LaCie Big Disk Extreme Failure.. Yes another one..

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

LaCie have one of the highest failure rates on the market. It's best to stay away from them.

 

[Elsmar]

I saw above some really high quotations for RAID 0 data recovery.

I forwarded my LaCie Big Disk for data recovery to this italian data recovery company
http://www.recupero-dati-nas-raid5.it/

First of all they fix the Seagate Barracuda and Maxtor DiamondMax drives, and in my case it was not a downgraded raid the problem: it was "two comatose drives", bounced back by them.

That company, saved my **s for few bucks, instead than charging me some $.$$$. The technical manager speaks a really good English and that did the trick; shipping time, only two days.

Just for curiosity I asked also about RAID 0 recovery and it would have been 50% cheaper than all the companies I've inquired, nevertheless they have been the unique that told me it may have been an easy "bricked drives case".
Obviously they also recover RAID 5 of both servers and nas.

Check them, really good people over there.
For your convenience, this is the contacts page
http://www.recupero-dati-nas-raid5.it/richiesta-recupero-nas-guasto.html

Bye
Frank

We need a recovery place like that in the US.

 

[Consultant]

LaCie have one of the highest failure rates on the market. It's best to stay away from them.

Got a source?

 

[Elsmar]

Got a source?

I only have the proverbial "it happened to me" - Bought 3 identical drives at the same time - 1 failed in warranty ( <1 year) and another failed within 6 months of that. Both were controller failures as the actual drives themselves reformatted and both are now in the closet holding backup data. That was enough to prompt me to copy the 3rd drive to a Samsung and retire the LaCie to the closet.

Personally I have no actual statistics, but I can tell you that LaCie customer service was of no help with the one that was in warranty to the point of being nasty. So - I made my decision not to buy any more LaCie products.

 

[satcomer]

Got a source?

Here are some videos for you.

 

[pos88]

Hi everyone,

I too have suffered from the curse of the Lacie, and am having trouble recovering my files using the r-studio method set out in this thread, so I'm hoping for some advice.

I have a 2tb Lacie 2Big with Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 hdd's (the unit is about 18 months old) and was set up as RAID0. I have hooked the hdd's up to my macbook pro and can see them in the device window of r-studio. Each unit has 7 identical partitions, 3 of which i can see look into (they are Ext3 and seem to contain lacie os files). The largest partition which is presumably where my files are says the partition type is Ext2FS/XIAFS and I can't look into it. Everything seems identical and I can't tell which is the master disk.

I've followed the instructions for creating a virtual block RAID, and no matter which order I have the drives or what block size i choose, I cannot see my files as described - when i double-click on the partition that is created in the virtual block is just says the disk does not contain supported file systems. Has anyone else experienced this and have any advice for what I am doing wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks in advance!

 

[Rigger3]

Over 25 Lacie Big Disk

Yes, I have come to never purchase from Lacie again. I have 25 of them and over half have failed. I am nervous to turn them on in case I lost the data!!!

Lacie should really honor repairing these drives, but will not. It has been power supplies to the drive it self.

Lacie own up and fix your stuff!!! an extended warranty for all Big Lacie.

 

[haggardpat]

A little help with rstudio

Thanks for the advice. I ended up going the R-Studio route and it worked great! As of this morning, all of my data from my failed 1TB Big Disk Extreme has been recovered.

I hooked up both 500GB drives to a ThermalTake BlacX Duet and connected it via USB (for some reason, R-Studio will not see the drives if it's connected via eSATA). I then followed the instructions above for creating a Virtual Raid Block and chose 256K as the block size. The new Raid Block showed up with the original name that I gave the LaCie drive. From there, I was good to go.

Also, since the drives themselves were fine, I was able to reformat them individually. So now I have 1TB of fresh space that I'll probably just keep running off the BlacX through eSATA. No more LaCie's for me!

I have the same issue with the same drive. I went and got the same ThermalTake controller you mentioned in your post. I'm going to try rstudio tonight. I was hoping that you could take me through the steps you did to recover your hd. You can email me if thats easier patrick@enstromdesign.com or haggardpat on aim. Thanks man.

 

[per.takman]

Could you get R-studio to work with Ext2FS/XIAFS

I found myself having the same problem you are facing. Lacie d2 ethernet big disk that failed. The instructions for R-studio does not work for me either. Did you ever get it to work?

Best regards,

Per Takman

 

[haggardpat]

I found myself having the same problem you are facing. Lacie d2 ethernet big disk that failed. The instructions for R-studio does not work for me either. Did you ever get it to work?

Best regards,

Per Takman

Hey,

Ya I did figure it out. This is what I did....

1. Took the drives out of the original lacie case

2. Mounted them with a Thermaltake dual drive controller that I got at best buy for like $60. One hd showed the original drive name 'Lacie' while the other showed nothing. (these were each 500gb western digitals)

3. In R-Studio I created a virtual block raid from the 'create virtual raid' button. First selected RAID 0. Next was stripe size. I ended up using the 116k block size. I tried 256 first but jpegs and other images turned out banded or didnt even open.

4. I then dragged the drive showing the original hd name 'Lacie' into the virtual raid list. Then dragged the second one in. If you get the order wrong it wont work. Just create a new virtual raid with a different order. Drive order combined with stripe size will take some tinkering if you dont remember the drive order of your original hd (like I did).

5. Under the created virtual raid on the left my drive appeared. Double clicked on the drive name 'Lacie' then my original file structure appeared. I downloaded a test image that was under 64k and it looked perfect.

6. From there I bought an R-Studio license. From there I was all set. Just selected the root folder of my original drive and clicked 'recover'. It took several hours because I was hooked up via usb.

Everything turned out 100% perfect. I've never done anything more than installing new ram in my mac so it was pretty exciting to save the $1000 I was quoted to do the same thing. I think thats everything. Let me know if I can be more helpful.

 

[per.takman]

Ubuntu solution worked

I tried the R-studio solution but failed to get it to work. I keept getting error messages. Instead I used Ubuntu and followed the instructions under:

http://forum.hddguru.com/lacie-bigdisk-1tb-firewire-usb-successful-recovery-story-t13729.html

After getting error messages and having trouble getting Ubuntu to see the two drives I thought I was toast, but discovered that Ubuntu suddenly was showing a 999 GB drive mounted and that was it. I was able to recover all my data.

 

[murgen]

Hi to all. At start sorry for my English
I have a 2d Ethernet big disk from Lacie. 1 Tb = 500 Gb + 500 Gb both disk is dead two days ago I bought a two 320 Gb disks. inserted them in to the case, connected as previous. some questions? :
1. do I need format them before inserting? if yes, so in what format?
2. is there some operating system on the disk (because I can't connect to disk using USB or LAN)
Thanks for any advise.

 

[wimblejon]

Another angry (ex) Lacie user....

Hi All,
We had 4tb invested in Lacie's 'good name' but gradually, one by one, the electronics failed. Not the drives but the in-case electronics.

Last year I opened one of the drives to see if I could rescue the data as Lacie's so called 'technical help' couldn't guarantee they wouldn't reformat the drive if I sent the thing in for repair. I found a dry solder joint on the internal board, resoldered it and the drive worked again (for a while).

The other drives electronics just failed, first one interface, e.g. the firewire 400/800, and then the others, e.g. USB. I did manage to re-house the drives to rescue the data. Have they built in obsolescence?

Lacie refused to sell me a replacement board, for which I offered to absolve them, in writing, of all responsibility for my data. Why?

These days companies succeed or fail on their customer support and relations. I can only see Lacie going down the pan with their ongoing attitude to me (and all the others I've found on the net).

Lacie, are you listening?

Jon

 

[rmhe1999]

Need basic help with Raid 1

Hello there. I've been reading the messages in this thread and hoped I could find some help here too. I have a 3 TB 2big quadra (x2 1.5 TB drives). I noticed the other day that the red light was blinking on the rear for one of my drives indicating a failure. I powered down and removed the failed drive so that I could verify the specs to purchase a replacement. With the troublesome drive removed I powered the unit back up and was able to read data just fine. Curious as to the exact problem with the "failed" disc, I removed the "good" disc and only inserted the "failed" disc. Suprisingly, it came up and was recognized. I was able to read files, etc. I did notice that it was not up to date though (aka the raid hadn't been writing to this disc for about two months: gleaned by looking at recent iTunes purchases to see if they were on the disc). Anyway, thourghly confused I put the drives back into their original configuration and boom, I get the message "the disc you inserted is not recognized by this computer." what the heck did I do wrong? The indicated lights on the 2big showed that it was trying to rebuild the "failed" drive. This went on for awhile but the rebuild did not complete: clearly the drive has problems. My concern is that I still can't read from the good drive like I did before. Any thoughts? Do I simply need to purchase a replacement drive so that the RAID can rebuild? I guess I don't understand why I can't read from the good drive if it's a RAID 1.

 

[ToddBradley]

Hey,

Ya I did figure it out. This is what I did....

[...]

Everything turned out 100% perfect. I've never done anything more than installing new ram in my mac so it was pretty exciting to save the $1000 I was quoted to do the same thing. I think thats everything. Let me know if I can be more helpful.

Two and a half years later, let me say THANK YOU for writing this up. I had a LaCie Little Big Disk in RAID 0 configuration fail and was able to get my data back using this procedure (with 32 KB block size). I'm writing up a more detailed blog article on the whole process, including how to take the drives out of the case.

 

[FlaPhoto]

Need clarification on procedure please

I am having the same issue with a Lacie 1TB Big Disk Extreme. It appears the drives logic board is dead - so I can't get it to even turn on - but I'm pretty sure the actual hard drives are fine. Following the recovery procedure - Do I need to mount both 500 GB drives at the same time to use R-Studio - or can I mount them one at a time?

Thanks!

Thank you soooo much, trimmmer! Your suggestion worked!

I opened up the Lacie enclosure, pulled out the 2x500Gb Seagate drives (SATA). Plugged each of them into a couple of standard USB enclosures (nothing fancy. Just no name brands). Downloaded the demo R-Studio for Mac and tested the procedure (as per the link trimmmer provided). **Note: the stripe size IS 256k** The instructions in the other post says it all but also note that the "Master" drive is the one listed with 2 partitions within R-Studio.

I was able to see all my files. Recovered a couple of small files (demo version limits 64k file size) and it was good. I then paid the $80 and away I went. Recovery takes a while but it works. Even if for whatever reason some of the files are corrupt, the point it, I can get more than what I had before. This has just saved me $1000 for pro recovery service.

Thank you soooo much. Don't you guys think that Lacie should have this knowledge? When I spoke to Lacie, they did not once talk about the "possibility" that the raid or power might be an issue.

Anyways... I am a happy camper with my life's work and files.

 

[williamdesign1]

I feel your pain as well. I purchased my drive around 20 years ago. Great that it lasted until now. I had to replace the power supply once. I'm not sure if it's the power supply or the drive, but it basically died on me today. It chugged out its last breath. Great drive, but it's only 500GB; It was huge back in the day, but small with today's standards. Regardless, I'll probably avoid LaCie drives moving forward. I have Seagate drives and some WD drives that seem more reliable.

 

[odball]

My LaCie Big Disk started failing - it would connect and appear on the Mac desktop but the drives kept spinning up and down. As the cheapest option I first checked the power supply by chopping the low-volts cord, identifying which cable went to which pin, checking the volts on each and then systematically substituting the correct voltage level via a bench power supply. It turned out that the 12v DC from the original PSU was fine - pulling 1.2 amps, but the 5v DC wasn't good enough under load - pulling 1.7 - 1.8 amps from the bench supply.

On my original failing PSU the cord colours are: +5vDC White to pin 1, + 12vDC Red to pin 2, Ground common screen to pins 3 & 4.

I gave it a thorough test by coping with SuperDuper off of it, formatting it and back to it - all ok.

So looks like I hit lucky.

I've ordered a replacement third party PSU from a UK eBay seller:
12V 2.2A 5V 2.0A AC Adaptor same as Lacie 706479 Sunfone AC Power Supply Adaptor

Looks like the correct replacement, will post here if it's OK ...

 

[williamdesign1]

Hey everyone, thanks in advance for help.

I have a 1 TB LaCie Big Disk Extreme 2 that is actually made up of 2 500GB drives. It failed on me. I have most of it backed up but there are a few things I would like to recover. I tested another power cord and it didn't work. So I talked to a few people and they said that if I bought a new seagate controller board that matches my 500GB drives identically I would be able to get the data off one drive at a time.

There is some good and some bad.

When I tested the new controller board on each drive (one at a time only because I only have one new controller board) they both started up normally! Success I thought.. but no.. Both Leopard and XP said "drive needs to be formatted" or "initialized".

I assume this is because these drives are programed to be one mountable drive that is controlled by the lacie chip inside the enclosure. That is also toast. I get no power through it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to recover the data?

The drives seem to work fine its just a matter of making the computer see them as one drive (i think). Would buying a similar Lacie enclosure alongside another controller chip fix this? or does the enclosure have to match several serial numbers in order to work?

Is there a way I can trick the computer? Or clone the drives to one new TB drive so they are actually one complete drive?

Thanks so much for your time!

You may want to *try* plugging in your LaCie HD first, then restarting your Mac holding down Command-R. Go to Disk Utilities, and wait for it to show up, then run First Aid. The reason that I say this, is because my Big Disk Extreme was stuck and making mounting sounds over and over again. Maybe I got lucky, but I was able to resurrect my LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500GB after keeping it stored in my basement for months. I thought that it was a dead drive, but this worked for me. Just trying to help.