Anyone has a problème with LaCie hard drive?

[Marsha Jane]

I have been using LaCie external drives since 15 years ago. I own around 15 hard drives from the old version to the new one, from 2Tb to 16 TB. Some of them connected correctly to my Mac Pro and works well and sometimes they disconnected with no reason. But it was ok for me and all what I cared about was to have safe copies of my photos until…last Summer. I have actually more than 700 000 photos ( I am keeper and I don’t like to delete any photos except when they are really bad ) plus videos which occupy around 45 TB. I wanted to keep everything on the same drive for easy and quick access.

Last august I bought a LaCie 40 TB 2Big Doc, Thunderbolt 3, which according to the retailer, it works with my old desktop Mac Pro and my new MacBook Pro M2. I tried to transfer all my Lightroom catalogue to it and put most of my important photos files in it. It worked ok with my desktop Mac Pro.

I wanted this hard drive to become the main drive for my Lightroom catalogue that I can use it mainly with my laptop and I can work with it in any place in my home or in the garden. In the beginning it worked ok with my laptop. And suddenly it stopped working completely. When I connect it to the laptop, most of the time I don’t see it neither in the finder nor on the screen. If it is not connected. And if it appears on my screen, I can open it and see all my files in it, but I can’t open any one of them and I can’t transfer anything from or to it. I always get the same message erreur 50.
i contacted the shop from where I bought it, I told them about the problème. They said they can’t help and I have to contact LaCie. I contacted LaCie. The agent, after sharing my screen, and even without being able to make this piece of S…..t working, he said there is no problem with the drive at all. All what he coule do is for me to send the disk to compagny where they will check it, but I will loose all my data and if they don’t find any problem with the drive, I will be charge for the work.
Here I am with a horrible service, a drive that cost me 2700.00 Canadian dollars and it is still on the guarantee and I can’t access my documents, I can’t make it work with my computer and the compagny does not care.
So I need and appreciate all your help and advice that you can give me:
What is the best and safe way to have everything on one external drive to access all the files and Lightroom catalogue ( needed at least 40tb, more will be better). I don’t like to use the cloud, I found it complicated and long to copie 40 tb to the cloud. Do you have a good and reliable compagny that make good quality external hard drive? ( Not LaCie please)
Thank you for your help

Yes I had a huge problem. I'm also in Canada, so maybe it's a Canadian issue? I purchased 2 external LaCie hard drives from Apple, each was the
LaCie 8TB d2 Professional Desktop Hard Drive. After installing both and restarting my iMac, all of my desktop icons disappeared and when I went into the individual document applications (e.g., Word), all of the files were corrupted. I had over 30 years of professional documents and spreadsheets - all corrupted and would not open. This happened in October 2023. However, all my photos (JPG) and PDF's were intact. I have Apple iCloud+ backup, so I called them. LaCie support was useless - difficult to get ahold of. Numerous efforts over the course of a week by Apple Senior Advisors were unsuccessful in restoring my documents. The Cloud storage intermittently found over 5000 files (sometimes none were found) but I could only restore about 10 at a time. During one consultation, my computer became very slow. The adviser who was viewing my desktop found malware that caused it to slow down and removed it, but it didn't help restoring my files. I never had this problem before installing the LaCie drives. Finally, another senior adviser escalated the situation to the Engineering Department, and they were able to fully restore my files. I have no idea what happened but I have two hypotheses: (1) there was malware on one of the new external drives that was installed at the factory by someone with nefarious intentions, (2) there was a "glitch" in their program that "restored" the blank external drive contents to my computer when I restarted my computer. Since I was within the 14-day return window, I returned the drives and got a refund after very much stress and time spent. Therefore, I have not purchased another set of this type, and have relied on SanDisk portable SSD drives. I would never buy another LaCie product again.

 

[Ralph]

Yes I had a huge problem. I'm also in Canada, so maybe it's a Canadian issue? I purchased 2 external LaCie hard drives from Apple, each was the
LaCie 8TB d2 Professional Desktop Hard Drive. After installing both and restarting my iMac, all of my desktop icons disappeared and when I went into the individual document applications (e.g., Word), all of the files were corrupted. I had over 30 years of professional documents and spreadsheets - all corrupted and would not open. This happened in October 2023. However, all my photos (JPG) and PDF's were intact. I have Apple iCloud+ backup, so I called them. LaCie support was useless - difficult to get ahold of. Numerous efforts over the course of a week by Apple Senior Advisors were unsuccessful in restoring my documents. The Cloud storage intermittently found over 5000 files (sometimes none were found) but I could only restore about 10 at a time. During one consultation, my computer became very slow. The adviser who was viewing my desktop found malware that caused it to slow down and removed it, but it didn't help restoring my files. I never had this problem before installing the LaCie drives. Finally, another senior adviser escalated the situation to the Engineering Department, and they were able to fully restore my files. I have no idea what happened but I have two hypotheses: (1) there was malware on one of the new external drives that was installed at the factory by someone with nefarious intentions, (2) there was a "glitch" in their program that "restored" the blank external drive contents to my computer when I restarted my computer. Since I was within the 14-day return window, I returned the drives and got a refund after very much stress and time spent. Therefore, I have not purchased another set of this type, and have relied on SanDisk portable SSD drives. I would never buy another LaCie product again.

Sorry to hear about your issue. Glad to hear that you eventually got all your files back. For the future, at least with the Mac, whenever you purchase a new drive, always reformat using the Apple Disk utility in APFS format. When copying your files over to the new drive, either use Apples Migration Assistant or CarbonCopyCloner. Another very good one is Superduper. Stay away from most others.

 

[Activert]

Yes I had a huge problem. I'm also in Canada, so maybe it's a Canadian issue? I purchased 2 external LaCie hard drives from Apple, each was the
LaCie 8TB d2 Professional Desktop Hard Drive. After installing both and restarting my iMac, all of my desktop icons disappeared and when I went into the individual document applications (e.g., Word), all of the files were corrupted. I had over 30 years of professional documents and spreadsheets - all corrupted and would not open. This happened in October 2023. However, all my photos (JPG) and PDF's were intact. I have Apple iCloud+ backup, so I called them. LaCie support was useless - difficult to get ahold of. Numerous efforts over the course of a week by Apple Senior Advisors were unsuccessful in restoring my documents. The Cloud storage intermittently found over 5000 files (sometimes none were found) but I could only restore about 10 at a time. During one consultation, my computer became very slow. The adviser who was viewing my desktop found malware that caused it to slow down and removed it, but it didn't help restoring my files. I never had this problem before installing the LaCie drives. Finally, another senior adviser escalated the situation to the Engineering Department, and they were able to fully restore my files. I have no idea what happened but I have two hypotheses: (1) there was malware on one of the new external drives that was installed at the factory by someone with nefarious intentions, (2) there was a "glitch" in their program that "restored" the blank external drive contents to my computer when I restarted my computer. Since I was within the 14-day return window, I returned the drives and got a refund after very much stress and time spent. Therefore, I have not purchased another set of this type, and have relied on SanDisk portable SSD drives. I would never buy another LaCie product again.

Thank you for your reply. I am now in the process of backing up the data from the LaCie to anther drive. I was surprised and shocked to see that some files disappeared from the LaCie or when I backed them up from another drive they were not backed up properly. Big problem with this drive And I am worry about some lost data.
when I finish backing up what I can, I will contact LaCie and I will ask them to take the drive and replace it ( and believe me I am going to do everything I can to make them replace it) . I am sure this drive is and was sold with defect. I bought it from Vistek Ontario because none in Quebec sell this drive. I will never buy anything from them. When they delivered to me, the box was open. I called Vistek and I told them about it and asked them if it was sold and returned before they sold it to me. They assured me that it was new. I really did not understand why the box arrived opened and nothing was sealed. Now I know for sure that this disk was returned by someone and Vistek sold it to me with problem. I am going to contact Vistek tomorrow and I am going to write a bad review about them. Because when I told them about the drive not working properly they refer me to LaCie. And LaCie did not care about resolving the issue.
You can’t imagine how I am mad at both Vistek and LaCie and trying to do everything myself to retrieve my data.
We pay a lot money to have a peace of mind and all we get is problems.
We Canadian dont have any way of making these compagnies taking responsibilities and as consumers we don’t have any protection. I wish we do things like in the U S.

 

[Activert]

Hi everyone.
First I want to thank you all for your help. You are really all amazing, helpful photographer and I am so lucky to be able to get all the support from you. I wish I could say the same about Seagate and LaCie, but no. I backed up everything and I reformatted the drive for Mac as you suggest to do @Ralph . first it worked smoothly and I was happy. After backing up 21 TB, I got a message that there was a problem with the drive. Then it worked again and more than 8 TB was evaporated, so many missing files and the problem back again.
I spent all the morning with LaCie Support. And here another bad service with LaCie, it is only with chat. Imagine how long it is to explain the problem to the agent. Asking the info again and again and explaining again and again, like I was turning around. After 2 hours and a half chatting, I have to send the drive and they will retrieve the data if possible and Chang the drive. It will take at least 30 days from the date they receive it.
i have to do the packing and printing the info and go to the UPS to send it and how much I lost time to fix Lacie problem. Still, I am worry about the data in my drive. they all are photos and videos. If someone copie them and like steel them. Can I trust them? I don’t know what to do.
My advice, please learn from my experience and don’t buy this piece of garbage and avoid this compagny

 

[Ralph]

Hi everyone.
First I want to thank you all for your help. You are really all amazing, helpful photographer and I am so lucky to be able to get all the support from you. I wish I could say the same about Seagate and LaCie, but no. I backed up everything and I reformatted the drive for Mac as you suggest to do @Ralph . first it worked smoothly and I was happy. After backing up 21 TB, I got a message that there was a problem with the drive. Then it worked again and more than 8 TB was evaporated, so many missing files and the problem back again.
I spent all the morning with LaCie Support. And here another bad service with LaCie, it is only with chat. Imagine how long it is to explain the problem to the agent. Asking the info again and again and explaining again and again, like I was turning around. After 2 hours and a half chatting, I have to send the drive and they will retrieve the data if possible and Chang the drive. It will take at least 30 days from the date they receive it.
i have to do the packing and printing the info and go to the UPS to send it and how much I lost time to fix Lacie problem. Still, I am worry about the data in my drive. they all are photos and videos. If someone copie them and like steel them. Can I trust them? I don’t know what to do.
My advice, please learn from my experience and don’t buy this piece of garbage and avoid this compagny

It’s a shame that all that effort was wasted. But I’m sure you learned things along the way. I’m with you at this point, it’s time to go in a different direction. In my situation. I use a OWC enclosure (Synology enclosures are another way to go) with two 12 tb drives which can be used in a RAID configuration or as separate drives. In My situation, I wouldn‘t use a single drive any larger than 18-20 tb. That is more than enough and I wouldn’t want to risk the loss of data on a drive that large. Also, with a drive that large, it would be much more difficult to create multiple copies unless you are using equivalent drives for backup. Thats why I use 12 tb drives . They are easier to manage.

 

[Activert]

It’s a shame that all that effort was wasted. But I’m sure you learned things along the way. I’m with you at this point, it’s time to go in a different direction. In my situation. I use a OWC enclosure (Synology enclosures are another way to go) with two 12 tb drives which can be used in a RAID configuration or as separate drives. In My situation, I wouldn‘t use a single drive any larger than 18-20 tb. That is more than enough and I wouldn’t want to risk the loss of data on a drive that large. Also, with a drive that large, it would be much more difficult to create multiple copies unless you are using equivalent drives for backup. Thats why I use 12 tb drives . They are easier to manage.

You are absolutely right. I learn so much from you! i should do like you, not larger than 20 tb