Best LaCie Thunderbolt 2 external hard drives for Mac Professionals Image Macmint Leave a comment If you are a professional and use Mac hardware, chances are you know the name LaCie. LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive for Mac is built for speed with USB 3.0,. It resulted in one of our most popular hard drives that's still talked about today.
I sense this may be slightly off topic here, but please bear with me. I have, through doing marching band videos for my daughter's school, accumulated several LaCie drives over the past five years. The first is a small 250GB. Followed by a 500GB in 2007, and a iTB in 2008.
In my opinion, these are almost total garbage. Firstly EVERY power supply has gone out. I recently replaced a power supply with the recommended 57W Chinese junk, and the 250GB works fine, the 500GB came back to life after DiskWarrior rebuilt the directory, but the 1TB will not come up to full speed, appears only sporadically on the desktop, and cannot be accessed (apparently, although it is seen) by either DiskUtility or DiskWarrior.
It also makes the dreaded clicking sounds as it does what it does at slow speed. I have, therefore, a couple of questions for all you experts out there: 1) Is there an alternate power supply that will provide 57W and can be used in place of the one LaCie provides? I am suspicious that even the replacement power supply I just bought may still be underpowered for the 1TB drive (although I have not yet measured the voltage outputs at the pins) 2) Is it possible to take the 1TB drive out of the LaCie case, and put it into another enclosure? My other suspicion is that something in the power handling unit in the LaCie 1TB may have been fried, so putting the drive in another enclosure seems to be a possible solution. I had good luck putting an iMac internal drive that was causing problems into an external case from OWC, in which it has worked flawlessly for two years. One thing you can be sure of is that nothing with LaCie on it will come near my computer in future.
What brands are really recommended as reliable external HDs? In my opinion, these are almost total garbage. Firstly EVERY power supply has gone out.
I recently replaced a power supply with the recommended 57W Chinese junk, and the 250GB works fine, the 500GB came back to life after DiskWarrior rebuilt the directory, but the 1TB will not come up to full speed, appears only sporadically on the desktop, and cannot be accessed (apparently, although it is seen) by either DiskUtility or DiskWarrior. It also makes the dreaded clicking sounds as it does what it does at slow speed. Click to expand.Actually, putting a drive on a power supply that fails to provide adequate current can cause clicking, as well as the more common cause of a failing drive mechanism. I have seen this myself on a 2.5' drive in a USB powered case.
The drive clicked like crazy and never mounted when powered by a single USB port, but worked fine when supplemental power was provided from a second USB port. But regardless of the root cause, it seems pretty clear to me that it is time to move the data to a new drive or two.
Assuming the failing drive is not under warranty, I would pull the internal drive out of the LaCie case and put it in a new one to extract the data. As always, the fundamental rule is to have at least two copies, on separate drives, of anything you actually want to keep. Click to expand.It depends on the rotational speed and platter count. 'Green' drives like the WD Caviar Green will spin at under 5400RPM and consume typically 6W for random seek, less than 3W at idle for some platter counts.
At the other end, a 15K SAS drive will burn about 16W (e.g., Hitachi 600GB Ultrastar). Knowing the number of platters and RPM would help, although, to guess, the 250GB from pre-2007 is probably burning about as much power as the 1TB 2008 drive (speculating the platter count and RPM are the same).
However, 57W is overkill for any 3.5' HDD built since 2000. Even at spin-up, you should be under 20W. Steve - steve w0x0f com 'Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, sidecar in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO what a ride!'
Actually, putting a drive on a power supply that fails to provide adequate current can cause clicking, as well as the more common cause of a failing drive mechanism. I have seen this myself on a 2.5' drive in a USB powered case. The drive clicked like crazy and never mounted when powered by a single USB port, but worked fine when supplemental power was provided from a second USB port.
But regardless of the root cause, it seems pretty clear to me that it is time to move the data to a new drive or two. Assuming the failing drive is not under warranty, I would pull the internal drive out of the LaCie case and put it in a new one to extract the data. As always, the fundamental rule is to have at least two copies, on separate drives, of anything you actually want to keep.