LaCie Hard Disk 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive designed by Neil Poulton 301304U
by Lacie
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Our Price: $198.70 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $85.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of LaCie Hard Disk 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive designed by Neil Poulton 301304U
Customer Review: Broke within a few days, unfortunately.
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought two of these hard drives so that I could take important data with me overseas. Unfortunately, after several days of downloading (700 GB on each drive), one of the drives started clicking horribly, and became unreadable. I was transporting the drives to and from the lab everyday, so that may have been how the mechanical problem developed. However, I was very, very careful with them (wrapping them in cloth before putting them in a cushioned bag, no less!), and this was over the course of four days (and they were less than one week old). Worried of losing the downloaded data, I took the broken drive overseas with me anyway, and the tech people here are now going to try use the parts from the working drive in order to try to fix the broken one. They recommend that I buy drives with metal, not plastic, cases in the future.Customer Review: Seems reliable, takes abuse, spin up is annoying.
Summary: 4 Stars
I have two of these now. Both seem to handle a huge amount of data transfer every week very well. I use them with OS X. I have had days in a row where lots of data is being transferred between the computer and the drives, and between the drives themselves all at once. On those days I am very impressed with the drives.
A concern for me is that the drives always take a while to spin up when they are called upon - for example, when I am prompted to upload a file, my system basically freezes until the drives spin up into action - and there are times when they make all the right noises but don't fully complete the process. Then I have to unplug the cable so I can continue my hardcore computing.
The case on one of them doesn't seem like it was put on properly.
Lacie customer service is excellent.
Customer Review: Met my requirements
Summary: 4 Stars
Generally a very good product. And because I got it on sale, it's turned out to be a wonderful bargain.
It requires a short initial setup, which should be easy to manage (even for those not tech savvy).
After that it's good to go. I have not tried the online back feature that was advertised as my the cost of internet bandwidth is prohibitively high.
I only have two very minor complaints.
1. The power plug features some fancy two pin contraption, when I feel a simple three-pin or regular two-pin contraption would have sufficed.
2. The hard disk is a solid rectangular block with no curved edges or corners, and a glossy finish that will not handle scratches well. If the edges were less sharp and the corners less pointy, it would reduce the chances of it getting snagged in table clothes etc.
Customer Review: Looks good, but it's just an external hard drive
Summary: 3 Stars
Don't expect too much excitement from this hard drive, once you get over the sexy design and funky blue light that glows from beneath the front of it. I'm using it as a backup drive on a Mac and find that it's slow to wake up (and loud as the disk spins up), and that it constantly "forgets" its icon (which I configured via the Apple-recommended process of Copy-Pasting an icon file to the disk).
It's functional, it looks good, but it's kinda loud, and the additional power supply required is kind of lame (hello, power-over-USB). I never leave it plugged in because whenever it does anything, it's loud and the light flashes, which is incredibly annoying, but as a backup drive it's perfect. I plug it in, back everything up, then unplug it. That serves as a double safety because it can't get power-spiked either :)
Customer Review: Worked for a few months, then stopped mounting
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive worked perfectly for about ~6 months. Then one day, it stopped mounting consistently. Within a week, it wouldn't mount at all. While it was mounted, I tried reformatting it, thereby losing my backup, in the hopes of fixing the problem. Nothing. I did some research and found that Lacie drives have a history of bad power supplies, so I called Lacie and asked for a new one. To their credit, they send one quickly, but the new power supply didn't solve the problem so I emailed tech support. Tech support suggested a litany of inane fixes such as, "Make sure your drive is connected to your computer," and, "Make sure your drive is turned on." Yeah, really helpful. After a series of emails, they decided to send me another power supply. I ditched the drive and bought another brand. I'll never buy a Lacie product again.