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.


74 responses to “Lacie Porsche Portable Hard Drive Review”

  1. 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.

  2. Hello fellow morons. What have any of you been able to recover your data? If so how did you do it?

    Tahnks,

    Pattie

  3. Hello fellow morons. Have any of you been able to recover your data? If so, how?

  4. 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

  5. […] 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 […]

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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. 🙂

  12. 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.

  13. 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

  14. 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.

  15. 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!

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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?

  19. 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.

  20. 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!

  21. 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

  22. I have three LaCie Porsche drives, the longest of which I’ve had nearly three years. No problems whatsoever. Sorry for your bad experience.

  23. 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.

  24. My 6-months olds Porsche 160 Gb USB just stopped working.

    Tried the drive in another enclosure, without success…

    RIP my data.

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