Reviews for LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveFireWire/i.LINK 400, FireWire/i.LINK 800, USB 2.0 - 7200 rpm - 8 MB Buffer - MPN: 300721 
By member:
michelestapleton
- Nov 16, 2005
Another failed LaCieStrengths: Big Weakness: Not reliable I've been screwing around for a week or so with a LaCie 500 that is apparently toast. I kept having trouble copying files to it several weeks ago and thought the problem was the computer the of the files were coming from (that the incoming files were bad) until I stared copying from another source and those files wouldn't copy either. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
lmenzin
- Nov 26, 2005
Another Drive FailureStrengths: Great storage capacity with good speed Weakness: Terrible reliability My drive also failed, two weeks after the end of the warranty. These drives are failure-prone, and Lacie tech support is useless. Ther are not too many options for external firewire disks. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
shahrukh8
- Feb 15, 2005
LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveStrengths: Big capacity (when it works, which isn't often) Weakness: Fails after 1 minute to 1 day First one wouldn't even show up in Disk Manager. La Cie tech support agreed it was defective. Second one appeared to work fine ... for about 1 day. Then same problem. 94% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
ref030
- Sep 7, 2005
Time BombStrengths: Massive storage at a reasonable price Weakness: Drives self destruct after less than one year of use. The LaCie Big Disk 500GB external drive seemed like a great way to handle the massive requirements of video and having had very good experience with othe LaCie drives, I purchased 2 of them. Every thing was fine until they both died within a year of purchase. LaCie did repair both drives but now one of them has died for the second time. LaCie refuses to repair it even though they know that the chip set they use for these drives is prone to failure and has been failing continually since their introduction. I learned of this after my drive failed a second time. Just do a goggle. 93% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
Reply by member: changkw
Oct 7, 2005 I met the same stituation. Not recommend for important data. Only for temporary cache drive uses. But I am still very cautious even to put my in-process final cut data on it. It is very fast though.
Reply by member: lbeachmike
Oct 9, 2005 Yup - same problem. Agreed. Fast drive, but highly flawed. I had two of them just fail. One right at the 12-month mark, and the other at about the 18-month mark. The second is no longer recognized by my machine. Sound familiar? I think it's rather shameful when a manufacturer has a known issue, as clearly documented by users here and elsewhere on the web, and fails to acknolwedge it and rectify it. These were not cheap, and we should all certainly have every expectation of getting more than a year or 18 months out of these. Total failure is rather inexcusable considering the purpose of the device.
By member:
evilhomer48823
- Dec 26, 2004
LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveStrengths: large size, on the cheap side. Weakness: can't depend on these units to accurately perform. I'm on my second lacie big disk (500 GB) and it just died tonight. The first one died within 72 hours of purchase so I didn't lose too much data. Both drives exhibited the same problems: bad blocks as reported by windows XP's system logs, data loss, followed by complete failure. In both cases, the drives were not recognized by the computer after subsequent reboots. I'm in the process of recovering my data off both of the internal drives. As a bit of additional info, both drives are Maxtor 250 GB's. I've never had good luck with Maxtor drives so I'm not entirely surprised that my drive failed. I would advise to not purchase these units. I've owned 4 external seagate HDD's, the oldest one was purchased 17 months ago, none of them have ever reported a single bad block. 93% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
Reply by member: jordanhammond
Nov 1, 2005 How are you recovering the data? By taking the external casing apart? If so are the drives still readable via IDE?
By member:
wshah
- Dec 16, 2004
LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveStrengths: Firewire 800 is blazing fast. 500GB is a nice sized drive. Firewire 800, firewire 400 and USB interface. Weakness: This drive case is much bigger than it looks. The case has a dark steel look - its not quite as shiny as the pictures make it out to be. LaCie makes great products. I have been a user of the Silverling programs since version 1.2.1. I have never been dissappointed. This drive is FAST, HUGE and COOL looking. It is not very portable. The power supply is a two piece unit. This drive was made to stay in place. It is quite bulky and HEAVY! Lastly, the drive is stackable if you need more than a few. 75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
JerryL3515
- Jan 23, 2005
LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveStrengths: Big capacity drive, reasonable cost Weakness: Size.. Not very portable I've use LaCie drives for years and have never had a failure. This one has been running for over two months - flawlessly. Great capacity, blazing speed, and easy to use. 75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
ldenson
- Dec 30, 2004
LaCie Big Disk 500 GB External Hard DriveStrengths: Huge capacity, fairly speedy, multiple interface options Weakness: Bulky, expensive Bottom line, this is a great device for storing huge amounts of data. I currently have 40+ hours of digital video on my Big Disk, and it has performed flawlessly, being transferred between three different computers, using both the FW400 and USB2.0 connections (I haven't tried FW800). Overall, a great product, but obviously not for everyone. 46% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
woutervan
- Jun 5, 2009
Lacie Disk FailureStrengths: None Weakness: Faulty PSU The Lacie Big Triple 500GB external drive was purchased three years ago to offer more storage and become my Media Drive, replacing smaller Maxtor drives (five years old). I used Backup software and TimeMachine to keep current backups of the iMac internal and Lacie Media Drive... Fortunately!!! Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
Stickyweb
- Mar 11, 2008
Big Disks = Big TroubleStrengths: Triple Interface Weakness: Drive failure Raid 0 means you will lose everything This isn't an "I hate Lacie" I have 6 of their Porsche Design drives that have operated flawlessly BUT everyone of the 3 Big Disks I have had has failed - 2 out of warranty. They look good, operate quitely & the Triple-interface is a great feature - Just don't expect to get more than a couple of years from them & back-up your backups! Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
dale303
- Sep 19, 2006
Big Pile of JunkStrengths: large capacity Weakness: drives simply won't be recognized on some machines. Self destructs after only a few months. 2x250GB disks in RAID 0 config. Bought two of these things. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top 
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LACIE SUCKS-case contains 2, 250 gb Western Digital...
Strengths: speed of drive
Weakness: speed of failure lame support
My $500.00 Big Disk Extreme failed after 14 months--just beyond the warrantee period. I emailed tech support and got the standard BS reply, "we're sorry you experienced failure... the only way to protect against problems is to back up your data..." Duh, I never said I did not back up my data. They said, 'it's probably not worth repairing, better to buy a new drive.' I bought 2 Maxtor One Touch 300 gb drives--so far, so good. Since the Lacie drive was beyond its warrantee and useless, I decided to disect it. To my suprise, when I opened the case, I saw 2, 250 gb Western Digital hard drives. So, Lacie does not even manufacture the components, they just build crappy hardware that runs Western Digital drives.
Conclusion: DO NOT PURCHASE LACIE DRIVES.
100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?
Nov 1, 2005
Hi, when you took your drive apart did you try to plug the disks in via normal IDE cables?
My 250G lacie has just died, I don't want to lose some of the data on it, and I don't want to pay £1000 to recover it.