Lacie Horrors - No Power!

Not quite sure if this is the appropriate board for this, but I'll try!
We have had our 1.2TB hard drive for 5 months. It contains CRITICAL data. Yes, we have backed up to some degree, however, as we all know, backing up video takes up so much space. Loss of this data would be horrendous for our company.
PROBLEM:
5 days ago, our LaCie (1.2TB) external went from a 3 month, healthy external to dead. Suddenly it lost power, so of course it is not mounting on the desktop. Therefore, no DiskWarrior, etc. to be done because it simply has no power.
EVENTS:
Called LaCie immediately and explained the problem. Patrick (LaCie rep) said that this seemed to be a "cut and dry" problem and that we just needed to try a new power supply, so sent one. It just arrived. We plugged it in and, sure enough, STILL NO POWER! The new green light on the power supply box is solid green.
Just got off the phone with LaCie again. Told him the situation and he had no answers. He said that we needed to find a company that "maintains RAID and keeps the data intact so that we could back-up all of our data." He suggested Best Buy Geek Squad and Drive Savers (which he says has a "90% success rate in data recovery.")
I asked him how we could recover the data if there was no power supply in the first place. He said that by taking the LaCie apart and creating a raid environment on another drive, we would be able to have power and be able to back up.
So, I am about to freak out. Medication is standing by.
ADDITIONAL INFO:
-Working on G5, OSX 10.3.9, FCP 4.5, Dual 2GHz, 512 MB DDR SDRAM
-I had partitioned the LaCie into 3 parts
-It was working great, and the power outage had nothing to do with surge (everything is properly surge/battery protected.)
-I tried plugging the new power supply directly into the wall...still solid green light, but no power to the LaCie.
-The blue light on the front has not come on for days.
-In System Profile, the firewire port is empty
Although I have read and re-read many threads on the power supply problems with lacie drives and the new power pack did the trick. This is not the case here.
Any advice, suggestions, rants or positive energy would be MUCH APPRECIATED!
Thank you!
Mark McKinney

If you feel adventurous and know what you're doing, you could get another exact same drive, open both (and lose the warranty while you're at it) and try to swap parts as needed - that's under the assumption that the data on the actual disks is fine and complete, and "only" some other part is defective. Under this assumption, chances of recovery are good.
I guess that's pretty much what the LaCie guy meant.
I'm afraid I can't think of anything better right now. Data recovery specialists will likely cost more than an additional drive would have (for backups). The following you don't want to hear, but it needs to be said: For most people it takes one loss (or near loss) of data to take backup seriously. The question is always: is the loss of data more horrendous than the price for proper backup? Or in your case: the price for the data recovery specialists.
Sorry for the rant, and good luck!
Quad G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 4 GB ECC RAM, Raptor 150 GB, Seagate 750 GB, GeForce 7800 GT

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Dropped Lacie 250 Gig -- Power plug broke off. Help!

It happens to the best of us. I accidently knocked my 250 gig Lacie Hardrive off my desk and it fell on the ground. The male power plug with 4 prongs broke off inside the female portion of the plug. In other words, the female part of the power plug in the Lacie drive where you insert the power plug is broken because the power plug prongs broke off the male power cord and are stuck inside.
I have no idea what to do. Can I fix this power plug? Can I pull out the metal prongs that are stuck inside the female part and buy a new power cord? Do I need to pull ou the hard drive and buy a new Lacie case? I appreciate your help in advance. I can't believe I did this and I am hoping for a good solution.

If I understand your situation correctly, you might be able to pull the broken pins out of the socket and buy a new power supply. I'm not sure which one you have, perhaps like this:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10735
Of course, something else may be broken inside from the fall, including the drive.
You can identify parallel ATA/IDE drives by a large ribbon connector on the end, plus the 4 pin power connector. Serial drives have the power connector and a small single wire serial connector. My guess, if you have the common LaCie silver drive, is that it's a parallel.

Mac Pro flashing power light (unresponsive)

Hello,
Twice this week a Mac Pro Quad 2.66 has become unresponsive after being left unattended. I have revived the computer by resetting the System Management Controller (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1806).
It's obvious this is not normal. Should I bring the computer in for repair? Is there something else I should be doing?
Connected to the computer are:
- Two Lacie Electron 19 Blue III monitors
- Lacie usb drive
- Lacie firewire 400 drive
- JVC DV-HRS2 Mini DV deck (firewire)
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Hello,
No USB hubs or USB/FW on the monitors. The lacie drives are older models and don't have the On/Off/Auto switch.
I think this happens when the computer and drive go to sleep. I will try to change the cables and plug the drives in one at a time.
Thanks Hatter.
The hatter wrote:
A device that doesn't support sleep and loses communication. And LaCie. USB devices and cables. Any USB hub.
Could be as simple as a USB cable; Firewire cable... does the Electron have USB and/or FW ports also?
LaCie recommends unplugging everything, shutting down, no power cord even and let sit a couple minutes.
Try without your peripherals and then try one at a time.
The big problem is if you are doing a hard restart w/o repairing your drives, whether you safely eject your drives first.
LaCie cables and power adapters can be a problem as I said, but any hub, mouse, keyboard can cause a problem but most often the mouse moves but you can't do anything and system is unresponsive.
No you don't need to take it in. I doubt Apple Hardware Test would find anything either.

LaCie USB 160GB HDD won't mount, just beeps

Purchased a new 160gb LaCie external USB HDD, but can't get the mac to recognise it. I have tried it with and without the additional USB power lead, but nothing happens. The HDD just constantly beeps.
Not sure what to do. We have tested it on other macs (laptops & desktops) and it mounts straight away no problems. The USB ports work for other things fine.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
Powerbooks often don't put out enough juice on the USB port to power external hard drives. The external drive may not start up or may start but still not be recognized by the system. One solution is to get a power adapter, as Hardy recommended, or, if possible, to use a Firewire connection (Firewire doesn't have the power issue USB has). There's also an advantage to using a Firewire connection, in that Powerbooks can only boot from a Firewire device. So, a USB only hard drive, once it starts up, is fine for backup but cannot be used to boot the system, if needed. Lacie sells a power adapter for around AU$25.

Seagate Back Up Plus 3tb USB3 or the LaCie - Porsche Design 3tb USB3

Hello All,
I have just ordered my refurbished 21.5 iMac and iPad 2. I am very excited to be making the switch from PC to Mac after 25 years on PCs. I will be using it for hobbyist photography work and homeschooling our 2 daughters. I am intrigued by so many of the cool things on the Macs… 1 in particular is Time Machine and that is where my 3 part question comes in… sorry if it is a reposted question… I could not find it.
I am looking at either the Seagate Back Up Plus 3tb USB3 or the LaCie - Porsche Design 3tb USB3. There is a $30US premium for the LaCie but it looks great! How is the quality of the LaCie compared to the Seagate? The enclosure is aluminum but is the drive as good as Seagate? I can maybe justify the $30US premium for the aluminum chassis but I want at least the same quality on the electronics.
I need to copy my jpg and RAW files from my PC to the iMac and then use the same drive for my time machine. Am I correct in assuming I will need to re-format the drive to HFS+ after I transfer my PC files to the iMac in NTFS?
I believe the answer to this next question is yes but since I am on a roll… should I keep the external HDD (either Seagate or LaCie) plugged in (power) and connected (USB3) all the time or just the time I am working on the iMac?
I sincerely appreciate any guidance you can give this newbie. Cost/budget weighs in here too otherwise I would be looking at a Time Capsule.
Regards,
Joseph

If you are looking at LaCie drives, here's the ones to look at.
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10554
Also, check out OWC (macsales.com) Mercury Pro drives.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/
They also have Thunderbolt drives now, too!
Good Luck!

TM LaCie XHD fails again

Have 500GB LaCie d2 HD QUADRA from 2007 as my TM backup XHD.
3-2009 failure to mount & had to replace Power supply under warranty. Now same problem. I read online many people have problems with LaCie power supply failing repeatedly.
Thinking of getting “G-Technology G-DRIVE 2TB Professional External Hard Drive”
Hoping it is better quality.
Then I plan to transfer my TM backups from my LaCie as follows:
Mac 101: Time Machine
Last Modified: September 16, 2011
                    Article: HT1427
                    Old Article: 306681
Mac OS X v10.6: How to transfer your backups from your current hard drive to a new hard drive
If you upgrade to a new hard drive with a larger capacity, you may want to transfer your existing Time Machine backups to it before using it for regular backups. To keep your existing backups on your new, larger backup hard drive, follow these steps:
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          2.          In Disk Utility, make sure it has a GUID partition and is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If needed, reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended with a GUID partition. If you do not know how, see the steps in this article. Note: Back up any data on the hard drive before you format it.
          3.          Select the new drive's icon on the desktop and choose Get Info from the File menu.
          4.          Make sure "Ignore ownership on this volume" is not enabled.
          5.          Open Time Machine preferences in System Preferences.
          6.          Slide the Time Machine switch to Off.
          7.          In Finder, double-click the current backup hard drive to open its Finder window.
          8.          Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" to the new hard drive.
          9.          Enter an administrator user name and password, then click OK to start the copying process. This may take some time to complete because all your backups will be copied.
          10.          In Time Machine System Preferences click "Select Disk…"
          11.          Select your new hard drive, then click "Use for Backup."
Now, on your new hard drive, you will have all of your existing backups from the previous backup hard drive plus have more room for more new backups.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Of course, I’ll need to get the LaCie to mount b4 I can do this so I will probably need to buy a $35 new power supply & hope it works. I don’t know if I can open the LaCie & remove the drive from the case & recover the data as I’ve read others have done. Long, involved process.
Any comments on quality of LaCie & failure of power supplies & quality of the G-Tech product for TM?

No comments/no interest in this topic.
As a courtesy I will update in case anyone with similar problems reads & wonders what ever happened? Was it is fact the LaCie power supply a 2nd time or did the XHD itself fail this time?
Yes, it was a 2nd failure of the crappy LaCie power supply. So I can confirm from personal experiences the repeated failure of the poorly designed LaCie d2 quadra power supply. That is one huge “brick” /converter/transformer.
Note: The LaCie blue light s/b steady when on & not backing up, when it backs up it blinks as it does when the power supply fails. Also you can put your ear near the XHD & hear it spin up. When p.s. fails you can hear it start to spin up for a few seconds & then stop & then try again & repeat & then it stops trying & the blue light starts blinking. The power brick’s green light remains on & steady whether it is good or has failed.
I am very disappointed in the quality of LaCie power supplies since I’ve now had two fail & think what I read online about how poorly designed they are is true. I will probably purchase a different brand of XHD, such as G-Technology, & use that for my Time Machine backup. While no brand has 0 failures, the LaCie power supply issue makes this brand unreliable.

External hard drive suddenly won't mount

Although I've not had a problem with this drive in the past, it all of a sudden won't mount. It has all my music on and stalled while I was using iTunes, the timer wheel came up and was still the same after 20 minutes so I closed down. Now the drive won't mount at all so I can't even try repairing the disk. I've tried swapping from firewire to USB cables and also going through a hub, neither have worked.
It's a Lacie and the power light stays continuously orange on it and it feels like it's working overtime.
PLEASE HELP!

A little bit more on this... I looked at the instructions for the Lacie and it said that some smaller laptops may require a power cable via a USB port and back into the Lacie, which now works but I'm wondering why this has happened all of a sudden and can I rectify it??
I've deleted a load of stuff off my ibook hard drive, like photos etc, thinking that would help but it hasn't. Plus, I've recently installed an extra 1gb power card.
What can I do to avoid having to plug all these peripherals in to access my music?

Installing second optical drive and the door hangs

This is just an FYI post, have not been able to find anyone else with the exact same problem, but thought I would list in the event of.
I originally installed an internal DVD R/RW Lightscribe drive from LaCie in a Power Mac G4 Dual 1Gig and it worked well! I have since purchased a MacPro and wanted to move the Lightscribe drive into the second optical drive bay. So after installing the drive and attempting to open the tray it was apparent that the door on the case would not allow the tray to open. The front of the Lightscribe tray was too bulky to fit through the opening on the narrower Mac Pro optical drive door.
Well, the folks at Lacie had attached a nameplate to the front of the tray that works fine in other configurations, but on the MacPro the clearance for the tray is narrower and it's bulk would not activate the sliding door properly.
Someone was thinking, because the tray nameplate is detachable with a little effort. I can provide photos if need be.
Tray closes as it should now.

Hi TCherry,
Your situation interests me since I was thinking of doing the same with a previous optical drive from an old G4. I also wanted to add it to my MacPro's 2nd slot.
Are you still willing to supply some pics to see what you did?
Rio.

Which is good: ejecting or standby mode for EHD's?

After a session at the computer, I have this dilemna: how to close down the session. At this present moment of time, I have a thunderbolt, a 2TB FW LaCie, and three Seagate [2 USB] EHD's all connected to my Mac. All the three Seagate drives have been allocated backup roles via CCC and TM.
In this scenario, what should be the manner of my quitting a session at the computer? Will keeping the EHD's in a standby mode for prolonged periods damage them?
Also, I would like to know what is the difference between mounting/unmounting of a drive and ejection of drive?

somanna wrote:
I guess I need to set my own 'protocol' in these matters.
Indeed
somanna wrote:
I need to tackle my own 'temporary laziness' and take time to do these things: eject the thunderbolt drive which I use for editing videos in FCPX. [After doing an 'eject' do I have to also disconnect the power supply by pulling out the thunderbolt cable from the drive? By so doing, the CCC based backup would not take place.
No it should go into standby without disconnecting it.
That is correct, if it is disconnected then CCC will not backup. If you are using the same drive for editing and CCC, then you will need to test it to see if CCC will bring it backup from standby. If not, then maybe that is not a good combination of uses for one drive.
somanna wrote:
My LaCie has a power switch. Is it okay to directly switch it off or do I have to first click upon its desktop icon and eject it? But if I switch off its power, then will CCC automatically start up the power and at its set time backup the data on this Lacie to its concerned backup drive, a Seagate?
No you should first Eject it before Switching it off.
No CCC will not turn it back on.
No
somanna wrote:
The 2 other Seagate drives also have got some functions to do regarding backups. These Seagate drives have no power switches. Should I just eject these drives and keep their power cables on or do I have to also have to remove their power supply cables from the drives after they are ejected.
As with any automated backup, the drive(s) must be connected and powered on in order for the automated backup to take place.
somanna wrote:
Further guidance and instructions in these matters will be highly appreciated.
While I also get a little anal about backup, I do like to save power whenever I can.
To be honest, I would probably only use the Thunderbolt drive for editing and keep one other drive online to back it up. Then rotate the other drives in and out on a daily or weekly basis keeping them off line, off site or at least in a firesafe.
Keep at least one or two aces up your sleeve! Heck' a single lighting strike, power surge or simple mistake could take out everything in the blink of an eye if it's all hooked together and running.

Should I eject external drives when I shut down my Mac?

Hello to all,
This might be a very elementary question to some, but I trust I will be given the proper answer. I have been using my Mac for nearly a year and I have not been ejecting my external drive/s once a day's work is over. I use the drop down menu to either put the Mac to sleep or shut it down. I allow the power to be on for the multi-socket spike from which my Mac and my drives get their power. Is this right or wrong? Any guidance in this matter will be appreciated.

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, I never sleep desktop machines or their HDs, only their displays, and run 24/7, but do power down ext HDs and printers, since they're seldom used.
Hello and thanks baltwo. Sorry for this apparent delay in responding to your reply, reason being I did not have much time to sit on my Mac on account of the Festival of Peace being conducted here in Hyderabad where I stay. Am having a blessed time here attending the meetings.
Your reply has been worded precisley and I trust you are saying this:
You do not shut down or put your Mac to sleep, but put the display to sleep; and that you switch of the power to your ext drives and printers. Am I right?
I have with me a Buffalo thunderbolt [1 TB], a 2 TB, LaCie [2 TB] and 2 Seagate [2 TB] external drives. I was in the habit of having these drives mounted even though when I had no need of all of them. The Apple technician who had come to remove the RAM [see above] informed me that it was not a good thing to have all the drives connected at the same time. Since then I am trying to keep only those drives for which I had need mounted.
The thunderbolt has no external power supply and hence, if I have no need of its services, I have to eject it and then unplug it from the back of the Mac. The LaCie has a power switch conveniently located on the drive itself and ejecting it and unpowering it should be easy. For the Seagate drives, after ejecting them, I need to remove the power adapters from the power spike. At the end of the day, when one is tired, all these different processes may be cumbersome to me, but I would not mind adopting it if I could be instructed as to how this method of yours scores over the other method in which one shuts down the computer. My next thanks is awaiting you!
Cheers and have agreat day.

External Buffalo Inc. Hardrive

I just found a Buffalo brand HD and was wondering if anyone has worked with this brand.
The power adapter is missing and I have to get one of those (it needs a 12V/5V adapter and has a weird connection. It almost looks like an S-Video connection).
The HD itself connects by USB. I know that this model (HD-HB160U2-WR) has been discontinued but I don't think it is too old.
The most important thing, of course, is if this HD is even compatible with my MacBook, but I don't think I'll know until I can actually give it power.
PLEASE give me any advice you can!! I don't have and urgent use for this HD right now, but I definitely wouldn't say no to 160 GB of space!!
Thanks!!
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9)
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Hi Moonchild23,
You can visit their sites or eBay to find similar power adapter.
Lacie have similar power connection port, but I never try and not recommend you to try it, unless you have nothing to lose.
Most external (if not all) are compatible with macbook, as long as they use USB or Firewire (400).
The only problem might be the HD format that might pre-formatted to NTFS that act read only on mac OS.
But as soon as you re-format it to FAT32 or HFS, you can use it with your macbook.
Good Luck.

Strange Firewire Behavior

Hi
Am using two Firewire connected drives both in Acomdata powered enclosures. One is a Seagate 400 and the other from a faulty LaCie d2 250 (LaCie had crappy power supplys). For some reason if I boot with both drives wired directly to the G4 they both mount. But when I try to daisy chain, neither mounts and then cannot get either to mount though I try them individually or both directly wire. I power everything down and they still won't mount.
I can get the smaller FW to mount after I connect a Firewire iBot camera and then open Disk utilities.
Is there a utility that allows resetting the firewire connection or mounting ?
or could this be a jumper setting issue on the larger drive? The ports work fine otherwise even in Target disk mode
Thanks
Enio

What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Dealing with FireWire problems (drives not mounting, devices unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908
 Cheers, Tom

LaCie d2 Big Disk power problem / failure

I've always been a fan of LaCie drives until recently when I started hearing some horror stories about drives crashing. I've got a couple of LaCie Firewire drives, 80GB Porsche design and a d2 Big Disk 320GB Triple Interface (Firewire 800/400 + usb2).
Suddenly I've had a horror story of my own...
During the past month I have noticed that the drive seemed to lose power and shut down without warning, which in turn caused my computer to freeze and crash. The drive was connected to my computer via the Firewire 800 connection and normally runs all the time that my computer is on. Since the problems began, I have been ejecting it and then turning it off when I haven’t been using it.
Then a couple of weeks ago the drive no longer turned on when the computer is booted up and the power button on the drive has no effect. I have noticed that the power supply box light flickers when the power cable is connected to the drive. When I take the power cable out of the drive the light on the power supply remains on and constant.
So now I am left with a drive that's about 85% full (hours of my CD's uploaded in Apple Lossless format) and therefore I am incredibly anxious to save the drive but more importantly the data on it.
I haven't moved the drive in anyway and it certainly hasn't been dropped or damaged. Likewise nothing's happened to the power cable to subject it to any damage. Furthermore I haven't even installed any new software or hardware recently either.
I've contacted LaCie and my orignal supplier (Savastore) and they're both being backward about repair and warranty despite the fact that in Europe the product carries a 2-year warranty and it's only 18 months old.
Has anybody else experienced any similiar problems? Did you manage to resolve them?
Mark
PowerMacG4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) 1.25GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 167MHz Bus Speed Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie 80gb, LaCie d2 extreme (triple interface) 300gb, iPod Photo & Video 60gb

Well, the route of the problem was a malfunction with the the power supply inside the drive. I was lucky to find a 'friend of a friend' at LaCie who was able to fix the problem and save my data. Apparently LaCie's normal policy would have repaired my drive but as a matter of course they would have wiped the drive before it was returned and I would have lost everything. Let's just say I owe the 'friend of a friend' big time because data recovery would have been very costly.
Since the drive has been returned I have backed-up all of the data to a new Western Digital eSata drive. I'm now going to use the old LaCie drive for non-crucial items while I monitor its 'health'.

Lacie "using too much power", USB disabled, can't access ext HD?

Last night, moving items to my Ext HD, i got an error message about the USB "using too much power" and then it disabled it.
I'm using a 15'' 2006 Macbook with 10.6.7 operating system.
I've googled the issue and have run out of ideas.
The Ext HD is a 500GB LaCie Little Disk New Pack USB2.0 Black
Restarted the macbook.
Booted the macbook into safe mode.
I've tried plugging something else into both my USB ports (it detected the item, a camera card reader) and was usable.
When I plug in my Lacie Ext HD now using its usb cord, the blue light on the Lacie flashes as if its detectable/inuse but there's nothing in my Mac menus showing access to it.
HELP ?
Error Message:
Because a USB device was drawing too much power from your computer, one or more of your usb devices have been disabled.
To prevent damaging your computer, the USB device drawing too much power has been disabled. Other devices may have also been disabled. When you disconnect the device drawing too much power, your other USB devices will be enabled again.

Maybe the disk will work through a separately powered USB Hub?
Bob

I'm trying to get music from an external lacie hard drive imported onto my iMac. I cannot open the Lacie drive since it says 'power pc not supported'. Any ideas here?

I am trying to import mp3s from a lacie external hard drive onto my iMac. They were saved from a dell running windows. My iMac says "power pc not supported" when I connect the lacie drive. Any ideas here, I have about 25GB of music I'm trying to save. thanks

Do not move the music yourself.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748

Lacie Horrors - No Power!

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