Lacie Harddrive Trouble

[Porte Rouge]

My LaCie Big Disk Extreme 1Tb has stopped showing up in Explorer. I
have been trying other cables, etc. I want to try the drive next on
another machine. However, I don't remember if I had to install any
drivers or anything on my Dell Dimension XPPro sp3. I can't find any
cd's where I normally keep installation cd's, but I just want to
confirm one way or another, do I just plug it in or find a driver to
install on the test machine first?

TIA

Porte

 

[Paul]

My LaCie Big Disk Extreme 1Tb has stopped showing up in Explorer. I
have been trying other cables, etc. I want to try the drive next on
another machine. However, I don't remember if I had to install any
drivers or anything on my Dell Dimension XPPro sp3. I can't find any
cd's where I normally keep installation cd's, but I just want to
confirm one way or another, do I just plug it in or find a driver to
install on the test machine first?

TIA

Porte

It may be time to disassemble the Big Disk Extreme, and test the
drive inside it, by connecting it directly to the computer.

Lacie makes some single drive products and some dual drive products,
and it will be simpler to test the single drive ones, as the
internal drive mechanism should respond immediately once you
connect it to an internal port on your computer.

It really all depends, on how badly you want the data. If the data
is more important than the warranty, then disassemble it and try
accessing the drive directly.

In one Amazon.com review, there is mention of power problems with
the Lacie products, so if you're lucky, this could be a power problem
of some sort.

Paul

 

[wrbrown13]

My LaCie Big Disk Extreme 1Tb has stopped showing up in Explorer. I
have been trying other cables, etc. I want to try the drive next on
another machine. However, I don't remember if I had to install any
drivers or anything on my Dell Dimension XPPro sp3. I can't find any
cd's where I normally keep installation cd's, but I just want to
confirm one way or another, do I just plug it in or find a driver to
install on the test machine first?

TIA

Porte

We've had the circuit boards fail on two of these drives - HDD itself was
fine in both cases. Circuit boards were replaced under warantee.

Bill

 

[Porte Rouge]

We've had the circuit boards fail on two of these drives - HDD itself was
fine in both cases. Circuit boards were replaced under warantee.

Bill

Did you lose the data on the drive when they did the repair?

Porte

 

[Porte Rouge]

It may be time to disassemble the Big Disk Extreme, and test the
drive inside it, by connecting it directly to the computer.

Lacie makes some single drive products and some dual drive products,
and it will be simpler to test the single drive ones, as the
internal drive mechanism should respond immediately once you
connect it to an internal port on your computer.

It really all depends, on how badly you want the data. If the data
is more important than the warranty, then disassemble it and try
accessing the drive directly.

In one Amazon.com review, there is mention of power problems with
the Lacie products, so if you're lucky, this could be a power problem
of some sort.

    Paul

Thanks Paul. But,I don't have the first idea how to do that. I
could probably manage to get the case open, I've got a hammer and
chisel around here somewhere How, once I get the case open, do I
connect the drive directly to the computer? I have actually managed to
add Harddrives before. Do I use one of those types of cables? Is there
a site that shows how to do this?

The drive is still under warranty and I am in email contact with
Lacie. They do respond, to their credit, it takes a day or so. The
first diagnostic round was to try different cables, computers and
power supplies. I could do everything but a different power supply and
all failed to get the drive to show up in device manager. I'll see
what they say to do next, and the I may possibly try that route.

Porte

 

[wrbrown13]

Did you lose the data on the drive when they did the repair?

Porte

No, the drives were completely intact. The controller card is a separate
unit inside of the case.

 

[Paul]

Thanks Paul. But,I don't have the first idea how to do that. I
could probably manage to get the case open, I've got a hammer and
chisel around here somewhere How, once I get the case open, do I
connect the drive directly to the computer? I have actually managed to
add Harddrives before. Do I use one of those types of cables? Is there
a site that shows how to do this?

The drive is still under warranty and I am in email contact with
Lacie. They do respond, to their credit, it takes a day or so. The
first diagnostic round was to try different cables, computers and
power supplies. I could do everything but a different power supply and
all failed to get the drive to show up in device manager. I'll see
what they say to do next, and the I may possibly try that route.

Porte

Does this look like the product ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/terabyte-drives-redefine-external-storage,1214-3.html

There is a picture of what is inside it, here. It is a dual drive
product, so the two drives are in RAID 0. The problem will be,
if you need to connect these directly to your computer, you'll need
a software way of combining the striped data, to get your files back.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/terabyte-drives-redefine-external-storage,1214-4.html

"Only two screws need to be removed at the back of the drive in order to pull the base
module out of the cover. Please note that LaCie placed a sticker on one of these screws
saying that opening the drive would void your warranty."

If the unit contained a single 1TB drive, then I'd take the enclosure
apart and connect the drive to an internal computer port. But since the
Lacie looks like it is a RAID 0 (2 x 500), there isn't much incentive to do
that. You'd need to craft a way to get the data back. The data would be striped,
and you'd need to determine the stripe size somehow. As you read the data
off the two disks, you need to interleave it on the destination disk. If the
stripe size was 64K bytes, then each of the numbers in this diagram would be
a 64K byte chunk.

+-----+ +-----+ +-----+
| 0 | | 1 | | 0 |
| 2 | | 3 | ===> | 1 |
| 4 | | 5 | | 2 |
... ... | 3 |
...

So that might give you some idea what you'd be facing in there. I'd want
two 1TB drives while working on the problem. One to hold a sector
by sector backup (using "dd" from Linux, and dumping two 500GB
images), and a second 1TB drive, which can be used for
experimental recovery attempts (building the interleave).

HTH,
Paul

 

[Steven Redgate]

Does this look like the product ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/terabyte-drives-redefine-external...

There is a picture of what is inside it, here. It is a dual drive
product, so the two drives are in RAID 0. The problem will be,
if you need to connect these directly to your computer, you'll need
a software way of combining the striped data, to get your files back.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/terabyte-drives-redefine-external...

    "Only two screws need to be removed at the back of the drive in order to pull the base
     module out of the cover. Please note that LaCie placed a sticker on one of these screws
     saying that opening the drive would void your warranty."

If the unit contained a single 1TB drive, then I'd take the enclosure
apart and connect the drive to an internal computer port. But since the
Lacie looks like it is a RAID 0 (2 x 500), there isn't much incentive to do
that. You'd need to craft a way to get the data back. The data would be striped,
and you'd need to determine the stripe size somehow. As you read the data
off the two disks, you need to interleave it on the destination disk. If the
stripe size was 64K bytes, then each of the numbers in this diagram wouldbe
a 64K byte chunk.

+-----+ +-----+          +-----+
|  0  | |  1  |          |  0  |
|  2  | |  3  |   ===>   |  1  |
|  4  | |  5  |          |  2  |
   ...     ...            |  3  |
                            ...

So that might give you some idea what you'd be facing in there. I'd want
two 1TB drives while working on the problem. One to hold a sector
by sector backup (using "dd" from Linux, and dumping two 500GB
images), and a second 1TB drive, which can be used for
experimental recovery attempts (building the interleave).

HTH,
      Paul

Yes, I have the Lacie Big Disk Extreme Triple Interface. I hope it
doesn't come down to that kind of operation. I had the power supply
tested and the voltages at the pins were correct. I am waiting on
Lacie's second round of emails.

Porte