LaCie Ethernet Big Disk failure

[musiclists]

Hi! My 1 TB HDD has failed after 8 months of use in a JBOD configuration. The Lacie support guys say it might be the power supply, but it looks good to me on the scope. Both 500 GB seem to be in good shape. Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

[rchadwick]

Definitely a firmware problem. Absolutely. No doubt about it.

[rchadwick]

Sorry for the smart-ass answer, but you didn't give us much to go on.

[musiclists]

OK, so I will try to be more specific. The drive started suddenly showing only parts of the contents, that is, some of the folders were missing, until it just stopped responding. Even the web interfase stopped working. All I get is the blue light on. I opened it up and connected the SATA drives to a Windows PC, one at a time. The first one showed several partitions and folders, tyipical in Linux, the other one shows nothing. Both seem to work properly.

Any suggestions on how to revover my data, if at all possible? Most of it is music files in mp3 and flac formats, but I have some txt, jpg, etc., as well.

Thanks again!

[rchadwick]

That helps a bit. It sounds like at least one, and likely both drives are OK mechanically. It could be a power supply issue. Does the PS that plugs into the unit have one, or two voltages? Check both if there's two. If only one, there may a 12V to 5V supply internally that's got a problem. Or, there could be some other issue with the enclosure.

[musiclists]

The power supply has two outputs, 12V and 5V. They both seem to be working fine. If there is something faulty within the enclosure other than the drives, I would be happy if I could recover the information and copy it to another drive. Cuold you suggest a course of action?

Thank you for your help!

[jono-ats]

My vote is for a bad controller. I believe LaCie's warranty (unless they have changed it) is that they simply swap out whole units and they will not repair yours. If that is the case, the best way to get your data back might be to buy an identical unit and use its controller.

Jon

[musiclists]

Sounds reasonable. The problem is I live in Argentina, and although there are serveral LaCie products available here, this particular model is not seen in the stores. I bought my unit during a visit to the US, if I have a chance to go back I will probably buy another one and see if this idea works. In the meantime, I will stay open to other options.

[CK]

Why not try and get one on eBay? I've just checked and there are lots of them available for around $250.

If you get one, reconfigured it as JBOD, then remove the drive, insert yours and see what happens. Worst case scenario is that you have a new Lacie Unit.......but don't trust it with all your data this time!