LaCie Big Disk Warning signs... Should I ditch?

Hi all,
First, want to quickly apologize for not doing a thorough read of all the posts regarding LaCie drives - the problem is that there are so many of them. People apparently are having all kinds of LaCie nightmares, and it would take me forever to read through everything. So here's my issue.
I have 3 LaCie Big Disk Extremes (d2), in three flavors. One 500 G, one 600 G, and 1 TB, each daisy-chained via FW 800 to the FW800 port on my G5 (Dual 2.5 GHz). All three have - until now - been acting just fine, but I just captured a few full HDV tapes to the 1 TB and I have had playback issues that just don't seem to go away. I'll play a few seconds, even at random points of the video, and it will freeze with the spinning beach ball of death.
At first I thought it was software issue, so I reinstalled QT, trashed preferences in FCP, but it all kept coming back to the same problem.
Now, here's the weird thing - when I copy the same video from my 1 TB to one of my other LaCies (which are actually further down the daisychain), the video plays fine, with no stuttering or freezing.
Now reading all of the LaCie posts is freaking me out a tad - is this some kind of warning sign that my 1 TB drive is heading down a dark path?
Is there some way I can fix it by either wiping it or attempting to see about fixing hardware?
And finally, is daisychaining all of these drives on the same FW 800 bus recommended, or is there a better solution (that won't break the bank)?
Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks guys!
Dan
(P.S. Any suggestions on other drive brands? A client just bought a Western Digital MyBook 1 TB, and it seems to be working great, but I'm open to suggestions).

Yes it is true that people report lods of problems with Lacie drives and there are many reasons for that.
Even the power supply is considered dangerousely unreliable.
Another thing is that drives can fail indeed at some point. If you can play the footage from some of your other drives then the 1TB might have some issues (power supply or other is difficult to say). Best would be backing up your media and if you can then run Disk Warrior http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
Good and not massively expensive drives, should you want new ones, are G-tech and Caldigit (links below). You could RAID a few drives (RAID 0 for example for quicker workflow), however, choice depends on several factors: what format you will be working on in the future, if you want to upgrade to eSATA at some stage, etc. Use the search tool of the forum or google for hints:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5068643
Personally I would NOT go for WD. Not really designed for editing.
http://www.caldigit.com/
http://www.g-technology.com/

Similar Messages

Warning - itunes 7 and lacie Big Disk

At poresent I am attempting to re build my Lacie 500Gb hard drive because itunes 7 has crashed it, please be careful if you have wav files on a lacie big disk
Disk utility does not work to repair the drive, tech tools has recommended using file recovery, what a wonderful way to spend a Friday evening, not listening to music but finding it
Oh and if anyone from the itunes team is reading this and I certainly hope there is, please be aware that if I lose my 500+ strong CD collection from my Big Disk, I will be asking them to send the person responsible for saying this product was safe for public consumption to come to Australia and sit in front of my mini and re rip every single CD one after another. Then they can rebuild the playiists that I so anally created, then they should be made to go and apologise to every single person in the world that their shoddy decision has effected
What a fantastic start to the weekend, thanks itunes, next time wait until it's ready
DjDs
Mac Mini 1.25Ghz PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1GB DDR SD DRAM, Migli Mini TV, Lacie Big Disk

I have recently "upgraded" to iTunes 7 myself. I use my old PB 17" as a music server (since work bought me a new 15" MacBook Pro), and . . . uh oh . . . I have my iTunes library on a LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme.
Perusing through the forums, it would seem that a lot of folks have trouble with the new iTunes and external drives, not just LaCie.
iTunes 7 corrupted the directory of the LaCie disk to the point at which I couldn't even mount the disk, and Disk Utility couldn't help me. It was really strange. The first time I ran iTunes 7, it did that whole gapless-playback scan (whatever the heck that is) and then could find none of the songs (it asked me on each song if I'd like to locate the original?). Then, I quit iTunes and couldn't open the LaCie drive icon on the desktop. So, I rebooted, and the LaCie drive wouldn't even mount.
The latest version of DiskWarrior (3.0.3), however, recognized the drive and rebuilt the directory and, I am happy to report, with the rebuilt directory ALL my music works and iTunes 7 seems to work like a charm.
It's a little frustrating that Apple released such a problematic product, BUT, I guess they can't try every possible hardware combination. iTunes and an external hard drive, though, would seem to be pretty common.
Talltexan, have you got the latest DiskWarrior?
Stuart

Trouble with LaCie Big Disk?

I saw on an archived topic that some others had problems with this 500g LaCie Big Disk. I was curious if there was anyone out there who was having the same problems I am.
The Drive will just periodically shut off for no reason whatever. It's not in use, or anything, it's just sitting there being on, and I get the warning that I've disconnected the drive and don't ever do that, etc.
I informed LaCie about this. I was out of warranty, and they just sent me a new one and it just did the same thing.
Anyone else having problems like this???
If so, was it resolved??
Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hey Thomas...
Thanks so much for the reply -- a good thought - the drive actually can be connected firewire 800, fw400, or usb, and I'm getting the same symptoms when connected with any of them

LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple 2TB

I am thinking of getting a LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple 2TB for use with Final Cut Express. This drive is actually 2 1-TB disks. Is there any problem using such a drive in capturing video (or anything else having to do with video editing/production)? Thanks in advance.

Do you use them for capturing and editing video?
Yes I do.

Icon and use of LaCie Big Disk+ no longer

I purchased a LaCie 1 TB big disk+ external drive. Worked great out of the box. Large enough that I unloaded all of my other external drives onto it. Now, it (the icon) no longer appears on the desktop, allowing me access. The profiler states that it's recognized. I'm using my firewire 800 port which works fine with other drives, so that's not the problem. I also tried connecting it using the firewire 400 port. No luck. I've rebooted numerous times, with and without the drive plugged in. I've turned it on and off, disconnected the power temporarily, disconnected and reconnected, tried reloading the drivers, but get the message they're up to date and fine. Help!

Often LaCie drives will have power supply brick issues that are difficult to troubleshoot as the blue light comes on and the disk spins but nobody is home.
If the drive is under warranty LaCie will replace the brick no charge.
As an aside, you still need to backup the data that is on this drive otherwise you stand a chance of losing all of your data should the drive fail.
Luck-
-DP

LaCie Big Disk Extreme

I own a 500GB Lacie Drive (Big Disk Extreme) that is behaving very poorly. Without elaborating on its behavior I wanted to ask if there are any good companies I can use to replace the drive itself inside the enclosure from LaCie? I've emailed them about this but have yet to hear back & wanted to start a search in case they will not do it.
Thanks,
Harris

Hi
When I was looking into getting an external drive for my Mac, I found a number of posts which seemed to suggest the power supply and cooling used in the LaCie enclosures containing the higher capacity drives weren't as good as they could have been and may lead to premature drive failure.
As far as I'm aware, all external drives are just normal internal drives mounted in an external USB or FireWire enclosure. You can certainly buy the drives and enclosures separately and build your own.
Equally I can't see why you couldn't just buy a drive and replace the existing one in an existing enclosure, or buy an enclosure and replace the existing one containing an existing drive. I guess the only difficulty would be if the LaCie enclosure is sealed or the internal data and power cables are soldered into the back of the drive. Having done a quick search in Google, it doesn't seem too difficult to remove the drive from the enclosure and replace one or the other yourself. I'd imagine this would almost certainly invalidate any warrranty though.
I hope this helps.

Lacie Big Disk BIG ERROR (-9972)

Below is the definition for the issue I'm having on my G4. I've used disk Utility, Drive Genius and Disk Warrior. None of them could fix the issue. The solution below states that I should "back Up" the disk and start fresh. Here's the problem: How I access files on a drive won't allow me to see what's on it?
Any help will do.
Much Thanks.
~MF
Symptoms
In rare circumstances, Disk Utility may display the following message when you try to verify or repair a disk:
"The underlying task reported failure"
The Disk Utility log will also display a -9972 error code. This indicates that your disk volume has issues that Disk Utility cannot fix.
Products Affected
Disk Utility, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Illustrator CS2
Resolution
What can I do?
If you experience this rare occurrence, you should attempt to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Try using fsck in single user mode, or start up your computer from a different volume before verifying or repairing.
Back up as much of your important data and files as you can, then try using a third-party disk utility to repair the drive. Be sure that you use one that works with your version of Mac OS X.
Back up as much of your important data and files as you can, then perform an Erase and Install installation of Mac OS X on the affected volume.
Important: This option completely erases the destination volume and then installs a new copy of Mac OS X. You should always backup important files on the target volume before performing an Erase and Install installation. You can then restore your backed up files afterwards.

Hi, ~MF -
It is good practice to cite the source of quoted material; if possible, give the link to the aarticle. In this case, it would appear that you quoted a portion of this Apple KBase article -
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1901
If you have tried to do what you can using Disk Utility (while booted to a CD) and Disk Warrior, try using a data retrieval program to capture your data from the drive before re-initializing it, such as -
Data Rescue
Virtual Lab
Both of those have trial versions available for download; either may have restrictions re what versions of OSX they support.

LaCie Big Disk 640GB Worked then stopped

I know Raid isn't supported by AE(n), but the strange thing is it worked the first day, then I started copying stuff on it and it stopped working. Is it because it started to use both disks?
Is there a way to upgrade the Lacie firmware to disable the Raid?
Any idea? Anyone?
Micha

Have you restarted the Airport remotely by say, changing any settings in the AirPort Utility?
That causes my USB-attached drive to disconnect from the wireless network every time. To get it to reappear, I simply unplug & replug it into the USB connection after the AirPort restart is complete. Worth a try if you haven't done that yet...

LaCie Big Disk 500GB Crashes OSX 10.4.7 when booted??? Help?! I've lost it!

I had this problem once before with kernel panic, but at the time the drive was NTFS formatted for the PC I was switching from. I networked, manipulated the data around, and transferred the data over the network then reformatted the LaCie as a Mac drive and re-uploaded all the files to it via the Mac G5.
Now, after I upgraded to 10.4.7 it seems, every time I try to boot the computer with it connected, it causes a crash/kernel panic forced hard reboot shortly after completely booting up.
I AM REALLY DISAPPOINTED IN APPLE. I switched back from the PC, hoping for an improvement for my thousands of dollars, but nooooo. Aperture? HA! Mail? corrupted, can't find stuff from 6 months ago anymore... Jesus Apple, get your $#!^ together! /rant
Can anyone help me get this Lacie back online? I'm completely hosed now b/c it won't mount on the PC either now that it's been 'Mac'ed' - which I am starting to look at as a technical equivalent of 'pimp-slapped'...
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Hey Apple, looks like it's time for 10.4.8?
G5 Dual 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 4GB RAM

Ok, I'm going to jump in here now.
I have a Lacie 320GB drive, that I borrowed from a friend, that has an NT filesystem. I'm running a bone stock 2.3Ghz dual G5 (5 months old) and 10.4.7.
If I plug the drive into either the front panel FW400 port -or- the rear FW800 port the machine will crash in about 5 seconds. The screen goes gray from the top to the bottom kind of like a shade being pulled down. Then I get the message in a small window that says to hold down the power button to reboot my computer.
Funny thing is, I also have a 1.67GHz G4 15" Powerbook, also running 10.4.7, and the drive works in both the FW800 and FW400 ports on that. I also plugged it into my (very old) 350Mhz G3 running 10.3.9 and it works fine there too.
Now onto my second, but related issue. I have a 250GB Lacie FW800/FW400/USB 2.0 drive also. Been using it for almost a year and always worked perfectly (Mac FS on it). Before I tried the other external drive (talked about above) I plugged this 250GB drive in and ....nothing.... It doesn't appear visible to the Mac in any way since updating to 10.4.7. Used it two weeks ago when running 10.4.6 and it worked fine. Now this drive is NOT visible on ANY machine that I have. I've tried all three ports on the drive (FW800, FW400, USB-2) with different cables and different computers. The drive is NOT visible on any of them. Disk utitility doesn't see it, the system profiler doesn't see anything on any of the ports. Funny thing is that as soon as you plug the drive into a port it fires up (light turns on) and you can hear it doing its thing internally just like it always has.
Now this could just be a coincidence that it went missing after installing 10.4.7 but I'm starting to think that 10.4.7 did something with the drive.
Remember, I have 2.3Ghz dual G5 which is ABSOLUTELY in stock condition as it came directly from Apple about 5 months ago. No extras, nothing special. Looking at your signature I see that we have pretty much the same machine.
I can only conclude that there is some problem with 10.4.7 software and my machine's hardware. You are seeing the same behavior and don't have an NT filesystem on your external drive so it doesn't appear to be related to that.

Will a WD Caviar drive from LaCie Big Disk Extreme go into an internal bay?

Two LaCie external hard rives would not mount. I have taken the WD drive out of the D2 Quadra and put it into bay 2 in the Mac Pro and it worked immediately. I cannot physically fit the two WD Caviar WD2500JB drives into bays 3 and 4. Is there any way of doing this, so that I can see whether the drives themselves are OK, like the drive from the D2 Quadra was ? Is there some kind of adapter that can be used to do this ? If not, is there any other way of mounting the drives so that I can recover the data from them ?
Many thanks to anyone who offers any solutions.

We know, and read lots of reports, where LaCie are a problem, but you seem to be using PATA drives and your best option is pick up a FW case, one that uses ATA drives.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/
You could though just replace the two drives with one SATA 640GB, just a matter of getting the data off. And for that you could try to find a docking station, but if they were in RAID you have more problems.
I would never buy or recommend MyBook, or any vendor label cases though.

Crashed LaCie Big Disk Extreme

The drive does not mount. Pulled out 1 of the 2 drives and put it into another case. It could then mount, but a single drive seemed to have too many fragmented file pieces without its other mate. Is the problem mechanical inside the box or is it one of the drives? Any ideas?

Oh, it's a concatenated RAID then, I think you still need both online though.
Might try Data Rescue II...
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).

LaCie 500g Big Disk getting hardware error on new Mac Mini

I accidentally unplugged the power cord on my new MacMini (it looks and feels very much like a firewire cable!) After that my LaCie Big Disk became unsearchable. It WILL mount with both Firewire and USB2.0 cables. I ran Disk Utility. I do not get the option to repair ANY permissions on either the Volume or the Disk itself only the option to "Verify Disk" or "Repair Disk". The resulting error is posted below. It is no longer searchable on the OS 9.2.2 G4 computer either.
I DO have the latest software updates. This external LaCie hard drive was Mac HFS+ formatted and working previously on OS9.2.2 and I will need to switch it back and forth between the OS 9.2. computer and my new MacMini. Have I any other choice but to reformat? If so which format will allow back and forth usage between OS 9 and OS X?
Disk Utility Error:
"Verify and Repair disk “LaCie 500 GB”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Mac Mini1,1 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 2 g ram, SuperDrive, LacieBigDisk external"
Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.5) 2 gb memory, SuperDrive, Intel DualCore

Hi Kim, I had a similar (although not exactly the same) experience to yours when I first got my LaCie (which is a d2, 250 GB) and accidentally cut power (with the power button on the HD itself) to the disk while my computer was in sleep mode. Since it was my boot drive, I also got kernel panics, and the only way I was able to get rid of them (and get a working system) was an Erase & Install of OS X. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve all my files, but you seem unable to browse it anymore, I guess that's what you mean when you say it isn't "searchable". Hope you had a good backup solution ...
What Disk Utility reports - Invalid Node Structure - is exactly the same issue I had, and Disk Utility doesn't seem able to repair it easily. Since you don't seem to use the drive to boot, you can simply reformat it using Disk Utility. I would suggest HFS+, and if you want to boot OS 9, select the "Install OS 9 drivers" option.
BTW I'm not sure whether you can get a dual-boot OS 9/OS X for Intel system (in case you'd be interested), because booting off an external drive on a Macintel requires the drive to be formatted with the GUID partition scheme, whereas OS 9 porbably only works with Apple's partition scheme.

My Lacie Big Extreme Hard drive does not show connection speed

*My Concern*
Hi I have a Lacie Big Extreme Hard drive, which although works fine is not showing its connection, shows up in the system profiler as 'Connection Speed Unknown'. -Should I be worried? I have other drives connected to my G5 Dual 2 gig machine and no problem their they all show their connection speeds.
*Other Firewire 'Unknown Speed connection' related Problem*
I had a DVD LaCie Dual layer portable Firewire drive which recently suffered from the same problem and I had to send it back. This was due to it slowly developing a fault of not being able to burn dual layer disks properly.
*What I have done to try and remedy the situation.*
I have been able to do the following but I am afraid with no change in the system Profiler;-
1 Trashed the whole system and rebuild
2 repair my permissions
3 empty out all my caches with OnyX (third party app) version 1.8.5
4 Disconnected all drives and reconnected them one by one to see if there are any anomalies within the system
5 switched my G5 off removed the plug from the wall waited 30 sec for it to reset itself this was the 1st attempt. On my 2nd attempt I then cold booted the machine and reset Pram settings
6 used Tech Tools Pro 4 version 4.1.2
7. Replaced Power supply of the offending unit (didn't have to but I wanted to be safe and eliminate this fronm the equation.
9.tried changing around the order in the chain to which the drives were connected to the G5but alas no joy!
Summery
So my concern is if a device which is Firewire shows up in the system profiler as connection speed unknown should I begin to worry even though it appears to be functioning.
Thank you ahead of time for any help on this matter
*Supporting evidence*
Please see below a shot of my System profiler so you can see what I mean:-
*(Important Note)*
The Lacie Big disk has 800/400 Firewire connection speeds I have connected it straight to my G5s firewire 800 port then daisy chained the LaCie's via its other 800 port to the two other 800 Firewire Hard drives.
When the LaCie DVD DL drive was connected, I connected it straight to the 400 firewire port. As it needed direct access to the G5 for it to function optimally.
*System Profiler Info under OSX Tiger 10.4.11*
FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0:
Manufacturer: LaCie Group SA
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0xD04B710B061FB5
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x102
Product Revision Level: P22O
Sub-units:
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 153.38 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk2
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk2s6:
Capacity: 153.38 GB
Available: 102.21 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
d2 quadra (button):
Manufacturer: LaCie
Model: 0x4136
GUID: 0xD04B840A07A9A5
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
d2 quadra (button) Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x484944
Unit Spec ID: 0xD04B
d2 quadra Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x110
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
d2 quadra SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk4
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk4s3:
Capacity: 465.64 GB
Available: 250.79 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0:
Manufacturer: LaCie Group SA
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0xD04B741A058BFC
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
*Connection Speed: Unknown --------------------------**{this is where my concern lies}*
Sub-units:
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x102
Product Revision Level: 912
Sub-units:
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 931.52 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk3
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk3s6:
Capacity: 931.52 GB
Available: 181.67 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+

Hi BDAqua - thanks a lot for replying - really appreciate your help. I was using Time machine to back up on the old lacie drives that I have - I just backed up on both lacies and they backed up faster for some reason but that might have been because they were very small back ups as I did full back ups on Tuesday night - this is the info under the USB section > hardware > about my mac - it didn't show the speed like the example you gave me though but it still backed none the less :
USB Bus:
Host Controller Location: Built In USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x0035
PCI Revision ID: 0x0043
PCI Vendor ID: 0x1033
Bus Number: 0x15
Bluetooth USB Host Controller:
Product ID: 0x8207
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 19.65
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Location ID: 0x15200000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
I also got a reply back from WD on the hard drive and they said the following - exactly the same as you about it being a problem with the power supplied hence why the disk won't mount - so you were spot on - so I'm thinking I should go ahead and get the newertech 7 USB port 4 amps as you suggested - let me know what you think and then I'll just order it - and thank you - really do appreciate your help on this - thanks Jayas
Dear Jayas
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is James.
If the drive is working fine on one system but failing on another especially with the "clicking" sound this is an issue with the system not being able to supply enough power to power the device.
These devices require power from the machine to make them operate if there isn't enough power supplied the drive will fail to work. This is why you are having no issues with one system but are on another.

Triangle Warning Sign

In the top left corner of my Skype window, below my name and next to the amount of money I have left in credits, there is a yellow triangle warning sign with an exclamation point in it. I've clicked it several times, and each time I find nothing wrong with account info or credits. I still have plenty of credits, so I'm just wondering what it is for and why it wont go away. Thanks!

Hi,
- Click on the amount of money at top left main window
- Click "Manage the account" link from your Profile
- Look at top left window : the "what and why" of the warning sign should be displayed there.
Hth
On ne regarde pas l'avenir dans un rétroviseur !
IMac Intel Core i3 3.2 GHz - RAM 12 GB - OS 10.10.3
Skype 7.8.391
Logitech usb headset or Jabra 250 bt

There is no display on Apple Thunderbolt display, when Daisy chain connect with six LaCie Little Big Disks.

Hi, Everyone,
I have aquestion with Thunderbolt daisy chan.
I have six LaCie Little Big Disks and Apple Thunderbolt Display to make daisy chan and I got a problem.
I place the Apple Thunderbolt Display at the end of the chain, and six LaCie Little Big Disks infront, and Apple Thunderbolt Display does not show anything.
If I plac the dell u2711 (DP1.1) Display at the end of the chain, and six LaCie Little Big Disks infront , dell u2711(DP1.1) displays.
If I place the Apple Thunderbolt Display at the end of the chain,and five LaCie Little Big Disks infront. Apple Thunderbolt Displays well.
Is it because the hardware limitation that Thunderbolt daisy chan can only have maximum 6 Thunderbolt deivce?
Apple Thunderbolt Display Should be DP1.2, why it doesn’t display?
My workstation running Windows 7x64 or Windows8.1x64
Thanks ,Myron

if you reduce the number of disks to 5 and the display works, I think we'll have your answer.

LaCie Big Disk Warning signs... Should I ditch?

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