never heard of the company, any good?

Wezoin

I just tried connecting to my macbook, and it appears to be working fine now... Strange?

I will grab one of my pc laptops too to checkout the disk management stuff.

Topweasel

Wezoin wrote: »

Yeah I found the receipt and everything - I'll return it once the weekend hits and do a swap.

When I return it, should I just do a straight exchange or go for a different brand?

This one is also near that price, but I've never heard of the company, any good?

While it is sad that you have never heard of Iomega, I wouldn't buy anything from them not named a zip, or jazz drive. If you end up having to swap it I would either pay the premium to get a Seagate or WD external, or stick with the Lacie at the price point you paid.

Wezoin

Topweasel wrote: »

Wezoin wrote: »

Yeah I found the receipt and everything - I'll return it once the weekend hits and do a swap.

When I return it, should I just do a straight exchange or go for a different brand?

This one is also near that price, but I've never heard of the company, any good?

While it is sad that you have never heard of Iomega, I wouldn't buy anything from them not named a zip, or jazz drive. If you end up having to swap it I would either pay the premium to get a Seagate or WD external, or stick with the Lacie at the price point you paid.

Actually, now that you mention it we used to have an Iomega zip drive at work. I figured they were just some no-name company when I saw that ad.

Anyway, it seems to be having trouble again. I should explain the situation, my network has 1 desktop, 3 laptops, and an xbox 360 that connect to it. Only the 360 is wired, everything else is wireless. It's a D-Link Extreme N, with Shareport. The router is in the basement, as is the 360, as the 360 needs to be wired (I don't want it wireless, I know about the adapter.) The router is on one side of the basement, right below where the desktop is (2 stories above it.) The hard drive is connected via USB to the shareport on the router. I installed all the driver updates and utilities necessary for Shareport.

Shareport sees the router, and tries to let me connect, but fails. When the hard drive worked I had moved it over by the chair I sit in with my laptop, and plugged it into a different outlet. This indicates to me that there might be a power issue with either that outlet or the unit itself. Any thoughts?

MichaelLC

Topweasel wrote: »

Wezoin wrote: »

Yeah I found the receipt and everything - I'll return it once the weekend hits and do a swap.

When I return it, should I just do a straight exchange or go for a different brand?

This one is also near that price, but I've never heard of the company, any good?

While it is sad that you have never heard of Iomega, I wouldn't buy anything from them not named a zip, or jazz drive. If you end up having to swap it I would either pay the premium to get a Seagate or WD external, or stick with the Lacie at the price point you paid.

Wow...Iomega. I used to sell Jazz drives to salarymen at CompUSA, along with USR 56k modems.

Have you tried a different USB device on the DLink? Can you plug a thumbdrive into it? Could there be an issue with the DLink reading a 1TB drive?

Don't know if you've checked the DLink boards, but this thread thinks it may be either AV software or the firmware. ver 1.31 seems to be undesirable.

Wezoin

I decided to scrap the whole idea of Shareport, as it wasn't really what I wanted anyway (one device allowed to use the drive at a time? thats pretty retarded) and went for a time capsule because of the recent price drop (that BestBuy didn't have yet so I got an extra $30 or so off of it.) It seems to be working well, although I've only had it all of 20 minutes. I can't tell if the router in it (airport extreme) is a bit slower than my old router or not (Dlink extreme N), but its good enough I reckon.

MushroomStick

Whatever you do don't get a seagate right now. All their largish drives have morbidly high failure rates right now. I recently bought a 1.5 TB seagate external thinking that it couldn't possibly be as bad all the amazon reviews said. Damn thing didn't even last 30 minutes, exchanged it for a 1 TB western digital and never looked back.