ergolad's Full Review: LaCie (300728U) 250 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive
Listen, I like a deal like everyone else. I do the math and I compare the prices and consistently LaCie drives are the best bang for the buck. But are they really?
Simply put, I've owned two of these and within, or just after a year of use, BOTH have failed. It's that simple. If the failure falls within the year warranty, and assuming you purchased it from one of their "authorized" resellers (and can prove it), they'll replace it fairly hassle free. Over a year, and you are SOL, as they say.
I used mine for daily back up and media storage. Once the first failed and was replaced under warranty, (thinking it was a fluke), I bought another and started mirroring the two drives for redundancy. I'm glad I did.
Life expectancy of drives varies. I'd say it's safe to expect 3-5 years. With that said, I've owned and built my own computers since 95. Out of those machines I have only had one drive (a internal Seagate) fail after 5 years on an old 386 machine. As for those who say that external drives are not intended to be run 24/7, I don't buy that. In my opinion, a well designed external drive should be able to run just as well as an internal drive.
Finally, I'm a little surprised that others here at Epionions have given these drives positive reviews. Actually, no, I take that back. Had you asked me within 9 months of owning my 1st LaCie drive, I too would have likely given a glowing review. A quick scan of the Internet will reveal to anyone serious about researching this purchase that I am one of MANY people who have had problems with this product and the overall design in different GB ranges. Here are some review titles I sampled:
"Have had TWO of these fail in a month"
"Do not, do not buy: Failed after 18 months."
"CRASHED!!!"
"Worked well before it burned out."
"Design by Porsche, not thermal engineers"
"A Hardrive to NEVER Buy!"
"Watch Out"
"Another victim"
"LaCie = Junk"
"4 out of 5 drives failed"
"Buy a WARRANTY"
"Burn Out"
The list goes on...
I'll be curious if we start to see over time the same issues arise for their newer drives of the same design. Hopefully LaCie has addressed whatever has caused so many of the 250GB models to fail and integrated that knowledge into the next generation.
There's really not much more I can say about these drives. Ascetically there nice enough to look at & they're fairly quiet. But again, what does any of that matter if they FAIL. They do FAIL.
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