Lacie Porsche Portable Hard Drive Review
For the record, the Lacie Porsche 250 GB hard drive is something I do not recommend. My unit failed within a year. Even after reformatting it failed again. I know hard drives fail, that’s not why I am upset. I’m upset because Lacie requires that the drive have a mechanical failure before they’ll replace it. Apparently the drive corrupting data and becoming inaccessible doesn’t qualify.
Lacie will not look at it, and somehow diagnosed that mine is operational over the phone (how brilliant) and pointed to a one-year warranty which has just passed. I won’t be buying Lacie again.
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Oh yeah… and you forgot to mention the fact that their warranty doesn’t apply unless you have a physical sales receipt in hand, either.
The previous Comment was posted on April 13, 2006 at 11:39 pm
You think that is bad? It is. Know what’s worse? Maxtor. My Maxtor external drive was retail, new, and carried an awesome 90-Day warranty. Incredibly, it fails after about 20 days. It was a Christmas present from my dad, so I am sans receipt at that point.
I RMA it.
They ship me the replacement. It never arrives. So, I call them, and they say that my address is wrong. Puzzled, as this was my work address and we receive FedEx or UPS deliveries daily, I stress to them it is not “wrong.”
After much convincing, I get them to ship it again, after establishing that they have 2, count it, 2 databases for RMA addresses! Why? No one knows. But, in the database that they were quoting from, my address is correct. However, after much time on the phone, the support person told me that in the other database, they left off the suite number.
…
Another month has now passed with all of this.
I get a new drive in the mail. It’s brand-spankin new. I went to CompUSA, where my dad had purchased it before xmas, and they informed me they would let me exchange it, since it is a brand new drive. Oh, but, the product has been discontinued. So, now I can’t exchange it unless I have a receipt proving it was purchased in the last 21 days.
So, I think the best advice I have for external drives is to purchase the drive and enclosure separately. Hard drives usually carry a 3 year warranty, usually. The good ones anyway. And enclosures usually offer a one to three year warranty also. Here is the good news. If you bought your external drive enclosure and all, your warranty is voided by opening the case. So, you better not investigate whether the drive is bad, or just the Firewire/USB2 bridge in the case.
If you, however, bought the encolsure separately, you can just send it in if it goes tits up. Or, the hard drive in by itself also. And you are likely to get a longer warranty on both items.
That’s what I do from now on. Ever since I had an external drive that the case fried, but the HD was fine. I wanted my precious data, but getting the HD out to get the data off would have voided the warranty. So, I had to send case and data off in the mail.
And I have worse stories of what the mail folks do to me…
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 5:17 am
We have a pair of these that we’ve had good luck with so far. But, we back mostly use them as large file transfer devices so out local network doesn’t grind to a halt when moving stuff around.
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 8:24 am
I think Lacie’s use Maxtor drives which doesn’t surprise me that they are poor in quality. Maxtor has gotten better, or so I’ve heard, but I’ve always just bought drives separately and put them in my own enclosures.
I prefer Seagate and Western Digital.
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 8:34 am
AArghhhh that’s not good news as I bought one of these shortly after Chris did. And I use it for backup and I don’t have a redundant backup of that. Guess I’d better be praying. (and buy another ext HD)
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 10:55 am
Wow, Darian, that’s a crazy story.
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I have also determined that the best route is to get external drive enclosures and just put the drive in there. It’s easier to replace and not too difficult to set up.
The previous Comment was posted on April 14, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I just discovered my Porsche drive is dead. Been searching the web to find others to see if it can be fixed. The orange light comes on, but it won’t spin. worked fine the other day – tons of files! client files. I’ve currently restoring back up with fingers crossed – yikes. I swore off Lacie in 1997 when I got a bad dat drive from them and they were horrible. Proche drive size and price lured me back 0 don’t think I’ll do that again. I do have another Porsche drive. Considering getting a new SEAGATE or WESTERNDIGITAL and tearing apart both drives and trying to get the dead drive to breath.
The previous Comment was posted on April 26, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Hi, I have a lacie porsche 250. It seems dead. I can hear and feel the drive working and the orange light is on, but neither of my puters can see the drive when I plug it in.
Can I take the HD out of the enclosure and use the enclosure for a new drive?
Love esther
The previous Comment was posted on May 16, 2006 at 5:22 am
I purchased two of the LaCie 250gig Firewire drives, and both of them failed regularly. They wouldn’t replace them as they claimed that since they format and work the repeated and regular data corruption is a problem with my system.
They will work a few days, maybe a week or more then fail when shutting down the system, saying it cannot write to a M$ temp file or something. This happens even if I haven’t put any files on it, just formatted it and let it sit.
On the next boot up the drive can not be read as it is corrupt. Reformat the drive and it will work again for a while, but failure is inevitable. I also have two Acomdata external 250′s, Firewire also, and in two years have never had a problem with either.
I opened the LaCie enclosure (worthless warranty anyway) and removed the 250gig Western Digital Cavier SE drive it contained and installed it directly into the system. It has been working for about 7 months now, no failures. I placed a 80gig WD drive I have been using for about 4 years with no problem, into the LaCie enclosure as a test. It failed in only three days, drive was corrupt, all data lost.
So I have to say the IDE/Firewire electronics in the LaCie are FUBARed, no doubt. Even a proven and working drive will soon fail when used with that enclosure.
The two drives are working fine now, installed directly into the system. The LaCie enclosures I threw out, but taped a dollar bill to each first, just so if they are found they will have actually found something of value.
The previous Comment was posted on June 6, 2006 at 6:58 am
Wow, Jimmy, thanks for the analysis. That’s probably exactly what happened to me except I didn’t take it so far.
The previous Comment was posted on June 6, 2006 at 7:07 am
Yep Chris, I have to agree the best bet is to buy the drives and enclosures individually. Though a little more expensive initially I think it’s a better investment for the long term, and much better warranty on the individual components.
The only bright spot is that it wasn’t a total loss, I do have two 250gig WD drives, although they were certainly more expensive than buying just the drives to begin with, lesson learned.
Actually I’m now thinking about a network file server enclosure to put all these drives into. I do a lot of video and audio work for a Death Metal band, so I need about a terabyte of storage for the working files, plus backup space.
Any recommendations on a network file server?
The previous Comment was posted on June 6, 2006 at 7:56 am
I’ve had a 320gb and 250Gb Lacie go down in ONE WEEK. I cant contact LaCie in the UK because there’s no Telephone number. So I faxed them, emailed and then got in touch with the USA main dealer. All were absolutely worthless. They only make the enclosure was one response I got on email……YES, I replied…..but that is the problem….your friggin enclosure and its power supply…the 250gb drive was placed in another enclosure9a rare thing…a Lacie power enclosure that works)….and it booted up, I copied the information across to a seagate USB drive and it’s ready for a return to the company I bought it from. THE 320gb is not so lucky. The enclosure of the Lacie isn’t powerful enough to boot up 2 160gn drives and therefore I had to bridge the power with another unit by powering one from the Lacie and one from an oxford enclosure….still didn’t work…..
Anyway, Just to say….If you plan to get a LaCie…..DON@T buy anything bigger than 250 as you wont be able to recover data with a single enclosure….
nige
The previous Comment was posted on October 3, 2006 at 2:57 am
Well, I too have experienced a failed LaCie hard drive. I am taking video editing classes, loaded up my hard drive, and when I got home to edit, all the files werre corrupt and kept crashing my system. I reformatted the drive (losing all my data) and tired again. Guess what? Yep, It happened again. Last night, in class, I loaded ore files, and the sme thing happened I showed my teacher, and he said that’s fucked up. You’re hard drive is totally messed up. Get rid of it. !!!!
Now I’m goint out looking for a replacemen drive. Any suggestions?
The previous Comment was posted on October 17, 2006 at 7:18 am
Vincent: you should seriously consider taking that drive out of the LaCie enclosure and using it as a normal hard disk. Perhaps as a backup to your new portable drive… that you should get.
The previous Comment was posted on October 17, 2006 at 7:37 am
I am having a problem with my hard drive. I connected another harddrive to my computer and I have done some work on that harddrive and removed it and after that. My original hard drive got messed up. I am using Windows XP SP2 and now my harddrive reboots giving a blue screen right after first windows logo screen. If I don’t turn off it reboots continuously. I had to install XP again and i did but installing it on the same directory on C: So now I have 2 Windows directory. I cannot reach the information and files that are from the first windows installation. My documents are not accessible. I don’t know what to do. I tried every single thing but I failed. I tried to do restore but my computer did not allow me to boot to MS-DOS. Eventhough I did not set an administrator password, it kept asking me that when I try to reach recovery console before I installed the XP again. I don’t know what to do right now. Please help me on this issue if there is any other way to save my information from the hard drive.
THANKS IN ADVANCE.
The previous Comment was posted on January 10, 2007 at 8:08 am
All I have to say WOW…and DOH! Doh as in don’t depend on the sleek “Porsche” drive. I just lost all my files and must now face my boss from the uholy place. I can see the files, I can play the files, but for transfer; – 36 Error Code.
The previous Comment was posted on January 30, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I am hearing significant rumbling in my Lacie drive. Shoud I be concerned??
The previous Comment was posted on March 1, 2007 at 12:14 am
Yes be concerned, I just installed my new 500gb Brick yesterday and today it failed.
The previous Comment was posted on March 1, 2007 at 5:53 pm
thanks fpr the info. DId you recover your information? What the hell is Lacie doing?? What’s the point of building backups that suck??
Also, could anyone please suggestt a reliable alternative. I have a MAC if it makes any difference.
The previous Comment was posted on March 5, 2007 at 7:40 am
Anyone experience failures on the USB2 version? If Jimmy’s experience is typical and the failure is due to the Firewire, does that mean the USB2 should not have the same problem?
The previous Comment was posted on March 30, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I have been using a Lacie Porche 250GB USB2.0 daily for the past 16 months. It’s travelled the country and been dropped a few times. I use it on XP and OS X (although it’s formatted to NTFS so read only on Mac unless access through network from XP). So far no problems with it at all. I’m looking to upgrade the HDD in the next few months… hope all goes well!
The previous Comment was posted on March 31, 2007 at 5:25 am
Yo I have the Porshe 160 fire wire drive (You Would think wit that name it has to be Good) and it just wouldnt go back on after Mac osx Froze after it couldnt load the files when i opend a folder in the drive it just couldnt do it i restarted and the lacie would not load on my desktop and the light stood on bright orange not the dimmer one that it has when its working so i knew the only way to keep my files was gonna take me doing it my self (Thats whut ya thinking when all ur data is just not there) i knew all the warranty and all that even if they fixed it they woulda wiped it so i took out the hard drive out the case put it in my g4 apple power pc tower and it still wont show up but when i go to disk utilities it shows up but only realy gives me the option to erase and start new on that drive witch is not a good thing being i need the things i had on there I dont know why but i thought Lacie was good but damm seing all these messages got me nautious if no one has figured this out im i guess im out of all my data wow never again would i buy something from this company again if any one has any advice get back to me “P.S. LACIE SUCKS DONKEY BIZZZZZY,S lacie needs to send all of us our money back ASAP or we will march !
The previous Comment was posted on May 4, 2007 at 4:08 pm
[...] Originally Posted by bstone As a professional Mac guy with many years of full-time experience, I beg to differ. They have been the most reliable brand with top notch tech support. More reliable than a Seagate in a good enclosure? I don’t think so. Seriously, do a search. People have reported all kinds of problems with the LaCie Porsche drives. I’ll help you get started: http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lou…y-f-a-porsche/ http://forums.macnn.com/57/consumer-…blems-porsche/ http://forums.macnn.com/57/consumer-…yone-here-had/ http://forums.macnn.com/57/consumer-…0-gb-external/ edit: more: BrainFuel » Lacie Porsche Portable Hard Drive Review (Last edited by CharlesS : Today at 02:13 AM) [...]
The previous Pingback was posted on June 3, 2007 at 12:14 am
I’ve just taken a Porsche 16gb firewire drive to bits, second time it’s stopped working, first time, i managed to get it going again – it now won’t spin up. It’s got a Seagate 7200-7 drive in it, so they must vary what drive they stick in the enclosure, it’s out of warranty which is annoying. anybody know which is the best replacement drive to stick in one of these?
The previous Comment was posted on July 1, 2007 at 1:42 pm
The problem is that you morons leave your drives on 24/7 these drives are uncooled so what do you expect? So either you need to install a hard drive cooler on them or turn them off when you’re not using them or learn to manage your data like you have a brain. I have about 5 terrabytes of lacie drives (porsche design) in large arrays attached to my computer.
I have NEVER had one fail, and they serve their purpose in storing data. There’s no way I’ll access all this data every day so I don’t. I turn them off an only keep so many on my usb hub’s when I want to put one into long term storage I write in marker under the drive lable it and then stick it in my “lacie closet” where I have even more lacie drives. They’re cheap, fast and plentiful they even look nice, a great product if you use it in a manner consistant with it’s design.
External drives are not meant to be run all day without ample cooling guys!
So know what you’re getting into. If you want it on all day long throw it in your computer case, or better yet buy a higher quality drive to throw in your case.
The previous Comment was posted on July 10, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Hello fellow morons. What have any of you been able to recover your data? If so how did you do it?
Tahnks,
Pattie
The previous Comment was posted on July 16, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Hello fellow morons. Have any of you been able to recover your data? If so, how?
The previous Comment was posted on July 16, 2007 at 9:50 pm
My 500 gig new porsche hardrive just failed working. It makes funny noises and the light become bright yellow and it won’t boot.
Have I just lost 450 gig of valuable high resolution photo’s or are there way to recover my data or get my drive to work again?
Hans
The previous Comment was posted on July 28, 2007 at 4:32 am
[...] Re: Recommendations On A Good External Hard Drives Im looking into getting a new external after my heartbraking crash of my harddrive. After doing extensive research, heres my conclusion: Seagate – I will never get again because 1. My drive that just failed on me was a 300 GB Seagate. 2. Seagate bought MAxtor, which is the worst hard drive brand I know. Lacie Porche – Looks nice but read a LOT of bad reviews and issues (BrainFuel » Lacie Porsche Portable Hard Drive Review) So I am going with TWO of the 500 GB Western Digital My Book Pro with Firewire. Best price I found it was here Western Digital 500GB My Book Pro Edition Triple-Interface External Hard Drive One I will keep at home for backup only, and one I wil take to my gigs for use with Serato. I dont want a Terabyte because thats just too much space and the 500 Gigers will probably fail after 3-4 years (typical lifespan of a harddrive is 3-7 years), which by then the TBs will be much cheaper. Hope this helps in anyone else’s research of harddrives. __________________ A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. – Thoreau thecoolpageaboutlife [...]
The previous Pingback was posted on August 7, 2007 at 1:21 am
good lord. good thing i checked this place out before buying this Lacie Porsche 500GB drive. its on sale for $119.
im supposed to pick it up today. i got the mybook 500gb from W.D.
everybody i know say that Lacie is the drive for media types in photography etc…but now this…
i checked out amazon and everyone seems to love it.
somebody says its the power supply thats the problem.
i guess ill pass on it.
The previous Comment was posted on August 17, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I bought the $119 500GB. Dont really need it. Its beside me unpacked.
Bought it before research on the web – looks neat – unbeatable price…impulsive purchase…but am not sure if I am a fellow moron that might get this unit to have a seizure.
Probably will return it… Proves this site is useful to treat for impulsive buyer syndrome
The previous Comment was posted on August 18, 2007 at 6:35 am
Well I’m currently thanking my lucky stars that I decided to not be lazy and actually do some product research! Depending on where I look, people either love the LaCie Porsche or despise it with a passion. I was all set to grab a Seagate after discovering that the Lacie drive was sooo bad, but the fact that they bought Maxtor is a HUGE turnoff for me. I think I’ll go and find myself a nice reliable Western Digital…
Thanks, everybody, for all the info. I often wonder what people did to research a purchase before the age of customer reviews.
The previous Comment was posted on September 12, 2007 at 1:54 am
Another broken 500GB Lacie Porsche here.
Lights come on, nothing happens. No more Lacie for me, I’ll spend on quality hardware from now on.
The previous Comment was posted on September 23, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I have had the drive for 6 months now. It failed today. None of the files are showing up on the drive, only the folder structure. I believe it has failed. The entire drive has failed. It worked perfectly fine until today. It is a 500 gig purchased for 120. I would recommend not investing your money in cheap storage, as your files are what makes the computer an important asset and if the hardware if faulty, then its really not worth buying.
The previous Comment was posted on September 26, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I had purchased 5 Lacie 250MB F.A.Porsche drives and so far have had 4 fail. All of them had failed with faulty power supply units, with one of those also having a fault drive.
If I ever buy a Lacie item again, I hope someone shoots me to put me out of my misery.
The previous Comment was posted on October 1, 2007 at 3:19 am
Decided to researc before I buy lacie and after reading this I will not touch lacie with a pole. Thanks for the tips. WD or samsung then. I’ve always liked the quiet samsungs.
The previous Comment was posted on October 4, 2007 at 9:02 am
I can retrieve data from most failed lacie F.A.Porsche drives.
If the drive starts to spin up, clicks and spins down I can usually get the data out of it before it totally fails. (You supply the new drive.)
The above link is to my ebay page.
Failing that, search on ebay for lacie recovery
The previous Comment was posted on October 9, 2007 at 10:47 am
I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve had the Porsche 160Gb Firewire for about 2 yrs., turned on, connected, and mounted 24/7 in Mac OSX with no probelms whatsoever. It reads, writes, saves, deletes, sings, dances and does everything it’s supposed to do flawlessly, and looks great doing it. The 500Gb USB2 was on sale for $119 ($131 out the door) so I bought it yesterday. When I first plugged it in (to a hub), it wouldn’t mount. I bypassed the hub and plugged in direct, and it mounted right up. I then erased and formatted it (which I think is critical). After that, it would mount when connected to the hub. Not sure why the hub would make any difference.
The previous Comment was posted on November 17, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[...] After reading this, I’ll stay away from LaCie external HDs. I’ve had one and it broke as well. Amazon has the Porsche 500GB for $119US. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
The previous Pingback was posted on December 13, 2007 at 10:30 am
Yikes, I too just bought a LaCie 500gig Hard Drive. I have the HD right next to me unopened, and I am going to be heading back to the store for a return after this comment. I am doing my research backwards, next time I will do it first before I buy, especially on data storage which I need something more reliable. WD here I come. Thanks for preventing a major headache!
The previous Comment was posted on December 19, 2007 at 11:20 am
I’ve had two of these drives in the 250 gig version. One uses a seagate drive the other uses a western digital. Both have been rock solid with no problems. I’ve
The previous Comment was posted on December 23, 2007 at 5:01 pm
I’ve had two of these drives in the 250 gig version. One uses a seagate drive the other uses a western digital. Both have been rock solid with no problems. I’ve had them for over a year as I bought them both on the same day
The previous Comment was posted on December 23, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I did not keep my Lacie 500 GB Porsche Drive on 24-7. All I did was plug it into a usb and the lacie power cable, I press the power button, light starts to flicker…I wait, nothing loads. I check out the drive, light is no longer on. I press the power button on again, nothing. Then it starts smelling everywhere, like something just fried. I look for the source…figure it might be the hard drive since it was acting up – yup, my hard drive is fried. RIP Lacie 500 GB Porsche I (June 2007 – Dec 26th 2007…boxing day).
Anyway to get my data back? – like by taking out the HD and placing it into another enclosure?
The previous Comment was posted on December 27, 2007 at 3:02 am
My 250GB Lacie Porche ExtHD is nearly a year old and I haven’t experienced any problems (at least so far). I was planning to buy two new 500GB Porsche drives as well, but after reading this article and all the comments, I’m having second thoughts. I think I will have to check into other brands before purchasing new drives.
The previous Comment was posted on December 27, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I have a 250 GB Lacie Porche HD and it has failed me as well within the first year. It is inaccessible and I am trying everythig I can to restore it. Thanks for letting me know that Lacie Two Year Warranty just might be worthless to me!
The previous Comment was posted on January 5, 2008 at 9:26 am
Damn, this whole thread is interesting. I’m just having my first problems with at lacie F A porsche 160 g hard drive. drive which i so happend to have bought on 06/01/05. Looking at the receipt right now. Today is my first time having any trouble with it. haven’t had to replace it. I think it’s just a matter of the fact that I did an install of for 2.0 usb ports. Which just moved it down to another drive slot. And It took me a bit of time to figure out how to change the damn drive names for it. And still working on getting everything in order as I speak. Well, first it said something about not connecting or finding the drive. Then I realized that the damn. new usb’s shoved it down in the drive ranks. about an hour after the fact. Took another 30 minutes to figure out how to change the letters for the drive. So, that everything links back up. Which I’m currently working on at the moment. checked the profile and it said that the lacie wouldn’t start up. unplugged and plugged it in a few times. re installed the drivers. And the lacie update check. Let me see what else. Just cut it off and cut it back on and now it seems to be good. All my files are back online. But, I will be investing in another soon and getting a seperate drive and an enclosure as you guys are talking about. Oh, looks like it’s not fine. just got this as a message ‘Windows – No Disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf9c 4 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c’ hmm someone e mail me if you got a suggestion for this. gonna look some stuff up online to see what i can find as well. dlbiininja@yahoo.com
The previous Comment was posted on January 7, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I have three LaCie Porsche drives, the longest of which I’ve had nearly three years. No problems whatsoever. Sorry for your bad experience.
The previous Comment was posted on January 8, 2008 at 7:31 am
hmm, from what i have researched online. It could potentially be these new damn usbs that I installed. frag. gonna have to take this bastiche apart again. sshheesh.
The previous Comment was posted on January 10, 2008 at 2:33 am
My 6-months olds Porsche 160 Gb USB just stopped working.
Tried the drive in another enclosure, without success…
RIP my data.
The previous Comment was posted on January 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Just bought a 500gb yesterday with a samsung drive in it. Moved 100GB last night and today; Drive: L\ is inaccessible. Tried it in 2 other computers, same deal. Glad it died now and not after the 14day no questions asked return period is over. Glad I also read this. Going to get an external enclosure instead I think.
The previous Comment was posted on January 18, 2008 at 7:54 am
Right….
Bought a Lacie (Seagate) 2TB Extreme in September. Transfered my 13000 images of family etc over to it. Happily running along until Friday this week when I saw a error message write failure to j: drive (yes the Lacie).
So I turned everything off and on again, and the drive stared whirring and clicking. And now NOTHING!!! have all my families photos on there and only backups from a year ago! (yes I hear everyone shouting… but but but… my fault!).
The question I now have is I think it’s the disk motherboard/ controller and possibly the power supply thats screwed this up as my pc recognises the 4 individual hard drives if I put them into the PC (although they are dynamic and wanted me to convert them!!! eeek). ANyway I want to know can I take the hard drives (one by one) and put them into a enclosure, connect via udb/ firewire and take the files of each of the hard drives until they are empty?
Am I being thick?
HELP!
D Owen
The previous Comment was posted on January 22, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Re: the following comment:
“I did not keep my Lacie 500 GB Porsche Drive on 24-7. All I did was plug it into a usb and the lacie power cable, I press the power button, light starts to flicker…I wait, nothing loads. I check out the drive, light is no longer on. I press the power button on again, nothing. Then it starts smelling everywhere, like something just fried. I look for the source…figure it might be the hard drive since it was acting up – yup, my hard drive is fried. RIP Lacie 500 GB Porsche.”
Describes my situation exactly. I’m going to try to put the drive into another enclosure and see how it fares.
The previous Comment was posted on January 26, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I have used my 250 gig FW Porcshe design for about 3 years on 24/7 for recording via Logic on an older Mac G4 without any problems whatsoever…. until yesterday, when the drive started making a LOT of loud spinning noise, and now will not mount at all. My Disk utilities “sees” it, but can’t/won’t mount it. Luckily, I have backed up to DVD mid summer, so I only lose a few tweaks and maybe one whole song that I can easily redo. I have an empty usb case, so tomorrow, I’ll pop the Porche case and put the drive in the usb case, and HOPE it mounts. IF so, I’ll buy a new FW case and move on. If not, I MAY go to a local guy that recovers data and hope he can get back what I’ve lost. Before I bought this drive a few years ago, I did do some research, and all I found was favorable.
I’d always heard to stay away from Western Digital, but MANY here have commented they are a good brand. Other than the LaCie, I have 2 Seagate internals that have never given me a problem, at all (knock on silicon!). If my endeavors are successful, I’ll report back.
The previous Comment was posted on January 27, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I have used my 250 gig FW Porcshe design for about 3 years on 24/7 for recording via Logic on an older Mac G4 without any problems whatsoever…. until yesterday, when the drive started making a LOT of loud spinning noise, and now will not mount at all. My Disk utilities “sees” it, but can’t/won’t mount it. Luckily, I have backed up to DVD mid summer, so I only lose a few tweaks and maybe one whole song that I can easily redo. I have an empty usb case, so tomorrow, I’ll pop the Porsche case and put the drive in the usb case, and HOPE it mounts. IF so, I’ll buy a new FW case and move on. If not, I MAY go to a local guy that recovers data and hope he can get back what I’ve lost. Before I bought this drive a few years ago, I did do some research, and all I found was favorable.
I’d always heard to stay away from Western Digital, but MANY here have commented they are a good brand. Other than the LaCie, I have 2 Seagate internals that have never given me a problem, at all (knock on silicon!). If my endeavors are successful, I’ll report back.
The previous Comment was posted on January 27, 2008 at 3:12 pm
IS there an echo in here?
The previous Comment was posted on January 27, 2008 at 3:18 pm
After a macbook problem, the store adviced me a clean re-install of osX.
So i went to a shop to buy the Lacie 500 gb Porsche to have a backup of all my data.
Guess what, 2 days later, before i could transfer all my data back, it fails to be detected.
The drive spins, the orange LED is on, but both macbook and my pc fail to detect the storage device.
*sigh*
The previous Comment was posted on January 28, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I am in film school and my Editing class requires that I have an external hard drive. “Good,” I thought, thinking about the Lacie Porsche drive 320 I had received for Christmas. That is, until my teacher mentioned that the Lacie Porsche drives make great door-stoppers. Apparently her TV station bought about a dozen and most of them died, some after a few months. I guess I should get a new drive before I loose all my data on my current one.
The previous Comment was posted on February 2, 2008 at 1:45 am
My Lacie 500gb external drive recently changed the color of the status led into yellow from orange and refused to start properly and show up in my Windows. I’m definetily not buying Lacie ever again.
However, I decided to not give up. About 50 HDD shutdowns and restarts later I managed to get the hdd to start properly! Don’t know why but the sound was suddenly different and it just started. I backed up about 50 dvd’s worth of data from it and it ran nicely for about 24 hours and then failed again and now it shows the yellow light again and doesn’t start properly.
My point being, if your Lacie refuses to start and changes the led color to yellow from orange, keep restarting it and if you are in any luck that piece of crap will eventually start one more time and you will be able to back up your data!
The previous Comment was posted on February 3, 2008 at 2:24 pm
hello, i have or had a 160gb F.A porsche drive Lacie, Firewire which i bought in may of 2005. This month Feb 2008 i went to get some stuff out of it and it was definetely dead. Neither my mac or pc woudl recognize it ( i was running it on my pc via macddrive) it was mac formatted to begin with. But anyways, needless to say it just makes clicking sound and then it stops.
now im just researching to see if i can get my pictures and portfolio without a hefty fee to retrieve if it could actually be retrieve. I use to love my Lacie – since it lasted for a while.. but now my reliable back up is no longer reliable – Lacies response is i should have had another backup 
i think next time i will have dvds backups.. as well. vs another harddrive . Any suggestions. thanks.. will be appreciated
I believe i left it on for too long without switching the power button off in the back. ( so yes its probably my fault) Before I always unplugged it – i am just pissed they dont’ make them to shut off after the actual computer they are connected to are off themselves.
The previous Comment was posted on February 16, 2008 at 10:28 pm
You can’t leave a harddrive on for too long – it’s supposed to work 24/7 if needed.
And my suggestion is to keep restarting the device, as chances are it will eventually start up properly again once more. I know mine did but the process did require patience.
The previous Comment was posted on February 21, 2008 at 9:13 am
I want my new 500GB Porsche to turn off and on with my main system power switch. Can I jump the internal switch to do this? Am I better off buying another enclosure for the hard drive? It sounds to me from the comments that the enclosure may be the problem half of the time anyway.
The previous Comment was posted on March 1, 2008 at 11:09 pm
hi, since about a year back i’m the owner of a 500gb porche drive, which hasn’t failed me yet. i’ve been carrying it around, mounting it to different platforms, gone from cold environments to warm – all without a problem. maybe i’m just lucky.
by the comments here (and forums elswhere) i figure it’s however time to back my stuff up before i’m as unlucky as some of you. sorry for your data losses. it’s a real bitch.
anyhow, i’m thinking, those of you that have experienced corrupt drives and such, have you been careful enough to unmount/eject the drive (ie, using safely remove hardware etc) when you’ve disconnected it?
i’m wondering because i’m curious how much it matters in terms of life length of the unit. i myself am pretty anal about unmounting, just because i too have had bad experiences before. but maybe it’s just a matter of bad luck, and not at all related to this precautionary matter.
thanks.
patrik
The previous Comment was posted on March 12, 2008 at 8:23 am
Hey All. I have a LaCie Porsche 500Gb External HDD and it’s awesome. Many of you have cried about the drive and praised WD, Seagate, Maxtor and others. I think it’s all a game of chance. The bigger HDDs get, the more they’ll fail and if you keep you “life” on a HDD exclusivly, and it fails, then you are an idiot. Back up your data and protect yourself. My LaCie is working great and it’s all the U.S. Marine Corps buys for it’s video editing systems so that should tell you something… (not the lowest bidder crap either). I’m wondering how much of these failures are user error. Any thoughts?
The previous Comment was posted on March 14, 2008 at 2:53 am
Rob, people expect the LaCie Porsche to work reliably for a long time but that’s not always the case. Why should it be a game of chance ? You call us stupid because we trust LaCie then you recommend them yourself on the ground that the U.S. Marine Corps is one of their best customers. What kind of reasoning is that ?
You advise us to backup our data; guess what : that’s why we bought a LaCie Porsche. Are you suggesting that for each 500 GB external hard drive that we possess, we should carry around 125 DVDs ?
When most of us buy an external hard disk, we read its manual, plug it in the computer, turn it on and start using it right away. If that’s what you call “user error”, then please tell us how you use yours.
To the other wise guys, we have peripherals that are left on 24/7 (scanners, printers, webcams, faxes, external dvd burners, …) yet they don’t fail after a year. So, stop patronizing us.
If the LaCie Porsche were such a great product, there wouldn’t be so many complaints about it.
The previous Comment was posted on March 19, 2008 at 9:27 am
Almost a year after I bought it, and therefore just out of guarantee my LaCie Porshe is no more.
The orange light would come on and the drive would spin up, but no PC I’ve plugged it into would even recognize it. Tried different power supply, tried different USB lead. Nothing.
No clicking sound, the drive sounded as if it was running normally, so I bit the bullet and opened up the casing and pulled out the drive. Turns out it’s a seagate inside, plugged it directly into mc PC and whaddya know? it works fine.
It would seem from my experience and a few others here it Lacies circuit board that can sometimes be the weakest link, when all else fails it could be worth trying my steps.
The previous Comment was posted on March 26, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Yeah man,those lacie drives are useless,i use a macbook running digital performer and was using the lacie 250gb firewire drive to save my audio files and digital performer projects.After a year of use it has started to play up,digital performer can’t open any projects and i keep on getting error messages which pisses me off no end,and to add insult to injury i can’t even record into digital performer because of this.At the time i brought the lacie i had just refurbished my music studio so i could only afford one drive,more fool me now i have lost everything and i am having to look at getting two replacement drives.It seems that most of the competition is no better and it is a lottery where external hard drives are concerned.My whole studio was held together by a thin strand of string and that was the lacie hardrive.Do yourselves a favour and buy three hardrives as a precaution.
The previous Comment was posted on April 1, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I am a solid mac junky (since the 80s). Lacie was their partner in external drives for years. I have an older Porsche 160gb and it has stood through the ages and is EXCELLENT. I have dropped it so many times….yes…nothing has ever hurt it. I carry it in my school bag as backup for my laptop. Last week I bought a second Lacie Porsche that was on sale (discontinued 320gb 7200rpm model). It is exactly the same box with the exact same power supply. This drive mad NOISE! My first one is 100% silent. This new one is only quiet when doing nothing. When you write to the drive there is a constant chucking noise. We read many posts then they said that it was an issue with the power supplies, so we called lacie (on hold 30minutes before talking to anyone EVERY time we called). They said they would send one in 2 days, so we could get it and try that before deciding to return it. It has been two weeks now and nothing has arrived. We called today (last day to return the drive) and were told they were still waiting for new power supplies POOR SERVICE! They said to keep it and they would replace it if it has trouble after getting the new wire but we read hundred of posts from others that lacie will not replace the drive unless it fails–not for being unreliable or noisy. Then I used my brain…duh…I swapped out the cord with the one on our older drive (EXACT SAME CORD). The noise persisted! The cord was not the problem. It is clearly the drive. So I looked at which drive was in it. I had read that they were using Seagate 320gb drives (a model with a 5 year warrantee. This was not what I got! inside the 320GB is a Hitachi HDT725032VLAT80. I looked up reviews on this drive and they are not good. noise and failure is constant issue problems starting from day one and failing in a year or less. If you drive is no 100% silent when writing. Return it and get another. When you get a good model and drive you will know. Also look up the model of the drive in your Lacie (on a mac you can read it information in disk utility). newegg.com is a great place to read about each drive so you can see if the drive enclosed is a good one.
The previous Comment was posted on April 7, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Add me to the list of people with a failed 250 GB Lacie Porsche drive although mine isn’t portable. The orange light comes on and never turns green even though I can hear the disc spinning. When I connect it to my computer it doesn’t show up. And it’s not a problem of overheating as this drive is only used once a week or so to backup another hard drive. It’s turned off the rest of the time. It is precisely for this reason that I have two copies of all of my stuff.
I also have two other 250 GB Lacie drives but they’re the mini drives that look like the Mac mini. I’ve had them for three years now and they work flawlessly so I’m pretty sure it’s the porsche enclosure that’s the problem. Either that or I’ve been really lucky with my mini drives. I have three ScanDisk Bus Powered firewire drives that have also worked flawlessly. I would highly recommend ScanDisk for portable drives.
The previous Comment was posted on April 17, 2008 at 2:30 am
I bought one of these (the 100gb model actually) last November, and it failed in May. The LaCie tech support people were very friendly and helpful, and exchanged it with minimal trouble.
I also bough an external DVD burner from LaCie and after a few months the power supply went bad. I sent them an email and they sent a new power supply, no questions asked at all. I didn’t even have to send them back the old one.
The previous Comment was posted on May 7, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Tha LaCie warranty is rubbish. After extensive discussions about returning a unit with a burned out motor I find that they WILL guarantee to reformat my drive even when I ask them not to and they WILL NOT guarantee not to replace the disk even when I ask them not to. Basically, they guarantee to return an empty drive. Not quite what I had in mind when I dumped a load of data from my laptop to the 500GB external drive!
To add insult to injury I still can’t open the bloody thing to see if I can effect my own data recovery.
LaCie – never again!
The previous Comment was posted on June 18, 2008 at 6:54 am
I like LaCie drives (have been using them for about 18 years when they used to be owned by Quantum who had a good reputation for drive mechanisms) but I think the external brick power supplies are rubbish. I have had a couple of power supplies fail. My sister’s apparently dead drive came alive with a new power supply today.
The previous Comment was posted on January 10, 2009 at 4:48 pm
My Lacie Porsche just fried aftet two years of being plugged in 24/7-good to know I’m a moron, better for everyone else to know Lacie has a reputation for sucking and horrible customer service. Bummer I lost all of files, but it’s not life ending
The previous Comment was posted on December 4, 2009 at 12:49 pm