LaCie 250 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive ( 300728U )

Yep. They are a waste of money since they only last for your current OS. One update will kill their usability, since La Cie will not create updated drivers for its customers.
This is outrageous corporate behaviour.
I have both a La Cie 250 gig storage drive and a La Cie CD burner which will not function at normal speed any more.
Slow as molasses, since they need new drivers for OS 10.3 update.
My recommendation? DON'T BUY any LA CIE products!

There's no doubt this disk is small and good looking, and a good price for a 250gb drive. But it makes more noise when idle than my other 2 external USB drives combined. When it's accessing data, the horribly loud clicking noises can easily be heard across the room during quiet movie scenes. It runs hot but does not have an automatic shutoff. (To be fair, most USB hard drives don't but a Porsche design should!). You can't solve this problem by using the on/off switch since it's this tiny thing in the BACK of the drive near the corner of the overhanging side and top - very hard to use for normal sized hands by feel alone. Maybe seems like a nit, but a portable drive really ought to have the sockets for the power and usb installed right side up so you don't have to remember to turn the sides with the icons down when inserting. It was plug'n'play on xp sp2, came formatted in fat32 with the dirty flag turned on so you have to run chhksk /f before running convert. You decide: looks or personality?
Update March 2007. I guess it's only fair to let you know that both of the ones I bought 2 years ago are still clicking and over-heating along. I don't use them everyday as they're for backups that I rotate offsite - which means that they travel in my backpack every couple of weeks. I'd up my star rating to 3 or 4 now if I could.

A couple of things... First, I had to learn the hard way that this device is not Windows Supported. You woun't learn about it until its too late, but most products go through testing to be certified as Windows Compatable. This is not. They either haven't passed Windows testing or haven't bothered.

That said, it wasn't until I defragmented the drive and had over 150GB of information erased. Initially, I thought it was the defragmentation program, but after running a diagnostic on the drive, I found that it has a physical defect.

It wasn't until I researched that I found that this is common with this brand. Also, the USB cord is about 15 inches long. So don't plan on putting it anywhere far from your computer.

Yes. It has an OK design by Porsche. Too bad the it doesn't run like a Porsche. This is an extremely compact drive, with no heat sink whatsoever. The drive gets VERY VERY hot. While researching my own problems with this drive, I found that many people have lost their data due to it overheating.

Purchase at your own risk! (OR install your own cooling system that the manufacturer forgot, get a longer USB, and scan for defects when you first get it)!! Not recommended if you have data that you can't live without... you risk losing it using this drive!

**** However, LaCie Seems to have gotten it right with their new eSATA drives (available here on amazon.com). Now, there are 2 similar 'looking' drives, d2 and SATA external... I'm referring to the external SATA. (Triple Interface Firewire, USB etc. is just too slow for a hard drive, get the external SATA (eSATA) if you can). LaCie resolves heat issus and speed issues (with the SATA not firewire or usb) in their new external SATA drive. At the very least, it is as fast as your internal hard drive (SATA only, not usb or firewire). So, to get a low cost high quality blazing fast drive, which LaCie can give, search Amazon for LaCie External SATA, I've got 2!

This is a great unit. It's a lot of room for you songs, video etc. It's not supposed to be a fast hard drive, but this is not a necessity when you use it to liste to your music or watch some movies. Also, since i heva been using it for a year it, it's quiet and I really don't understand why some reviews say it is a loud one. Trust me, this is the best deal in terms of gb/$.

I bought this drive re-conditioned, direct from LaCie a week ago. I got it today and have been trying to get my G4 Powerbook to recognize it for several hours. I currently want to draw a target on it's pretty titanium colored top to aim my fist at. There are mixed reviews of either no problems or a garage full all over the Internet. I should have looked at them and bought something else, but it was cheap and I have a limited budget. LaCie customer service is junk, and Apple doesn't have anything obvious on their site about this drive. I will get it to work because I'm stubborn and know enough about my computer, but if you want something that will plug and play with no potential for problems: DO NOT BUY THIS DRIVE.

I have recently purchased two of these drives. It is, undeniably, the most aesthetically pleasing external drive on the market. The skills of the Porsche design team have been used to great effect to produce a unit that is sleek, compact and discrete, yet at the same time being pleasingly conspicuous by virtue of its surface quality.

But what is a drive for, what is its function? Is it to be used as an item of well-designed desk art, or as an electronic storage device? Dull it may be, but the latter is the only sensible answer. And, while this drive's design looks great, it also seems to contribute to physical flaws that subvert its reliability.

The unit's compactness seems to lead to it running at a scorching high temperature. These drives are meant to be stackable, but my experience is that to stack these units only adds to the heat build-up, and to such an extent that the unit at the bottom of the stack becomes literally untouchable.

After just one week of operation, one of my drives stopped working, with a loud clicking sound coming from inside the casing. I lost 160GB of data. My enquiries with disk recovery specialists produced a depressing prognosis - it seems that the disks in these units have a low success rate for data recovery and I was told, effectively, to forget about any hopes for retrieving my data.

LaCie was of little help. Its email-based technical support seems to be capable only of sending out automated, generic responses to posted queries. Thankfully, Amazon will refund my money under its 30-day returns policy without any fuss - if only all organizations had Amazon's customer service ethos.

Looks are fine, but when it comes to my data, I want reliability above all else. My own experience of this drive is that it cannot be trusted to store data with confidence. I would never buy one again. Next time, I'll buy the ugliest drive on the market and hope for a better outcome.

I've had this drive since they first released them a couple years ago. It has given me nothing but flawless operation. So much so that I went back and bought three more! They also have given me nothing but outstanding performance! I had a problem with only one, but LaCie's tech support was fabulous and got it up and running quickly. For those that lost data from a failed drive, I must ask, where was your backup?!?! Anyone who uses computers know they can be fickle and to also have more than one backup if your data means anything to you!

I can't wait to buy more of these drive. Over the years, every other company drives have been crappy, except these ones. Maxtor, WD, Seagate, you name it. Yeah, the LaCie drives are the same thing inside, but they haven't given me the issues the others have!

I dont have problems with this unit, it runs perfect, yes it get's hot, but for me it runs perfect, no data loss what so'ever. and im planing in buying another.

One of two my LaCie 250GB drives bit the dust. It didn't even last a year. I'm glad I have a back up drive, but I'm sweating bullets because all of my digital images are on it. I don't know much about the inner workings of computers, but I just updated to the Tiger OS for my Mac the day before this happened. No noise at all came from the drive. Nothing inside was moving. LaCie is going to repair it, but all the data will be wiped. Buyer beware! Spend some extra cash and get a more reliable drive. Oh yeah, the drive was fairly warm when it went out, while the other one (slightly newer) was good and cool.

After reading about the reviews here on amazon i really thought about this drive before i bought it and i have to say for me this is a perfect product.

The drive in my case is not a Maxtor but a Seagate ST3250823A and it's very silent and doesn't get that hot. It works perfect it lies on my desk behind my laptop and most times i don't even notice that it is running. I use it under windows XP and i formatted it as NTFS and i can do everything i can do with my build in drive.

It's fast and looks nice. I think it's a great product for it's price.

This drive is what you need. Despite some of the reviews, it IS Windows compatible (it is USB plug and play), it IS NOT loud, and it is blazingly fast.

I have 2 of these now and planning on purchasing a third to store my media files. Excellent product - you will be glad you bought one.

I am very pleased with this drive. After countless poor experiences with Maxtor externals, I decided to try this LaCie. It's quiet, fast, trouble free and looks great. Recommended.

Great value for a 250 GB hard drive. I use Windows XP SP1 and had no problems installing and using this drive - it requires no additional software or drivers. It requires power and comes with a supplied power cable. It also comes preformatted as FAT32. I reformatted it to NTFS without any issues and this took about 1.5 hours to complete. In reality this drive is just as easy to use as a "jump drive" - just plug and go. I checked to see if it would work with my USB 1.1 ports and sure enough it does (although it won't be as fast). Performance has been very impressive as well.

While I appreciate all the great feedback, I also noticed there are a lot more negative ones on Amazon compared to Buy.com. For the exact same product, 250GB Lacie USB 2.0. Do Amazon shoppers complains more or do Buy.com filter out the complaints?

Pro:
1. Great look, small, metal casing.
2. High 250 GB capacity with low price.
3. Fast USB 2.0 transfer with 8MB buffer
4. Plug & Play for PC users.
5. Quiet (not silent)

Con:
1. Short 1 foot USB cable.
2. Drive gets pretty hot. (all drives gets hot)

Here are "some" complaints from other users. Can not confirm this is due to user or a defective product.

1. Mac users had problem installing.
2. Some reported drive failure.
3. Loud clicking sound. (most likely a defective drive)

Hope this helps.


OK, I bought a LaCie 200GB drive, and it ran solid for a month. So I bought 3 more, b/c they were inexpensive and looked nice. One month later, 2 of the drives are saying they are corrupted and are no longer in NFTS format (!) after I'd put 100+GB of info on each. A 3rd never worked and just makes clicking noises (I'm sending it back to LaCie). The 4th I haven't touched since it backed up one of the first 2.

I suppose it was a mistake to buy 4 of the same kind. But I've tried these drives on 2 different Windows computers, and first they worked and then they didn't. On both. With multiple cables/USB cords, etc. What a drag.

I wish I'd bought a variety of drives.

I bought two of these, they both failed. I sent them in under warrantee. They were returned to me "reconditioned" - and still with the same problem.

I just received the pacake from Amazon. Coonected it to my laptop and the drive shows 232GB. I know there will be space used for the Hard drive software.. but 18GB ? Even windows installation is not that much...

Lacie does not seem very loud. Looks OK.. The USB cable is short.

One advantage is that it takes 110-220V. good for travellers.

No problems, its small, very quiet, plug and play (no drivers required), and stackable.

You should change it from FAT32 to NTFS, very easy to do in 30 seconds with a single DOS command, then you can save files over 4Gig to it.

The USB cable is a little too short and the status LED is a litte to small.

I am satisfied with the drive. The unit I purchased has a Seagate drive. I have a couple of comments:
1. I have Windows ME and had no trouble with installtion.
2. I have had the drive on for several days it does not run hot -It is cool to the touch.
3. The USB cord is very short.
4. The only complaint I have is the speed of the drive. I tried to burn a large data CD [500MB] with Nero and it froze and did not finish burning. I had to copy the files back to my hard drive to copy them to CD.

This drive definitely runs on the hot side with prolonged continuous use, and it's loud, but (knock on wood) it hasn't been unreliable so far, and I've had mine for almost a year. I basically isolated the drive from my other external hard drives, and have it connected to a separate surge suppressor with a convenient foot switch.

It was totally plug-and-play with Windows XP SP2, so I don't know what that reviewer's problem was. For the reviewer concerned about the 232GB vs 250GB, that's the difference in how the bits are counted. Every drive ends up having less memory that what's advertised on the box.

I use Window XP Pro..and it read the drive right off the bat....didn't have to do anything but transfer my files. Mine doesn't seem to be too hot...but for those that it bothers...you can attach a little drive fan to it if you wish.
Soooooo....it gets five stars from me.

I agree with the negative reviews before me. I have a Dell laptop and I wanted to back up my iTunes folder which has left me with no further hard drive memory. The guy at the Apple store said "Sure, no problem" in the Apple staff's deceptively laid back style.

Hassles since then.

The drive was not recognized by Windows, the directions for Windows set up leave out a critical right click step which has to be directed on a very small part of the screen requiring phone coaching from the LaCie staff.

I backed up the iTunes folder to the drive and reconfigured iTunes to refer to the new external drive music folder...and nothing is recognized. LaCie support now refuse to help saying it is an iTunes problem. And you can imagine what the Apple support staff say.

Perhaps this works smoothly with Apple products.

My experience is that it is a $200 lump of coal.

Heaps of shame on them and Apple for claiming it is PC compatible.

Small size, very lightweight, 250GB, great design, excellent price, fast speed....if that is what you ask, that is what you get!!!

Like several of the other reviewers, my computer (new Dell) won't recognize it. Tried downloading the driver on the utilities disc, rebooting, reconnecting, troubleshooting, reading FAQ's, going to LaCie website, etc. Others say theirs plugged and played with no trouble. Mine just sits there like a useless lump. Based on the extreme positive and negative views, I assume some work fine and others don't work at all. Question is, which one will be shipped to you? Not worth the headache of finding out. Also...I did a lot of comment reading here before buying this. All external hard drives seem to get mixed reviews. Why is this? These things are so important. Can't anyone build a reliable one?

I've used the drive for a month now on two different Windows XP computers. I just plugged it in and it worked, I didn't even install the software that came with it. It's very fast, and quiet.

Some people have written that it gets very hot. I think they're simply unaware of how hot drives get inside the computer case. Yes it's warm, but much cooler than internal drives are.

The data cable is only about 18 inches long, but it isn't possible to get fast data transfer over a long cable. Short is fast, and fast is the most important thing with a hard drive.

Stylist design and small footprint makes this a good choice . Especially since I have a new iMac Intel . I have problems with other products that suppose to be universal .
The Lacie is . Plug and Play , install software and it's on my desktop . I will buy another one from Lacie .

I got the hard drive about a week ago. it has been amazing so far, much better than i had anticipated. Its silent all the time its not in use, i dont know how transfer rates compare but i loaded my 30gb dv movie onto here in about 10 minutes, i was in no rush so it wasnt a big deal.

With the one I just purchased I now have three units and love them. They are very quiet, really fast and look great in my studio. I use one of them for client backups and two for editing video. I also own a Biggest which is even faster! I've never... seen a drive built as well as this, it is very solid.

This drive so far hasn't failed me, of course the only problem is the short usb cord that comes with it.

I literally plugged the item in and it worked instantly, it is exactly what i needed. The price was great too!

I have 200GB & 160GB LaCie external HD, and they have been working property on 3 of my PC's. That's why I trust this brand to buy the 250GB this time.
I was wrong.
This 250GB HD didn't recognized 3 of my PC's(including Dell).
I asked what's wrong to LaCie by mail, and they answered me that my PC's have problem, even I explained a lot about the situation!
I just returned the product to Amazon.com.
After that, I found so many people complain with this item on many site!
Don't buy it, if you read this kind of review!

I've had my lacie 250 for 6 months in Iraq in the dust and I have still yet to run into a problem. I got mine formated it and started loading it down with music, movies and pictures and more. My Computer is Windows based and i had no problems like some of the others have said. Its quiet and as long as ya dont hide it in a under books and stuff that block some air circulation the thing runs cool, its small and looks good too. The only drawl back i ran into is the USB cable is short but a 3 dollar USB cable extension takes care of that and for the price of this its worth it.

This is my second LaCie and so far I have been very pleased with the hard drive. I use mine as duplicate backups of my favorite files so I am glad they have been so reliable.

Warning though, turn them off when not in use b/c they do tend to heat up

Bought this product 10 days ago. Initially no problem with may laptop or desktop computer. But three days ago, the drive started cliking and non of the 2 computers would recognize the drive. Tried with Linux or Knoppix and the same problem...

I would not recommend this drive! Try other options...

Several recent reviews have correctly noted that the hard drive has sudden accessibility problems (and runs hot and clicks). Roughly a month after I loaded all of my photographs and videos onto this product as an archive, the drive suddenly will not communicate with the computer. If you run a search on "troubleshooting" for LaCie External Hard Drives, you will learn that this is a common problem. I hope you do not make the same mistake that I did. Buy something else.

This Hard Drive is somethin, Im in Iraq so the temperature is up there, this thing is takin the heat well and all the dust as well. I paid no more that $120.00. I totally recomend this Hard Drive to anyone for any use, its worth it.


I have had 2 of these drives for about 3 months. I use them mainly to store the audio files from my CD collection (over 500 CDs, FLAC encoded, drives about 2/3 full at this point). I keep one at home and one at the office and periodically bring them together and use Microsoft Synctoy to synchronize the data between them. They came pre-formated FAT32, which I prefer for an external drive since just about any computer can read/write FAT32. Windows 2000 knew what they were when I plugged them in and did not require special drivers. They worked fine with the USB 1.1 on the motherboard, but I stuffed a PCI USB 2.0 card in to make the Synchroniztion process go faster. I've not noted any abnormal noise. The cases are designed to stack, but I'd advise against doing it on a regular basis. This drive seems to disipate most of its heat from the top of the box, and it gets hot if you stack something on top. I have not noted that it gets abnormally hot so long as the top of the case remains clear. OTOH, the case does not have any cooling slots or other openings, so I'd expect it not to gather dust inside the case. And its reasonably compact and has a clean look.

I think its a great drive at a great price.

Seems most people here are getting a mix of drives. The one I just bought off the shelf at a local big-box retailer contains a Hitachi drive. I'm pretty happy about that, although I'd prefer a Seagate. I feel bad for everyone who got one of these stuffed with a Maxtor-- even for the current insanely low price I'd have to take such a box back. The Hitachi is running very quiet and cool so far and my XP machines have picked up the USB-->IDE hardware with no problems or headaches. I am copying 50gb worth of test data over to the drive and I can't even hear it running, although it's going about as fast as I'd expect from USB.

Remember that most hard drives either fail in the first 7-30 days of usage or sometime around the 2-4 year mark (unless they are WDs, in which case they will last precisely 366 days-- or Maxtors, in which case one just never knows). This is the way it has always been and the way it will always be until all hard drives are made of solid-state flash memory or "other." Even the best manufacturers have a lot of drives that are DOA or die shortly after being switched on. It really does behoove you to beat the crap out of the drive the first week you have it to make sure it's not going to fail. Copy stuff onto it, delete it, copy some more stuff onto it, leave the thing running 24/7. If it makes it through 5-7 days of reasonable abuse, you're probably OK. But whatever you do, DON'T use ANY external drive for a backup project and then delete all data from the other drives, especially within 15 minutes of opening the box. Hard drives need to be broken in before they can be reasonably trusted. You are playing with fire if you are using any brand new drive as your only copy of *anything*. I don't really feel bad for you, and shame on you for blaming LaCIE for your lack of computer savvy.

I bought this 250GB HD; it was very slow to start with. And one doomed day, after 45 days of purchase it stopped working. I was caught where I couldn't return to the store of purchase. So I called Lacie. Lacie want to return it to them to repair it under manufacturer's warranty. Few days later, got a new one - right on the first day, new one didn't work either. Send again, got a new one - right on the first day, this one didn't work either.
When third time isn't a charm, I called Lacie for refund. They don't refund if item not bought direct from them plus even if the item is bought from them it should be less then 30 days. Every time the buyer has to pay for shipping the item to repair.

Worst product, Buy at own risk


The fact that these hard drives are "driver-free" means that you can use them with both Mac and Windows OS at the same time. I've got two hooked up to my MacBookPro which is running Bootcamp. This way I have access to all my documents that are on the LaCie drives regardless of which operating system I'm using.


This product seems to work as advertised.
How long it lasts before breakdown will determine its worth.

LaCie is an amazing external hard drive device for file backup support!

this was my second hardrive I hooked up to my mac.
It works great. I just found partitioning it off to be way too permanent and inflexible. SO with this second one Ive learned to just use folders.
Overall these things work great and the price on Amazon was really better than my local choices in Philly.

I was using it as a backup device and it failed after about 12 months. So I am ripping it apart and putting in a new UltraATA disk in. Just hope the box is not frying the disk.
I noticed in another review they had a Western Digital. I had a Segate Baracuda 7200.8. Doubt that it makes any difference. I am sure it is just low bidder.

I've got to say I'm really worried about my hard drive failing after reading all of these reviews. But to be honest I have not had the same problems (crosses fingers). My hard drive has worked admirably for over a year. I do not however hold anything near and dear to my heart on this drive (probably the most important thing I have on my drive is all of my music) and I use it mainly for weekly back-ups of my computer. So to start my little review off:

Systems used with Hard Drive:
- Powerbook running Panther and Tiger (PPC)
- IBM Thinkpad running Windows XP

What I've used this hard-drive for:
- making a disk image of my whole computer hard drive for a new OS install
- backing up all of my important files right before the last gasps of my computer hard drive
- weekly backups of all files
- movies, tv, music
- running seldom used programs off of the external drive such as Photoshop

Pro's:
- CHEAP- it is even cheaper now, I think I bought mine for about 140ish more than a year ago.
- Aesthetically pleasing
- has been dependable for me (crosses fingers)- I have traveled with it on one road trip where I put it in a suit case between my clothes.
- plug and play for both OS's although you must make sure you format the drive in a format that both OS's can use. Currently since the IBM is no longer using the drive I have formatted it only for Mac.

Neutral:
- Speed- fast enough for archiving and running some meaty programs off of it such as Photoshop (although of course slower than on my actual harddrive), but it is not a speedster by far. I imagine a firewire800 external would be much, much faster. Advertised specs are 480Mps, 7200 rpm... not too shabby for the price.
- Software- clunky, ugly and user unfriendly from a Mac standpoint, but it works. I use dotMac's backup utility instead, which works without a hitch on the external.
- Heat- runs warm, but not hot. And definitely not as hot as my Powerbook. I've taken the precaution of putting my external on some makeshift stilts to elevate it about 1/2" to increase air cooling after reading all these horrid reviews, but I ran the drive for over a year just sitting on a plain desk in an air-conditioned room.
- Sound- As loud as my old minitower pc harddrive. Which means it isn't quiet, but it isn't out of the ordinary loud compared to a harddrive in a cheap desktop. Also mine makes a click at the end when it stops spinning. I'm overly paranoid from all these reviews.

Cons:
- Short USB- but a long one might effect the speed as stated in earlier reviews
- Badly placed on/off switch- if you never turn your hard drive off it won't bother you and eventually even if you do turn your hard drive on and off a lot you will get use to it. Not a big con.

So there you have it. A solid 4 stars for me. Although after reading all of these reviews if I were buying an external to store my photos (and other files I feel are priceless and irreplaceable) and that was the only place I was storing my photos, I would not buy this hard drive based on other people's unfortunate experiences. I mainly use this hard drive to back up my laptop hard drive and the odds of both of my hard drives failing at the exact same time are slim, so this has been a good (ie cheap) value for me... especially since it did save my rear when my actual laptop hard drive did fail.

COMPACT AND PORTABLE . GREAT FOR MOBILE USE , I HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

I have three of those discs set up as a RAID. They work just fine. The disks are quiet and don't get hot at all. Plus they look nice!

I must say this is a do not buy. This is because I have now known five people including I that have all bought this, and they have all stopped working. I contacted La Cie for help, and all they said is: well have a back up for your back up. Then gave me pointers on what I did wrong to why it does not work. Which is kinda of funny b/c they never asked, and just accused. It is cheap for a reason.

I originally bought two of these drives for data backup. Within a few months, one of them would intermittently refuse to mount. So I would erase it, reformat, and it would work for awhile. Finally, after about 8 months, it quit for good. No disk recovery program would recognize the drive, so I lost my data. I returned the drive to LaCie and they gave me a refurbished one. Then, a friend of mine with the same drive had the same problem. No disk utility (Apple Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, TechTool, Symantec Utilities) could recognize the disk. I noticed that when I turned the power on, the disk would only start up for a few seconds, so it appears that there was a hardware failure. She also has lost all her data.

Well, my second drive failed the same way. Fortunately, I coaxed the drive into mounting one last time and I got my data off. I shipped the drive off to LaCie and they sent me a replacement drive, which was DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Did all the normal tricks (different computer, cables, power adapters, disk utilities) plus everything LaCie told me to try, but the drive was dead. Unfortunately for me, I had waited several months before I tried the drive and the original drive is now out of warranty, so LaCie will not replace the dead replacement drive they sent to me. 4 out of 5 dead drives makes for an 80% failure rate. And these are mechanical failures; once the drive dies, you cannot retrieve your data with data recovery programs. So, unless your data is disposable, do not buy one of these drives.

IT REALLY SOLVED MY PROBLEM OF SPACE!
Easy to use, small and compact. A really good buy!

This drive works. I was very worried when ordering because of the bad reviews it gets here at Amazon. Mine works. It is a year later and with daily use it still works. I am glad i bought it as it looks better than every other drive out there. I actually have 2 of these same drives and one is a Seagate inside, the other is Hitachi...the first time you plug it into your computer it tells you the drive maker so pay attention. I was glad i did not get a Maxtor inside.

Don't hesitate.. buy it because your room will appreciate the good design.
And because they work.

I've been running 2 of these drives (250MB) for about 2 years, and a 3rd one (160MB) for over 4 years. With no problems. I leave one of the 250MB drives on all the time, as my primary file storage drive - used for file sharing on the home network, including the TiVo HD. It works great. The other 2 drives are left off most of the time, but I turn them on about once a week to make backups. I'm running Windows XP, and there was no configuration or installation required. These are solid machines; reliable, fast, and inexpensive.

The only drawback is the high-pitched hum. It's not as loud as the PC fan, but it is noticable if you are listening to music in the same room and have sensitive ears.

This is on their 80GB external drives. I used one at work for backup successfully for about a year, so bought one for home. It made an unsual disk noise from the start (I should have returned it immediately, in retrospect). After about a year, the home unit starts giving me errors on almost every bulk copy operation. Will only work with a limited amount of files to copy onto it, so I have to do a lot of manual work, & defeats the whole reason I got it for! I'm not happy & wouldn't recommend this brand to anybody. Buy at your own risk!

I have had my drive for about 2 1/2 years now, it has survived countless plane trips and hard travels. I use it for my movies, music, and any file I feel needs to be backed up. It has worked great and even though it has been knocked around a bit I have never had any problems with it.



I bought this drive to view movies with my Phillips DVP 5960/37 DVD Player.
I hooked up through the usb port and was recognized by the dvd player
right away.

Plays all divx xvid mp2 etc. without stuttering or any other problems.

As far as noise is concerned I have noticed no problems.
I also didnt see any problems with file overhead or heat as one reviewer
has stated.

Over all I am very happy with this EHD the only problem is the small shut off

I've had this drive for about a year and it's still working fine after two office moves. No problems with overheating, no lost files--in fact, since the price has gone down so much (I bought it "on sale" for $169), I was thinking about getting another LaCie just to store some some music and photos.

I HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THIS LACIE EXT. HARD DRIVE. IT IS EASY TO USE, SMALL IN SCALE, PORTABLE AND HIGHLY EFFICIENT. BEST PRODUCT ON THE MARKET FOR THE PRICE.

RON KOWALKE
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII

Can't beat the price. Good company with good products - but not a good choice if you are planning to use it for fast data transfer applications (video, etc). Excellent spare backup drive and small enough to fit in a Targus bag with a small laptop.

I bought this as a gift for a friend. He tells me that he loves it.

Get these when they're on sale, which is fairly often. LaCie is a packager: they take drives from Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor (which is part of Seagate now) and other major manufacturers and put them into their neatly designed Porsche housings.

Contrary to the some of the reviews here, LaCie doesn't use cheap or sub-standard drives. But drives are electro-mechanical devices and they do fail. Statistically the overall number of failures is low, but that isn't any consolation when it's your drive that fails and takes your data with it. Media failure is a fact of life. Trusting your backups to a single medium is an invitation to disaster.

On the other hand, particularly when you get these LaCie drives at the lowest price, using two or three in rotation for backing up your data is economical and safe.

The housings are practically as small as the 3.5" drive itself. Heat-dissipation is excellent and there is no need for a fan. The power block is relatively small. The only thing you might not like is the very short USB cable provided by LaCie, but that's easily remedied: get a longer one.

Overall, these LaCie 250GB drives are excellent values. Follow what data professionals do and use more than one drive for backing up your data and you'll be well satisifed with these units.

Incidentally, these units are also very handy for transporting data from one location to another.

Jerry

This is the second drive of this type that I have bought. The other one is about a year old and has given me no hint of any problems. I have even dropped it on the floor a couple of times and it has not affected the operation of it at all.
It is very quiet.

I returned the drive without opening, so can't rate it. CompUSA did not reveal that they charge sales tax despite no brick-and-mortar in my state, did not confirm purchase until already shipped, did not respond to my complaint/queries until I contacted Amazon. I would have refused delivery but package was left in my absence, with HUGE dent. So I returned. Did receive credit fairly promptly. Will not buy from CompUSA online again.
Was disappointed that Amazon support now clearly overseas and not so good.

Never had a problem with this external hard drive. Hooked it up to my IMAC and it worked. Then again, that's why Apple is famous.

The size and speed of this drive is great for the price. I'm satisfied with the performance of this product.

I really like these hard drives, because they are tough (I've dropped them and they've survived, although I don't recommend it), the USB 2.0 means you can just pretend they're part of your computer, and for the price, it's a lot of harddrive.
My only complaint about them is that their power adapter is very clunky. The transformer is huge and the multi-pin plug is just a bent-pin issue waiting to happen for me. I'd like it all to be more portable. I keep one power supply in my office and one at home and take the drive back and forth. It's a great solution, but not as good when I go on the road.
I have two of these and my partner has about 4-5. They haven't crashed ever, and I recommend them to anyone just looking for more space on their computer.

I've had this drive for well over a year and have entrusted it to be a backup drive for both an iMac G5 and then for a G5 tower, both running current versions of OS X. It just works! I formatted it for my Mac (with journaling) when I bought it and have used it daily. And since then, I've bought two more like it for my office.

The only downside is that I paid a lot more for it back then!

This hard drive certainly did not work for me. I've been using large external hard drives for many years for back-ups and have never had trouble copying files to them. Not only was this drive refusing files (character length) but when I decided to use the (confusing) software that came with it, after a lengthy back-up, the drive refused to even mount. If the problem is because I'm Mac-based not PC (that happens a lot!) then I'd like the manufacturer to say 'this product does not perform well with such-and-such operating system...'

I purchased one of these as a backup for my music files; despite all the "porsche" nonsnese, it feels cheap and not-so-sturdy.

It seemed to work fine, until I made the mistake of dropping it - about a foot and a half, onto a carpeted surface. Yes, thats it, it was on top of a minitower under my desk, and it flipped over and fell onto some soft carpeting...and never worked again. I thought, you have GOT to be kidding! I have an old 80 gig unit from another company that isn't in business anymore; that one has been moved, packed away, etc, and yes, even dropped from that fearsome height onto jagged carpeting, and it still works. Not so the Lacie 250 gig drive. It makes an Ipod seem sturdy by comparison.

I bought the external drive our lab guy uses on-campus and was not disappointed. I have literally thousands of photos and sound files from fieldwork & family that threatened to crash my laptop. They've been relocated to the LaCie which fits comfortably behind my computer stand on the desk...One note, however. It is very easy for the power cord to come out or get loose from the back of the drive. So where ever you put it, it must be in a low traffic area. Amazon's price beat all the walk-in stores by far. I even got it cheaper than what the university paid for it....

Fashion techies need to check out the blue & red leggo versions of this external drive. Tre cute!



Received nearly overnight . . . Works fine. (Did NOT come with any software which others do . . . maybe this does not matter? I have no idea!)

I'm a newbie in external Hard Drives and reading reviews for ANY HD makes you wonder if there is any brand that is really reliable. This first HD was an inexpensive experiment for me and so far it works OK. No heating problems.

Now so you can have a better picture. I'm a MacBook user and I backup my data weekly. Would have liked to have a longer USB cable, but its not the end of the world, and a power supply already integrated in the HD, not that external PC power supply device. I'm still trying to figure out where the design by Porsche is. If Porche is 'designing' silver rectangular prisms I won't buy their next car. If Lacie needs Porsche to do that well...I know their skills are inside the hood but come on!

Tremendous item, backs up all my movies and files in a timely manner with no problems of over heating or stalling. Great buy and cheap as well!

I have about 8 Lacie hards drive now, including 6 of this model. I also gave one of these to my son as a gift to add more storage to his laptop (they are very portable). All mine have worked flawlessly so far. The design is very cool and looks good.

They are quiet drives, fast, install easily, and work great. By far most of the reviews and comments I have seen are positive. My own experience has been good (so far ;) - so I give these products 5 stars and consider them a great value for the money.

I also have several of the WD Essential hardrives and they're very good, too, but the sleek, attractive design of the Lacie Porche drives can't be beat. These can easily be carried in your laptop bag for backups and extra storage, or stacked beside your desktop. Just make sure to leave room for airflow as they are passively cooled (no fans).

I watch for sales and buy them then. A great value in my opinion. They don't come with much software, but I prefer to use my own anyway, so not an issue for me. There is a Lacie Backup software, it's very simple, too simple for me. I use DriveImage XML (free) and Paragon (costs, but good).

I use these drives for video work and they do the job. Highly recommended.



I saw people complaining abou this drive, but to me it seems quiet and fast, I like it.

I have been using LaCie 250 GB HD's now for over six months with clients who want to have backups that they can take off-site. These Hard Drives are great because you can swap them out (exchange them) just by pulling the plugs out of the back of one, and then plugging them back in the next HD. This makes it very simple to do a rotation with 5 or 6 HD's. This is a great alternative to buying a Tape Backup system. I have been using this system with Veritas Backup Exec 9.1, 10 and 11d with great results. This is a great HD for the price; I have probably purchased about 2 dozen already.

The disk is OK. A weak point - power cord. The disk mama does not hold the cord's papa tightly enough, it falls out easily. The connector's wires are very fragil, and if damaged - you have to by the whole unit that costs nearly the same as the disk.

the hard drive is great and runs fine and fast, easy to install just plug and play but it is ONLY 232 gb not 250 even though it is advertised as such and the box it self is advertised as such.

Easy product to install and use; I've done 2 backups thus far on a iMac G5 using mac's software (Backup) and it works flawlessly. I bought the USB drive so I can also use this drive with a PC machine but I havent tested that yet. I did however partition the drive for this use and that was an easy task using Apple's disk utility. Hope this helps!

I haven't had any problems. Works as expected. Price 89.99 is really a good deal.

The drive was finicky from the start, often having to be restarted several times before being accessible. After a little over a year it disappeared from the screen completely and has become totally inaccessible without recovery software. Great price--big risk!

I use the LeCie to backup my Vista system, it works great and it's fast. Could not ask for a better external drive.

I haven't had any problems. Works as expected. Price 89.99 is really a good deal.

The drive was finicky from the start, often having to be restarted several times before being accessible. After a little over a year it disappeared from the screen completely and has become totally inaccessible without recovery software. Great price--big risk!

I use the LeCie to backup my Vista system, it works great and it's fast. Could not ask for a better external drive.

The disk is OK. A weak point - power cord. The disk mama does not hold the cord's papa tightly enough, it falls out easily. The connector's wires are very fragil, and if damaged - you have to by the whole unit that costs nearly the same as the disk.

the hard drive is great and runs fine and fast, easy to install just plug and play but it is ONLY 232 gb not 250 even though it is advertised as such and the box it self is advertised as such.

I recently had to send in my laptop for a small repair, and I needed to back up my media files. In particluar I have an extensive itunes library I was concerned about. This worked perfectly....not to mention as my music library grows further, I'll have plenty of space for it.

This hard disk is really compact, and fast. Really it was a increible buy.

I purchased this hard drive to provide backup space for my Macbook Pro. It works great and comes with backup software that is easy to use. 250 GB is nothing to frown at either. For such a low cost this is a great buy.

I was a little aprehensive when I read some of the reviews of this product, but mine has worked smoothly for two months. We use two other Lacie 250 Gb drives at work, which also work fine.

Not only did two of these drives crash within three months but LaCie refused to honor their warranty, hiding behind fine print technicalities. Bad faith and bad business practice.

Easy product to install and use; I've done 2 backups thus far on a iMac G5 using mac's software (Backup) and it works flawlessly. I bought the USB drive so I can also use this drive with a PC machine but I havent tested that yet. I did however partition the drive for this use and that was an easy task using Apple's disk utility. Hope this helps!

I have been using LaCie 250 GB HD's now for over six months with clients who want to have backups that they can take off-site. These Hard Drives are great because you can swap them out (exchange them) just by pulling the plugs out of the back of one, and then plugging them back in the next HD. This makes it very simple to do a rotation with 5 or 6 HD's. This is a great alternative to buying a Tape Backup system. I have been using this system with Veritas Backup Exec 9.1, 10 and 11d with great results. This is a great HD for the price; I have probably purchased about 2 dozen already.

I saw people complaining abou this drive, but to me it seems quiet and fast, I like it.

Tremendous item, backs up all my movies and files in a timely manner with no problems of over heating or stalling. Great buy and cheap as well!

I have about 8 Lacie hards drive now, including 6 of this model. I also gave one of these to my son as a gift to add more storage to his laptop (they are very portable). All mine have worked flawlessly so far. The design is very cool and looks good.

They are quiet drives, fast, install easily, and work great. By far most of the reviews and comments I have seen are positive. My own experience has been good (so far ;) - so I give these products 5 stars and consider them a great value for the money.

I also have several of the WD Essential hardrives and they're very good, too, but the sleek, attractive design of the Lacie Porche drives can't be beat. These can easily be carried in your laptop bag for backups and extra storage, or stacked beside your desktop. Just make sure to leave room for airflow as they are passively cooled (no fans).

I watch for sales and buy them then. A great value in my opinion. They don't come with much software, but I prefer to use my own anyway, so not an issue for me. There is a Lacie Backup software, it's very simple, too simple for me. I use DriveImage XML (free) and Paragon (costs, but good).

I use these drives for video work and they do the job. Highly recommended.



I have 3 of the Lacie 250 USB drives. All have proven reliable. All 3 are attached to my iMAC via a 6 port USB 2.0 hub. One is used to backup my iMAC's hard drive and the other two for redunant data storage. I have left these drives running for several days and have never experienced any heat related issues. The drives simply spin down when not in use. I can hear them spin down when not used and activate when called on. As suggested by another reviewer, at these prices it pays to buy several and use them to create several back-ups of your data. As I create more video files I plan to dedicate a new drive for videos only. I highly recommend these drives. As an additional note, I have used other drives and I really appreciate the on-off switch on the Lacies. They allow me to switch them off when not needed. Overall, great drives.

This is a horrible product, shame on LaCie for bringing something so clearly defective to market. The first drive I received failed within thirty days. The replacement hasn't completely failed yet but it often stops operating due to heat issues.

The design and capacity are nice, but that's about it. Supposedly the drive is stackable - forget about it - it generates an incredible amount of heat and goes haywire as soon as the temperature gets to a certain level. Personally I have to operate the drive on its side in a cold room to even get it to function.

this has been a great external hard drive for me. its sleek and modern design takes little space and looks great. as far as it's performance goes, i'd say it's performed perfectly. I am a professional photographer and I trust all my back up on this hard drive ( I also burn DVD's of jobs just in case). But whenever I access files, this hard drive performs fast and with reliability. I think my next will be the porsche design with 500 gigs since these prices have dropped so much.

...the drive essentially melted and I lost all my data. Over 12,000 songs and some other important data. Luckily I was able to get a data recovery guy over to retrieve some of it. But I have learned my lesson. Either buy an external drive with a built-in fan or get an enclosure with a fan. Still, if the cost of forgetting to turn off your external drive for one night is meltdown of said drive and loss of all data, LaCie should at least have the decency to put a warning on their product. For the year and a half prior to its meltdown, it worked fine, though.

We love our external hard drive. It was a smart buy at an unbeatable price.

I bought the external drive our lab guy uses on-campus and was not disappointed. I have literally thousands of photos and sound files from fieldwork & family that threatened to crash my laptop. They've been relocated to the LaCie which fits comfortably behind my computer stand on the desk...One note, however. It is very easy for the power cord to come out or get loose from the back of the drive. So where ever you put it, it must be in a low traffic area. Amazon's price beat all the walk-in stores by far. I even got it cheaper than what the university paid for it....

Fashion techies need to check out the blue & red leggo versions of this external drive. Tre cute!



Never had a problem with this external hard drive. Hooked it up to my IMAC and it worked. Then again, that's why Apple is famous.

The size and speed of this drive is great for the price. I'm satisfied with the performance of this product.

I really like these hard drives, because they are tough (I've dropped them and they've survived, although I don't recommend it), the USB 2.0 means you can just pretend they're part of your computer, and for the price, it's a lot of harddrive.
My only complaint about them is that their power adapter is very clunky. The transformer is huge and the multi-pin plug is just a bent-pin issue waiting to happen for me. I'd like it all to be more portable. I keep one power supply in my office and one at home and take the drive back and forth. It's a great solution, but not as good when I go on the road.
I have two of these and my partner has about 4-5. They haven't crashed ever, and I recommend them to anyone just looking for more space on their computer.

This is the second drive of this type that I have bought. The other one is about a year old and has given me no hint of any problems. I have even dropped it on the floor a couple of times and it has not affected the operation of it at all.
It is very quiet.

I returned the drive without opening, so can't rate it. CompUSA did not reveal that they charge sales tax despite no brick-and-mortar in my state, did not confirm purchase until already shipped, did not respond to my complaint/queries until I contacted Amazon. I would have refused delivery but package was left in my absence, with HUGE dent. So I returned. Did receive credit fairly promptly. Will not buy from CompUSA online again.
Was disappointed that Amazon support now clearly overseas and not so good.

I HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THIS LACIE EXT. HARD DRIVE. IT IS EASY TO USE, SMALL IN SCALE, PORTABLE AND HIGHLY EFFICIENT. BEST PRODUCT ON THE MARKET FOR THE PRICE.

RON KOWALKE
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII

Can't beat the price. Good company with good products - but not a good choice if you are planning to use it for fast data transfer applications (video, etc). Excellent spare backup drive and small enough to fit in a Targus bag with a small laptop.

I bought this as a gift for a friend. He tells me that he loves it.

Get these when they're on sale, which is fairly often. LaCie is a packager: they take drives from Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor (which is part of Seagate now) and other major manufacturers and put them into their neatly designed Porsche housings.

Contrary to the some of the reviews here, LaCie doesn't use cheap or sub-standard drives. But drives are electro-mechanical devices and they do fail. Statistically the overall number of failures is low, but that isn't any consolation when it's your drive that fails and takes your data with it. Media failure is a fact of life. Trusting your backups to a single medium is an invitation to disaster.

On the other hand, particularly when you get these LaCie drives at the lowest price, using two or three in rotation for backing up your data is economical and safe.

The housings are practically as small as the 3.5" drive itself. Heat-dissipation is excellent and there is no need for a fan. The power block is relatively small. The only thing you might not like is the very short USB cable provided by LaCie, but that's easily remedied: get a longer one.

Overall, these LaCie 250GB drives are excellent values. Follow what data professionals do and use more than one drive for backing up your data and you'll be well satisifed with these units.

Incidentally, these units are also very handy for transporting data from one location to another.

Jerry

I bought this drive to view movies with my Phillips DVP 5960/37 DVD Player.
I hooked up through the usb port and was recognized by the dvd player
right away.

Plays all divx xvid mp2 etc. without stuttering or any other problems.

As far as noise is concerned I have noticed no problems.
I also didnt see any problems with file overhead or heat as one reviewer
has stated.

Over all I am very happy with this EHD the only problem is the small shut off

I've had this drive for about a year and it's still working fine after two office moves. No problems with overheating, no lost files--in fact, since the price has gone down so much (I bought it "on sale" for $169), I was thinking about getting another LaCie just to store some some music and photos.

I have had my drive for about 2 1/2 years now, it has survived countless plane trips and hard travels. I use it for my movies, music, and any file I feel needs to be backed up. It has worked great and even though it has been knocked around a bit I have never had any problems with it.



This is on their 80GB external drives. I used one at work for backup successfully for about a year, so bought one for home. It made an unsual disk noise from the start (I should have returned it immediately, in retrospect). After about a year, the home unit starts giving me errors on almost every bulk copy operation. Will only work with a limited amount of files to copy onto it, so I have to do a lot of manual work, & defeats the whole reason I got it for! I'm not happy & wouldn't recommend this brand to anybody. Buy at your own risk!

IT REALLY SOLVED MY PROBLEM OF SPACE!
Easy to use, small and compact. A really good buy!

This drive works. I was very worried when ordering because of the bad reviews it gets here at Amazon. Mine works. It is a year later and with daily use it still works. I am glad i bought it as it looks better than every other drive out there. I actually have 2 of these same drives and one is a Seagate inside, the other is Hitachi...the first time you plug it into your computer it tells you the drive maker so pay attention. I was glad i did not get a Maxtor inside.

Don't hesitate.. buy it because your room will appreciate the good design.
And because they work.

I've been running 2 of these drives (250MB) for about 2 years, and a 3rd one (160MB) for over 4 years. With no problems. I leave one of the 250MB drives on all the time, as my primary file storage drive - used for file sharing on the home network, including the TiVo HD. It works great. The other 2 drives are left off most of the time, but I turn them on about once a week to make backups. I'm running Windows XP, and there was no configuration or installation required. These are solid machines; reliable, fast, and inexpensive.

The only drawback is the high-pitched hum. It's not as loud as the PC fan, but it is noticable if you are listening to music in the same room and have sensitive ears.

I originally bought two of these drives for data backup. Within a few months, one of them would intermittently refuse to mount. So I would erase it, reformat, and it would work for awhile. Finally, after about 8 months, it quit for good. No disk recovery program would recognize the drive, so I lost my data. I returned the drive to LaCie and they gave me a refurbished one. Then, a friend of mine with the same drive had the same problem. No disk utility (Apple Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, TechTool, Symantec Utilities) could recognize the disk. I noticed that when I turned the power on, the disk would only start up for a few seconds, so it appears that there was a hardware failure. She also has lost all her data.

Well, my second drive failed the same way. Fortunately, I coaxed the drive into mounting one last time and I got my data off. I shipped the drive off to LaCie and they sent me a replacement drive, which was DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Did all the normal tricks (different computer, cables, power adapters, disk utilities) plus everything LaCie told me to try, but the drive was dead. Unfortunately for me, I had waited several months before I tried the drive and the original drive is now out of warranty, so LaCie will not replace the dead replacement drive they sent to me. 4 out of 5 dead drives makes for an 80% failure rate. And these are mechanical failures; once the drive dies, you cannot retrieve your data with data recovery programs. So, unless your data is disposable, do not buy one of these drives.

COMPACT AND PORTABLE . GREAT FOR MOBILE USE , I HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

I have three of those discs set up as a RAID. They work just fine. The disks are quiet and don't get hot at all. Plus they look nice!

I must say this is a do not buy. This is because I have now known five people including I that have all bought this, and they have all stopped working. I contacted La Cie for help, and all they said is: well have a back up for your back up. Then gave me pointers on what I did wrong to why it does not work. Which is kinda of funny b/c they never asked, and just accused. It is cheap for a reason.


This product seems to work as advertised.
How long it lasts before breakdown will determine its worth.

LaCie is an amazing external hard drive device for file backup support!

this was my second hardrive I hooked up to my mac.
It works great. I just found partitioning it off to be way too permanent and inflexible. SO with this second one Ive learned to just use folders.
Overall these things work great and the price on Amazon was really better than my local choices in Philly.

I was using it as a backup device and it failed after about 12 months. So I am ripping it apart and putting in a new UltraATA disk in. Just hope the box is not frying the disk.
I noticed in another review they had a Western Digital. I had a Segate Baracuda 7200.8. Doubt that it makes any difference. I am sure it is just low bidder.

I've got to say I'm really worried about my hard drive failing after reading all of these reviews. But to be honest I have not had the same problems (crosses fingers). My hard drive has worked admirably for over a year. I do not however hold anything near and dear to my heart on this drive (probably the most important thing I have on my drive is all of my music) and I use it mainly for weekly back-ups of my computer. So to start my little review off:

Systems used with Hard Drive:
- Powerbook running Panther and Tiger (PPC)
- IBM Thinkpad running Windows XP

What I've used this hard-drive for:
- making a disk image of my whole computer hard drive for a new OS install
- backing up all of my important files right before the last gasps of my computer hard drive
- weekly backups of all files
- movies, tv, music
- running seldom used programs off of the external drive such as Photoshop

Pro's:
- CHEAP- it is even cheaper now, I think I bought mine for about 140ish more than a year ago.
- Aesthetically pleasing
- has been dependable for me (crosses fingers)- I have traveled with it on one road trip where I put it in a suit case between my clothes.
- plug and play for both OS's although you must make sure you format the drive in a format that both OS's can use. Currently since the IBM is no longer using the drive I have formatted it only for Mac.

Neutral:
- Speed- fast enough for archiving and running some meaty programs off of it such as Photoshop (although of course slower than on my actual harddrive), but it is not a speedster by far. I imagine a firewire800 external would be much, much faster. Advertised specs are 480Mps, 7200 rpm... not too shabby for the price.
- Software- clunky, ugly and user unfriendly from a Mac standpoint, but it works. I use dotMac's backup utility instead, which works without a hitch on the external.
- Heat- runs warm, but not hot. And definitely not as hot as my Powerbook. I've taken the precaution of putting my external on some makeshift stilts to elevate it about 1/2" to increase air cooling after reading all these horrid reviews, but I ran the drive for over a year just sitting on a plain desk in an air-conditioned room.
- Sound- As loud as my old minitower pc harddrive. Which means it isn't quiet, but it isn't out of the ordinary loud compared to a harddrive in a cheap desktop. Also mine makes a click at the end when it stops spinning. I'm overly paranoid from all these reviews.

Cons:
- Short USB- but a long one might effect the speed as stated in earlier reviews
- Badly placed on/off switch- if you never turn your hard drive off it won't bother you and eventually even if you do turn your hard drive on and off a lot you will get use to it. Not a big con.

So there you have it. A solid 4 stars for me. Although after reading all of these reviews if I were buying an external to store my photos (and other files I feel are priceless and irreplaceable) and that was the only place I was storing my photos, I would not buy this hard drive based on other people's unfortunate experiences. I mainly use this hard drive to back up my laptop hard drive and the odds of both of my hard drives failing at the exact same time are slim, so this has been a good (ie cheap) value for me... especially since it did save my rear when my actual laptop hard drive did fail.

I bought this 250GB HD; it was very slow to start with. And one doomed day, after 45 days of purchase it stopped working. I was caught where I couldn't return to the store of purchase. So I called Lacie. Lacie want to return it to them to repair it under manufacturer's warranty. Few days later, got a new one - right on the first day, new one didn't work either. Send again, got a new one - right on the first day, this one didn't work either.
When third time isn't a charm, I called Lacie for refund. They don't refund if item not bought direct from them plus even if the item is bought from them it should be less then 30 days. Every time the buyer has to pay for shipping the item to repair.

Worst product, Buy at own risk


The fact that these hard drives are "driver-free" means that you can use them with both Mac and Windows OS at the same time. I've got two hooked up to my MacBookPro which is running Bootcamp. This way I have access to all my documents that are on the LaCie drives regardless of which operating system I'm using.

Seems most people here are getting a mix of drives. The one I just bought off the shelf at a local big-box retailer contains a Hitachi drive. I'm pretty happy about that, although I'd prefer a Seagate. I feel bad for everyone who got one of these stuffed with a Maxtor-- even for the current insanely low price I'd have to take such a box back. The Hitachi is running very quiet and cool so far and my XP machines have picked up the USB-->IDE hardware with no problems or headaches. I am copying 50gb worth of test data over to the drive and I can't even hear it running, although it's going about as fast as I'd expect from USB.

Remember that most hard drives either fail in the first 7-30 days of usage or sometime around the 2-4 year mark (unless they are WDs, in which case they will last precisely 366 days-- or Maxtors, in which case one just never knows). This is the way it has always been and the way it will always be until all hard drives are made of solid-state flash memory or "other." Even the best manufacturers have a lot of drives that are DOA or die shortly after being switched on. It really does behoove you to beat the crap out of the drive the first week you have it to make sure it's not going to fail. Copy stuff onto it, delete it, copy some more stuff onto it, leave the thing running 24/7. If it makes it through 5-7 days of reasonable abuse, you're probably OK. But whatever you do, DON'T use ANY external drive for a backup project and then delete all data from the other drives, especially within 15 minutes of opening the box. Hard drives need to be broken in before they can be reasonably trusted. You are playing with fire if you are using any brand new drive as your only copy of *anything*. I don't really feel bad for you, and shame on you for blaming LaCIE for your lack of computer savvy.

I have had 2 of these drives for about 3 months. I use them mainly to store the audio files from my CD collection (over 500 CDs, FLAC encoded, drives about 2/3 full at this point). I keep one at home and one at the office and periodically bring them together and use Microsoft Synctoy to synchronize the data between them. They came pre-formated FAT32, which I prefer for an external drive since just about any computer can read/write FAT32. Windows 2000 knew what they were when I plugged them in and did not require special drivers. They worked fine with the USB 1.1 on the motherboard, but I stuffed a PCI USB 2.0 card in to make the Synchroniztion process go faster. I've not noted any abnormal noise. The cases are designed to stack, but I'd advise against doing it on a regular basis. This drive seems to disipate most of its heat from the top of the box, and it gets hot if you stack something on top. I have not noted that it gets abnormally hot so long as the top of the case remains clear. OTOH, the case does not have any cooling slots or other openings, so I'd expect it not to gather dust inside the case. And its reasonably compact and has a clean look.

I think its a great drive at a great price.

It's cheap, but it's very fragile. It broke after about 1 year. I opened it with screwdriver, and found that the inside is a WesternDigital Enhanced IDE harddrive made in Malaysia. Just a regular harddrive for desktop, and they put it in the square metalic case designed by Porche. So be careful not to move it around, because it's very fragile.

This hard drive is great for any Mac User. I keep all my movies on it and they playback with absolutely no studdering. Firewire transfers much much faster than USB or USB 2.0 so you know you can't go wrong with this drive. I have kept my hard drive on for 15 months straight and have yet to have a problem. Highly recommended. Can't beat 50 cents per Gig of storage.

I love this product. I use it to back up my computer so if there are any problems, I don't loose all my important stuff. It has saved me a few times already, but that's because my computer was giving out on me. I definitly recomend this product. It is a great price for all the space you get.

Great drive, very quiet, not too hot, super fast, wonderful design.

I purchased this hard drive to keep all my music and tv shows on instead of keeping them on my laptop. It works great, looks great, and is pretty fast. The only thing I didnt like was the short 1- foot USB cable LaCie supplies with the hard drive. The hard drive gets warm, but most external hard drives do. Overall I reccomed this hard drive to anyone, for the price you pay, your getting a lot of space.

This Hard Drive is somethin, Im in Iraq so the temperature is up there, this thing is takin the heat well and all the dust as well. I paid no more that $120.00. I totally recomend this Hard Drive to anyone for any use, its worth it.


Several recent reviews have correctly noted that the hard drive has sudden accessibility problems (and runs hot and clicks). Roughly a month after I loaded all of my photographs and videos onto this product as an archive, the drive suddenly will not communicate with the computer. If you run a search on "troubleshooting" for LaCie External Hard Drives, you will learn that this is a common problem. I hope you do not make the same mistake that I did. Buy something else.

This is my second LaCie and so far I have been very pleased with the hard drive. I use mine as duplicate backups of my favorite files so I am glad they have been so reliable.

Warning though, turn them off when not in use b/c they do tend to heat up

Bought this product 10 days ago. Initially no problem with may laptop or desktop computer. But three days ago, the drive started cliking and non of the 2 computers would recognize the drive. Tried with Linux or Knoppix and the same problem...

I would not recommend this drive! Try other options...

I've had my lacie 250 for 6 months in Iraq in the dust and I have still yet to run into a problem. I got mine formated it and started loading it down with music, movies and pictures and more. My Computer is Windows based and i had no problems like some of the others have said. Its quiet and as long as ya dont hide it in a under books and stuff that block some air circulation the thing runs cool, its small and looks good too. The only drawl back i ran into is the USB cable is short but a 3 dollar USB cable extension takes care of that and for the price of this its worth it.

This drive so far hasn't failed me, of course the only problem is the short usb cord that comes with it.

I literally plugged the item in and it worked instantly, it is exactly what i needed. The price was great too!

I have 200GB & 160GB LaCie external HD, and they have been working property on 3 of my PC's. That's why I trust this brand to buy the 250GB this time.
I was wrong.
This 250GB HD didn't recognized 3 of my PC's(including Dell).
I asked what's wrong to LaCie by mail, and they answered me that my PC's have problem, even I explained a lot about the situation!
I just returned the product to Amazon.com.
After that, I found so many people complain with this item on many site!
Don't buy it, if you read this kind of review!

Stylist design and small footprint makes this a good choice . Especially since I have a new iMac Intel . I have problems with other products that suppose to be universal .
The Lacie is . Plug and Play , install software and it's on my desktop . I will buy another one from Lacie .

I got the hard drive about a week ago. it has been amazing so far, much better than i had anticipated. Its silent all the time its not in use, i dont know how transfer rates compare but i loaded my 30gb dv movie onto here in about 10 minutes, i was in no rush so it wasnt a big deal.

With the one I just purchased I now have three units and love them. They are very quiet, really fast and look great in my studio. I use one of them for client backups and two for editing video. I also own a Biggest which is even faster! I've never... seen a drive built as well as this, it is very solid.

I use Window XP Pro..and it read the drive right off the bat....didn't have to do anything but transfer my files. Mine doesn't seem to be too hot...but for those that it bothers...you can attach a little drive fan to it if you wish.
Soooooo....it gets five stars from me.

I agree with the negative reviews before me. I have a Dell laptop and I wanted to back up my iTunes folder which has left me with no further hard drive memory. The guy at the Apple store said "Sure, no problem" in the Apple staff's deceptively laid back style.

Hassles since then.

The drive was not recognized by Windows, the directions for Windows set up leave out a critical right click step which has to be directed on a very small part of the screen requiring phone coaching from the LaCie staff.

I backed up the iTunes folder to the drive and reconfigured iTunes to refer to the new external drive music folder...and nothing is recognized. LaCie support now refuse to help saying it is an iTunes problem. And you can imagine what the Apple support staff say.

Perhaps this works smoothly with Apple products.

My experience is that it is a $200 lump of coal.

Heaps of shame on them and Apple for claiming it is PC compatible.

Small size, very lightweight, 250GB, great design, excellent price, fast speed....if that is what you ask, that is what you get!!!

Like several of the other reviewers, my computer (new Dell) won't recognize it. Tried downloading the driver on the utilities disc, rebooting, reconnecting, troubleshooting, reading FAQ's, going to LaCie website, etc. Others say theirs plugged and played with no trouble. Mine just sits there like a useless lump. Based on the extreme positive and negative views, I assume some work fine and others don't work at all. Question is, which one will be shipped to you? Not worth the headache of finding out. Also...I did a lot of comment reading here before buying this. All external hard drives seem to get mixed reviews. Why is this? These things are so important. Can't anyone build a reliable one?

I've used the drive for a month now on two different Windows XP computers. I just plugged it in and it worked, I didn't even install the software that came with it. It's very fast, and quiet.

Some people have written that it gets very hot. I think they're simply unaware of how hot drives get inside the computer case. Yes it's warm, but much cooler than internal drives are.

The data cable is only about 18 inches long, but it isn't possible to get fast data transfer over a long cable. Short is fast, and fast is the most important thing with a hard drive.

This drive definitely runs on the hot side with prolonged continuous use, and it's loud, but (knock on wood) it hasn't been unreliable so far, and I've had mine for almost a year. I basically isolated the drive from my other external hard drives, and have it connected to a separate surge suppressor with a convenient foot switch.

It was totally plug-and-play with Windows XP SP2, so I don't know what that reviewer's problem was. For the reviewer concerned about the 232GB vs 250GB, that's the difference in how the bits are counted. Every drive ends up having less memory that what's advertised on the box.

I am satisfied with the drive. The unit I purchased has a Seagate drive. I have a couple of comments:
1. I have Windows ME and had no trouble with installtion.
2. I have had the drive on for several days it does not run hot -It is cool to the touch.
3. The USB cord is very short.
4. The only complaint I have is the speed of the drive. I tried to burn a large data CD [500MB] with Nero and it froze and did not finish burning. I had to copy the files back to my hard drive to copy them to CD.

No problems, its small, very quiet, plug and play (no drivers required), and stackable.

You should change it from FAT32 to NTFS, very easy to do in 30 seconds with a single DOS command, then you can save files over 4Gig to it.

The USB cable is a little too short and the status LED is a litte to small.

I bought two of these, they both failed. I sent them in under warrantee. They were returned to me "reconditioned" - and still with the same problem.

I just received the pacake from Amazon. Coonected it to my laptop and the drive shows 232GB. I know there will be space used for the Hard drive software.. but 18GB ? Even windows installation is not that much...

Lacie does not seem very loud. Looks OK.. The USB cable is short.

One advantage is that it takes 110-220V. good for travellers.

While I appreciate all the great feedback, I also noticed there are a lot more negative ones on Amazon compared to Buy.com. For the exact same product, 250GB Lacie USB 2.0. Do Amazon shoppers complains more or do Buy.com filter out the complaints?

Pro:
1. Great look, small, metal casing.
2. High 250 GB capacity with low price.
3. Fast USB 2.0 transfer with 8MB buffer
4. Plug & Play for PC users.
5. Quiet (not silent)

Con:
1. Short 1 foot USB cable.
2. Drive gets pretty hot. (all drives gets hot)

Here are "some" complaints from other users. Can not confirm this is due to user or a defective product.

1. Mac users had problem installing.
2. Some reported drive failure.
3. Loud clicking sound. (most likely a defective drive)

Hope this helps.


OK, I bought a LaCie 200GB drive, and it ran solid for a month. So I bought 3 more, b/c they were inexpensive and looked nice. One month later, 2 of the drives are saying they are corrupted and are no longer in NFTS format (!) after I'd put 100+GB of info on each. A 3rd never worked and just makes clicking noises (I'm sending it back to LaCie). The 4th I haven't touched since it backed up one of the first 2.

I suppose it was a mistake to buy 4 of the same kind. But I've tried these drives on 2 different Windows computers, and first they worked and then they didn't. On both. With multiple cables/USB cords, etc. What a drag.

I wish I'd bought a variety of drives.

I am very pleased with this drive. After countless poor experiences with Maxtor externals, I decided to try this LaCie. It's quiet, fast, trouble free and looks great. Recommended.

Great value for a 250 GB hard drive. I use Windows XP SP1 and had no problems installing and using this drive - it requires no additional software or drivers. It requires power and comes with a supplied power cable. It also comes preformatted as FAT32. I reformatted it to NTFS without any issues and this took about 1.5 hours to complete. In reality this drive is just as easy to use as a "jump drive" - just plug and go. I checked to see if it would work with my USB 1.1 ports and sure enough it does (although it won't be as fast). Performance has been very impressive as well.

This drive is what you need. Despite some of the reviews, it IS Windows compatible (it is USB plug and play), it IS NOT loud, and it is blazingly fast.

I have 2 of these now and planning on purchasing a third to store my media files. Excellent product - you will be glad you bought one.

After reading about the reviews here on amazon i really thought about this drive before i bought it and i have to say for me this is a perfect product.

The drive in my case is not a Maxtor but a Seagate ST3250823A and it's very silent and doesn't get that hot. It works perfect it lies on my desk behind my laptop and most times i don't even notice that it is running. I use it under windows XP and i formatted it as NTFS and i can do everything i can do with my build in drive.

It's fast and looks nice. I think it's a great product for it's price.

I dont have problems with this unit, it runs perfect, yes it get's hot, but for me it runs perfect, no data loss what so'ever. and im planing in buying another.

One of two my LaCie 250GB drives bit the dust. It didn't even last a year. I'm glad I have a back up drive, but I'm sweating bullets because all of my digital images are on it. I don't know much about the inner workings of computers, but I just updated to the Tiger OS for my Mac the day before this happened. No noise at all came from the drive. Nothing inside was moving. LaCie is going to repair it, but all the data will be wiped. Buyer beware! Spend some extra cash and get a more reliable drive. Oh yeah, the drive was fairly warm when it went out, while the other one (slightly newer) was good and cool.

I've had this drive since they first released them a couple years ago. It has given me nothing but flawless operation. So much so that I went back and bought three more! They also have given me nothing but outstanding performance! I had a problem with only one, but LaCie's tech support was fabulous and got it up and running quickly. For those that lost data from a failed drive, I must ask, where was your backup?!?! Anyone who uses computers know they can be fickle and to also have more than one backup if your data means anything to you!

I can't wait to buy more of these drive. Over the years, every other company drives have been crappy, except these ones. Maxtor, WD, Seagate, you name it. Yeah, the LaCie drives are the same thing inside, but they haven't given me the issues the others have!

I bought this drive re-conditioned, direct from LaCie a week ago. I got it today and have been trying to get my G4 Powerbook to recognize it for several hours. I currently want to draw a target on it's pretty titanium colored top to aim my fist at. There are mixed reviews of either no problems or a garage full all over the Internet. I should have looked at them and bought something else, but it was cheap and I have a limited budget. LaCie customer service is junk, and Apple doesn't have anything obvious on their site about this drive. I will get it to work because I'm stubborn and know enough about my computer, but if you want something that will plug and play with no potential for problems: DO NOT BUY THIS DRIVE.

I have three of these drives and all of them have experienced thermal related failures.

The Maxtor drives aren't bad, they are just more susceptible to damaged from overheating than a comparable Seagate or a Western Digital.

My Dell Precision 670 had two 200Gb MaxLine SATA drives they both failed because the room was too hot for them. Dell replaced them with Western Digital drives, they've been OK for a year now vs. two months for the Maxtors.

The hard drive needs air flowing over it and an ambient temperature of below 20 degrees celcius to work with normal temperatures, i.e. not exceeding 50 degrees celcius.

Unfortunately, the mounting of the drive was faulty on all of my LaCie enclosures so the heat was not able to escape adequately to the casing and dissapate.

I achieved a 15 degree reduction in temperature by putting a small amount of thermal conductivity paste on the screws and then making sure the screws were tightly holding the drive to the chassis.

Still, why should I have to do all of this after shelling out all the cash! I won't be buying any more LaCie products, nice looking, badly engineered.

Facts are short:
My LaCie Porsche 250GB USB2 always ran hot.
Maxtor MaxLine II drive was inside the one I bought.
LaCie Porsche Failed after 18 months of service.

Your mileage may vary, but my advice is spend the money on a better drive. Even a LaCie, just make sure it does not conceal a Maxtor drive. I have had them fail more than once on me, and I would have marched this one back to the store if I had known earlier.


Can't believe LaCie would put a Maxtor drive in one of their fine enclosures. That is probably why these are so cheap. Go price _any_ 250GB bare drive and see if you can find anything close to $160...... There is a reason and I found out why the hard way. I wish I had paid more attention to the warning signs.

Mine died, likely of the widely mentioned LaCie Porsche overheating problem, after only eighteen months of service.
If this is LaCie or Maxtor's idea of an ideal Mean-Time-Between-Failure, then I'm never going to buy LaCie _or_ Maxtor ever again.

I hope this is an isolated event in LaCie's history. Their products rock. LaCie: Don't become the next Iomega.

It Rocks! Althought even with a 2.0 USB port the data transfer wasn't as fast as I would have hoped transfering large video files.

I bought the LaCie 250 GB hard drive at the recommendation of data professional at work. I was amazed at how easily it installed. I plugged it into a Windows XP system and it was instantly recognized and required no intervention on my part. The drive works seemlessly with the system. I am intending to use the drive to back up my digital photos and intend to migrate the LaCie drive to my next machine.


don't understand why so many people complained.
it works on both my 2000 and XP system, pretty quite,
fast, and not hot.
though i doesn't quite favor its "brick" appearance.

I have recently purchased two of these drives. It is, undeniably, the most aesthetically pleasing external drive on the market. The skills of the Porsche design team have been used to great effect to produce a unit that is sleek, compact and discrete, yet at the same time being pleasingly conspicuous by virtue of its surface quality.

But what is a drive for, what is its function? Is it to be used as an item of well-designed desk art, or as an electronic storage device? Dull it may be, but the latter is the only sensible answer. And, while this drive's design looks great, it also seems to contribute to physical flaws that subvert its reliability.

The unit's compactness seems to lead to it running at a scorching high temperature. These drives are meant to be stackable, but my experience is that to stack these units only adds to the heat build-up, and to such an extent that the unit at the bottom of the stack becomes literally untouchable.

After just one week of operation, one of my drives stopped working, with a loud clicking sound coming from inside the casing. I lost 160GB of data. My enquiries with disk recovery specialists produced a depressing prognosis - it seems that the disks in these units have a low success rate for data recovery and I was told, effectively, to forget about any hopes for retrieving my data.

LaCie was of little help. Its email-based technical support seems to be capable only of sending out automated, generic responses to posted queries. Thankfully, Amazon will refund my money under its 30-day returns policy without any fuss - if only all organizations had Amazon's customer service ethos.

Looks are fine, but when it comes to my data, I want reliability above all else. My own experience of this drive is that it cannot be trusted to store data with confidence. I would never buy one again. Next time, I'll buy the ugliest drive on the market and hope for a better outcome.

This is a great unit. It's a lot of room for you songs, video etc. It's not supposed to be a fast hard drive, but this is not a necessity when you use it to liste to your music or watch some movies. Also, since i heva been using it for a year it, it's quiet and I really don't understand why some reviews say it is a loud one. Trust me, this is the best deal in terms of gb/$.

A couple of things... First, I had to learn the hard way that this device is not Windows Supported. You woun't learn about it until its too late, but most products go through testing to be certified as Windows Compatable. This is not. They either haven't passed Windows testing or haven't bothered.

That said, it wasn't until I defragmented the drive and had over 150GB of information erased. Initially, I thought it was the defragmentation program, but after running a diagnostic on the drive, I found that it has a physical defect.

It wasn't until I researched that I found that this is common with this brand. Also, the USB cord is about 15 inches long. So don't plan on putting it anywhere far from your computer.

Yes. It has an OK design by Porsche. Too bad the it doesn't run like a Porsche. This is an extremely compact drive, with no heat sink whatsoever. The drive gets VERY VERY hot. While researching my own problems with this drive, I found that many people have lost their data due to it overheating.

Purchase at your own risk! (OR install your own cooling system that the manufacturer forgot, get a longer USB, and scan for defects when you first get it)!! Not recommended if you have data that you can't live without... you risk losing it using this drive!

**** However, LaCie Seems to have gotten it right with their new eSATA drives (available here on amazon.com). Now, there are 2 similar 'looking' drives, d2 and SATA external... I'm referring to the external SATA. (Triple Interface Firewire, USB etc. is just too slow for a hard drive, get the external SATA (eSATA) if you can). LaCie resolves heat issus and speed issues (with the SATA not firewire or usb) in their new external SATA drive. At the very least, it is as fast as your internal hard drive (SATA only, not usb or firewire). So, to get a low cost high quality blazing fast drive, which LaCie can give, search Amazon for LaCie External SATA, I've got 2!

There's no doubt this disk is small and good looking, and a good price for a 250gb drive. But it makes more noise when idle than my other 2 external USB drives combined. When it's accessing data, the horribly loud clicking noises can easily be heard across the room during quiet movie scenes. It runs hot but does not have an automatic shutoff. (To be fair, most USB hard drives don't but a Porsche design should!). You can't solve this problem by using the on/off switch since it's this tiny thing in the BACK of the drive near the corner of the overhanging side and top - very hard to use for normal sized hands by feel alone. Maybe seems like a nit, but a portable drive really ought to have the sockets for the power and usb installed right side up so you don't have to remember to turn the sides with the icons down when inserting. It was plug'n'play on xp sp2, came formatted in fat32 with the dirty flag turned on so you have to run chhksk /f before running convert. You decide: looks or personality?
Update March 2007. I guess it's only fair to let you know that both of the ones I bought 2 years ago are still clicking and over-heating along. I don't use them everyday as they're for backups that I rotate offsite - which means that they travel in my backpack every couple of weeks. I'd up my star rating to 3 or 4 now if I could.

Yep. They are a waste of money since they only last for your current OS. One update will kill their usability, since La Cie will not create updated drivers for its customers.
This is outrageous corporate behaviour.
I have both a La Cie 250 gig storage drive and a La Cie CD burner which will not function at normal speed any more.
Slow as molasses, since they need new drivers for OS 10.3 update.
My recommendation? DON'T BUY any LA CIE products!

Lacie are getting the wrong end of the stick from me. The fact that this company refuses to update drivers for old hardware for new versions of an OS is simply a farce in this day and age.

Lacie refuse to develop drivers to support a new OS or even an update. Back in the days of NT they would not even bring out Win2k support for the systems. When XP arrived most of their hardware the year before was simply left to dry up with age.

In short if you buy Lacie then it will only perform to your current system specs. Any changes to the OS and chances are you will be shelling out more doe for new hardware.

CON.

I bought this in use in conjunction with the Linksys storage Link NSLU2 and it works perfectly. Now, I believe that the USB 2.0 doesn't have the same bandwidth as FireWire, but still the drive works just like I had planned and stores massive amounts of files is 250 GB right now I only have half of it filled and I have more than 20 DVDs on it. So I am psyched!

This drive does look cool I mean, it was designed by the guy who designed a Porsche so it's cool, clean lines, sleek and I'm a major geek for saying that about a hard drive sad!

These drives are stackable to. They also require an external power sorce.

Peace out