Hi All,
On 23/11/2005 8:40 AM, "Chris Prew" <email@hidden> wrote:
> I bought 3 laCie big disks - 500gb for Rsync data backups, and one of
> them was flaky out of the box. After transferring a certain amount of
> data to it via Rsync, I'd start getting I/O errors, and no more data
> would get copied. After I'd unmount it, it wouldn't be recognized. Had
> to fight with LaCie support for weeks to get them to take it back for
> repair (we can't test it using rsync, they said), but they finally took
> it, and I'm still waiting for it to come back.
I've had LaCie drives and CD burners for ever. Have 3 x 250Gb FW drives that
circulate our staff machines and had no problems. Have a couple of 80Gb
drives acting as backup drives on small servers, and also a pocket 20Gb
drive.
One day when I had the 20Gb pocket drive connected to an old iMac which I
was loading an image onto, I tangled the K/B cable with the FW cable for the
drive, and as I unplugged the K/B it pulled the FW cable out, and the drive
dropped from about 1m onto a solid concrete floor, still under power, still
spinning. I thought "That drive is TOAST."
Picked it up off the floor, plugged it in, it fired up, mounted, and NO loss
of data. Ran surface diagnostics over it and couldn't find a fault. Now
that's a TOUGH little drive!
On the other hand, I have a 500Gb FW drive on a server as a backup drive,
and it was also dead out of the box like Chris' drive. After writing only
about 3-5 Mb (yes, MEGABYTES) to the drive, it gave I/O errors etc and
halted all file transfers. I tried to reformat it, which took well over 72
HOURS!!!
After formatting, and running Norton and DiskWarrior (and every other disk
utility I could lay my hands on) over the drive, it still failed.
I then noticed that the box it was sent in was damaged. This damaged box had
been placed inside another padded box, which was NOT damaged, to the
original drive/box was damaged BEFORE being sent to me. There was no visual
damage to the drive inside the box, but the whole package had obviously been
dropped, and subjected to damaging G-forces.
I sent it back to LaCie, and they sent a replacement the next day - no
questions asked. The replacement drive was fine, but about a month ago it
started doing weird things, suddenly spinning down, up, down, up etc at
random times.
I had it off line for a while as I planned what to do about it, but when I
reconnected it to do more tests, it still played up. Was just about to send
it back (still under warranty) when the silly business suddenly stopped.
I believe the problem was with heat, and the power supply (this list has
already discussed the somewhat dicky LaCie power supplies). I moved the AC
adapter to a more ventilated spot, and provided more clearance around the
drive itself for air flow, and the problem went away.
My $0.02 worth...
Cheers, Paul.
---------------------------------------------
Paul J. Stoll
Manager Student IT Services
Computer Assisted Learning Unit - Room 5E-203
School of Medicine - Flinders University
Email : email@hidden
Phone : 8204 4163
Mobile: 0410 501 350
Pager : 8204 5511 - page 20426
Fax : (08) 8204 5675
---------------------------------------------
1966 2006
Flinders 40th Anniversary
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