LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 320 GB Firewire800/Firewire400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301832 by Lacie
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Digital camera reviews of LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 320 GB Firewire800/Firewire400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301832
Digital camera Review: Amazing!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This Hard drive works just as advertised with no problems whatsoever. I use it with Time Machine through firewire and it's extremely fast, with no issues. I also keep it in my bookbag everyday, so it gets its share of shifting around and stuff being on top of it and it works just like the first day. I am very satisfiedDigital camera Review: Awesome Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
This hard drive works like a charm. It is portable and silent. I would recommend this hard drive to anybody looking to take files on the go.Digital camera Review: Backup device for Mac Mini
Summary: 4 Stars
I wanted a backup device for my wife's older Mac Mini. The LaCie plugged into the Firewire400 port and showed up just like a USB thumb drive. It's small, quiet, and doesn't require a power cord. So far so good!
Then she started running out of space on her original Mac HD, and I looked into how to move her iPhoto and iMovie libraries to an external drive. In the process, I realized the LaCie would be more valuable as a backup boot drive. Here's what I did:
Download Carbon Copy Cloner, a shareware program.
Copy the software that comes on the LaCie to the Mac HD. (Although I never used it.)
Run Carbon Copy Cloner to reformat the LaCie to Mac Extended Format and create a block by block copy of everything on your Mac HD.
Once that is done, you can go into System Preferences, select Startup Device, and choose the LaCie. When you restart, the LaCie appears at the top of your desktop and the Mac HD appears below it. Now that you know how to do that, switch back.
It's probably not as fast as the internal drive because Firewire 400 is slower than the internal bus, but it works. The advantage of having a bootable external hard drive is that if your internal drive fails, you not only have your data backed up -- you can actually run off the external drive.
Once you have a full backup, CCC allows you to make an incremental backup whenever you want, adding only what has changed. That makes it quick and convenient to keep a complete backup of your system.
One other discovery I made along the way -- if you have an older Mac with only Firewire 400, you'll find it very useful to have a 6pin to 9pin Firewire cable. Most new devices have only one Firewire400 port, so to connect multiple devices together you need to use the Firewire800 port. But it doesn't seem to work to use a Firewire800 cable to do it, since you're starting with a Firewire400 port at the computer. I found a cable at Inspiretech, IAI143, for only $3.99, and it solved my problem. You can also buy an adaptor to do the same thing, but the cable seemed cheaper and more reliable.
I gave the LaCie 4 stars instead of 5 because it's an expensive little thing for the amount of data it holds and I've only used it for a few months and can't vouch for its reliability. But I'd sure buy it again.
Digital camera Review: Complete Junk - Worth Zero stars
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive lasted just three months before it unexpectedly stopped working. I used this drive to diagnose client computers, so it's critical that it always works. It looks cool on the outside, but when you remove the rubber bumper, the casing looks very flimsy and poorly built. I complained to Lacie that the drive failed and wanted warranty service and all they told me was the address of the seller and told me I could buy another !!! Three months into a 3 year warranty and they tell me this ??? What a cruddy attitude. I'm going back to using Western Digital internal drives- not sexy or too convenient but super reliable. I will never buy another Lacie product and I advise you if you value your work not to either.Digital camera Review: DO NOT BUY
Summary: 1 Stars
Design flaw. the firewire cable is so stiff it will dislodge your USB/firewire port causing complete product failure. NO RETRIEVAL METHOD EXISTS with this brand. DO NOT BUY.