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: Excellent all around-so far
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a terrific little external hard drive, but first things first while I take a little break in filling up the Lacie:
Dear, Amazon.com: No government and no business in any state ruled by same government have any business whatsoever curtailing dissemination of truth. That pertains as much in the United States as it does in China, though the latter doesn't claim to be a democracy. We do, and it's on all of us to maintain, especially in the face of government and its media stenos.
The Lacie is what I hoped for. I was keeping an eye out for an external drive with Firewire connection, preferably 800, at some reasonable price. (Why IS Firewire so much more expensive?) I spotted this Lacie 320 and went for it, partially based on reviews here.
Formatting is easy, though I'd use Lacie's little program first so as to get at the instructions to do more. (Lacie allows for quick formatting a FAT32 partition, if you need that.) I did more, creating just two partitions: one HFS Extended and the other NTFS. Easy to do if you've done it before.
I'm about done transferring 30-40 gigabytes of data to the NTFS partition through my Mac Pro's (single Quad-Core only) CD-ROM from CD-Rs (mostly) where I'd already stored lots of data, mostly Photoshop images ranging in size from 50 KB to 1 GB.
Speed via Firewire 800 is excellent, I think. From the CD-Rom, it takes about 7 minutes to transfer 1 GB of data, which isn't bad at all. From my computer's hard drive it takes about 30 seconds to transfer 1 GB of data. Can't complain about that.
I can't speak for USB, though speed will of course be slower, but I expect just as reliable. Same for Firewire 400. Lacie kindly provides three different cables along with a power cable to work with USB.
I did encounter a glitch, but I'm 99% certain--as usual--to do with Windows and not with the Lacie. Too often devices are blamed when Windows is almost always the culprit. (Which is why I got a Mac, where glitches are at least less irritating. Mac OS, however, isn't perfect either in any number of ways. But I shouldn't get started--maybe one day these makers of OSes will take customers about halfway seriously for the money we fork over, but I'm not holding my breath. I had no trouble doing some copying on the Snow Leopard side of my Mac to the HFS partition.)
Now, Amazon also pushes a Case Logic case for the Lacie. I went for it. Very nice case in which the drive fits badly. Another quarter-inch in size would make a serious difference. One can get the case zipped around the drive but the drive will not lie completely flat inside the case, which means that if one would like to keep connectors inside the case along with the drive, all gets pretty tight. The drive simply will not fit under the elastic band inside the case without just about tearing the band. I'm keeping the case out of laziness, but look out for it.
Digital camera Review: Excellent external harddrive for money spent
Summary: 5 Stars
I had this brand of hard drive recommended to me by professionals and was very pleased to find it at 500 GB capacity with both firewire options available for a great price. So far I have backed up all of my information on it and am happy with the speed it has when using the firewire connections. Using just the USB port makes things slow down considerably when transferring mpegs or and photo files, but that is to be expected. Overall great drive for the price.Digital camera Review: Expected Behavior
Summary: 4 Stars
quick shipping, basicly I Used the Disk with Time Machine as backup disk, but installation was easy, Firewire 800 works fine and not problem after one month of use..Digital camera Review: Failed after 9 months, repaired
Summary: 3 Stars
Disk Utility tried three times to repair it. When that failed I tried to re-format it. That failed too.Customer service had me write zeros all over it. That repaired it. No clue on what went wrong, unless it was one time I forgot to plug in the second cable.
This drive requires two cables in two USB receptacles. Customer Service had me make the connections with no hub. That makes it hard to plug in a keyboard, mouse, or anything else. The Western Digital Passport only requires one connection.
Digital camera Review: Failed; Unreliable and lose fitting cables
Summary: 1 Stars
I would not recommend purchasing the product. While the design is a great idea, the drive was just not made reliable enough. Cable connections on the back of the device had the impression that they were cheaply made, and kept removing themselves.
Moreover, the entire drive eventually failed, making various clicking noises and otherwise being very unreliable. It would periodically unmount from the computer, and not just because of the aforementioned lose cables, but rather the problem associated with the clicking noise.
So, for me the drive failed after owning it for a very very brief time and barely handling it.