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.
74 responses to “Lacie Porsche Portable Hard Drive Review”
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.
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…
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.
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.
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)
Wow, Darian, that’s a crazy story.
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.
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.
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
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.
Wow, Jimmy, thanks for the analysis. That’s probably exactly what happened to me except I didn’t take it so far.
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
I am hearing significant rumbling in my Lacie drive. Shoud I be concerned??
Yes be concerned, I just installed my new 500gb Brick yesterday and today it failed.
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.
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?
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!
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 !
[…] 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) […]
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?