LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB FireWire 800/ FireWire 400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301371 by Lacie
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Digital camera reviews of LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB FireWire 800/ FireWire 400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301371
Digital camera Review: A great drive
Summary: 5 Stars
This drive does everything the product information says it does. A very portable light weight drive. Lacie is a great company and they stand behind their products from previous experience with the company; I travel a lot and take this drive with me.Digital camera Review: A little too bulky
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this disk because of its Firewire interface (my iMac has no more free USB ports).
As an existing Western Digital Passport disk (USB only), I was surprised to see the actual size of my new Disk. This Lacie disk is twice as thick as the WD Passport device and 10% longer.
Furthermore, the cable connecting to the iMAC thicker, less flexible and less elegant than the one that comes with the Passport.
After the fact, I learned that Western Digital has a Firewire enabled model (Passport Studio), which is not only smaller and more elegant but also less expensive.
I have no issues with the reliability or speed of this device, just on the design which really disappointed me.
Digital camera Review: A stylish, rugged BRICK...!
Summary: 1 Stars
**Update: After searching online, it seems there are power consumption issues with this drive. Of course I had to figure that out on my own be cause Lacie doesn't have support FORUMS where users can help one another.
And the solution? Well, if you go to this product page on the Lacie web page there it is: "Power problems? Buy an extra AC (wall) adaptor for $19.99!"
How about this? INCLUDE THE ADAPTER WITH THE HARD DRIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I've owned this for about 1.5 hours now and it's been a complete waste of time and money.
Doesn't work. Worse than being outright DOA, this thing will selectively mount in OSX, and then dismount with no explanation. I tried all kinds of combo's of FireWire cable, USB cable, both with and without the extra power cable. I also tried in Win7 and on a completely different OSX machine. Same behavior.
Oh, and coincidence that OSX was unstable for this whole process? Kernal Panic, very intense CPU usage, etc. Personally I'm skeptical an external HD would cause such things, but then again this has been a very horrendous experience --nothing surprises. Who knows what garbage software/firmware is on this thing.
And of course, we're told never to send back disks with data on them for security purposes. But I can't even get this thing to remain running for more than 1 minute, so I can't do a clean wipe. I can't even do a regular reformat...! That means I can't even send it back for a refund. So I'm keeping it and literally going to take a hammer to it.
Enjoy my hundred and forty bucks Lacie --it's the last you'll get from me.
AVOID AVOID AVOID.
(And to think I avoided Western Digital because some of the later drives had pesky 'intrusive' software ...at this point I would have gladly accepted that just to have a drive that WORKS!)
Digital camera Review: Almost Perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an effective, convenient and rugged plug-and-play device that, once the originally drive formatting is done in Mac or PC, doesn't require extra software to run: excellent! Usefully, it allows you to assign up to 32 GB of drive space for a different type of operating system (e.g. Mac or PC), an exchange drive partition, whichever one is not your main computer. I'm not clear exactly why the entire drive can't just be 'doubly assigned' in such a manner, but I assume there are technical limitations. While the drive is very good and reliable, the main issue I've had is an error message sometimes when I try to put files on the 'exchange' drive, such a movie clip. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to this error since other files with the same extension will work fine. Also be sure to plug it into a powered USB port, i.e. not the one on your keyboard, which won't work. Other than those minor issues, it's a really excellent product!Digital camera Review: Almost perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
The drive is easy to use, has good performance (specially over Firewire 800), and looks great. One only problem: the shock protection makes it overheat quickly, so I am afraid to use the disk for continued periods. It gets *really* hot. This is clearly a design problem.