LaCie Porsche Mobile Hard Drive USB (500 GB)

• Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 6 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 9 stars

  Reliable low cost Workhorse

  by divy on September 16, 2007

  Pros: Low cost. Reliable. High capacity. Quick Response-- No wakeup delay. Decent speed.

  Cons: On/off button hard to find.

  Summary: This is now my 3rd Lacie Porsche drive. I have a 250 and two 500's. I have virtually no complaints about them. I use them constantly and They work ...

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  Summary: This is now my 3rd Lacie Porsche drive. I have a 250 and two 500's. I have virtually no complaints about them. I use them constantly and They work all the time. The drives are a bit warm, but it doesnt seem to bother them. the speeds are reasonable.
  
  Most important---There is almost NO delay time when accessing the drive, even after they have been idle for hours. This is because the only on/off control on the Lacie is a manual button in the back, so the drive stays "on" until you turn it off. Comparable WD and Seagate externals use a "smart" USB activity detector to turn the drives on and off. This often leads to an irritating "wake up time" delay of anywhere from 6 seconds or more. A WD drive I had often never woke up at all, so I was constantly replugging the usb or power cable to get it to turn on. What a PIA I sold it off on ebay.
  
  Minor complaint, The on/off button is recessed and hard to find. It is relay tripped so the drive wont recycle back on if there is a power failure. So you have to find the button and push it if, say, you move the drive or there is a power outage.
  
  Incidentally, The 500GB model uses a Seagate 3 platter ST350083 drive. The 250GB model uses a Seagate 2 platter ST3250820A. Both are known for reliability.
  
  Overally I cannot recommend these Lacies enough. You just cant beat the performance/price ratio. They run a close second to my beloved (but expensive) 120GB Passport firewire drive. We have 4 intel macs, 3 laptops and 1 mini, and i have the lacies hooked to the mini in a pseudo NAS arrangement so that the laptops can network right into them. We use the lacies to hold movies and tv shows so anybody can watch their favorite show anywhere. The drives are preformatted in DOS; mac users should use disk utility to reformat them into Journalled MAC OS so they can be networked and run a lot faster.

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  5 out of 5 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Excellent, easy to use external HD

  by welfarebum on August 29, 2007

  Pros: Compact, easy to use, stylish design

  Cons: quite heavy compared to others

  Summary: I bought this HD for three main reasons: the cost, the aluminum case and the fact that my family has purchsed products from this company before.
  
  Stylistically it's very
  
  ...

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  Summary: I bought this HD for three main reasons: the cost, the aluminum case and the fact that my family has purchsed products from this company before.
  
  Stylistically it's very minimalist almost to the point of boring, but that kind of fits in with what I was looking for. I don't need something that lights up with flashing neon lights and has weird buttons and switches all over it. It has a power light to tell you that it's on, a power switch to turn it on and plugs for the power and USB cable respectively.
  
  Setting it up was very easy - literally plugged it in and Windows XP recognized it immediately. No formatting or assigning drive letters, just instant access to a USB mass storage device.
  
  Transfer speeds are respectable, and the size is very compact. It's very easy to just tuck it away somewhere, or leave it out to admire it's minimalist glory.
  
  An excellent purchase, I'd highly recommend this external hard drive to anyone.

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  4 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  DONT BUY! Stopped working in 8 month, Refused warranty!

  by aabaht on January 8, 2009

  Pros: None as compared to others, might be cheaper than a few bucks

  Cons: 1. ZERO WARRANTY! Lacie is Dishonest. They simply refused to repair/replace the drive, even when it's under the warranty of 2 years. They DONT REPAIR EVEN FOR A FEE.
  2. Heats up really fast.
  3. Slow, Noisy at times, Very poor build quality & design

  Summary: First advice, DON'T BUY IT!
  I bought one in June 2007. Sole purpose was data back-up. I would take it out once in 3 months, back-up and put in ...

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  Summary: First advice, DON'T BUY IT!
  I bought one in June 2007. Sole purpose was data back-up. I would take it out once in 3 months, back-up and put in back in a safe place. Never dropped it, always ensured it remained in a cool environment, protected from dust. And one day it showed an error in file copying. some sorta "cyclic redundancy error in i/o". Thus started the slow death of bad sectors. Now the drive is not even recognized by any computer.
  
  I had bought the drive from the online store of B&H photo/video, where they had mentioned the 2-year limited warranty. I contacted the Lacie people. They simply refused by saying the warranty was only ONE year. I again confirmed from the store, they say it was TWO. LACIE says it was ONE.
  
  Worst part is that, they don't even give you an option of repairing the drive as a paid-for-service. So if it stops working. They are sorry for you! But they CANT HELP YOU!

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• 3 stars

  Dropped 20cm onto carpet

  by zadefaraj on July 25, 2008

  Pros: Worked great when it did

  Cons: Doesn't work anymore

  Summary: This was the fist backup drive I've owned. It worked fine for 3 months until it fell 20cm onto my carpet, without even a thump, and stopped working. After ...

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  Summary: This was the fist backup drive I've owned. It worked fine for 3 months until it fell 20cm onto my carpet, without even a thump, and stopped working. After searching the internet for solutions I determined the spindle motor is jammed and can not be fixed for under $1000. More importantly, one search for 'crashed Lacie hard drives' brought up horror stories from hundreds of other users losing their data due to 3rd rate failure-prone parts. Lacie does not have any warranty for recovering your data. In fact, they recommend backing up your backup drive in order to prevent this from happening. I do not recommend this drive at all. Please, do a little research before you lose everything.

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• 8 stars

  Good, but not the fastest

  by dragoncancer on February 4, 2008

  Pros: Looks good, no longer expensive

  Cons: Transfer time is slower than my other external usb drive

• 8 stars

  500GB for $120 Great PRice

  by huanbei on December 16, 2007

  Pros: Price Tag, Design?

  Cons: Noisy, some fit&finish issues

  Summary: was gonna buy the western digital 320GB mybook for about the same price, but then saw this one.
  
  Love the simply aluminum finish, looks nice on my desk. Some minor
  
  ...

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  Summary: was gonna buy the western digital 320GB mybook for about the same price, but then saw this one.
  
  Love the simply aluminum finish, looks nice on my desk. Some minor fit&finish issues but for the price it can be overlooked(ex. when plugging in the back the port got like pushed inside).
  
  Got it for $120 in B&H. Again great price.
  
  oh yeah its like, makes lots of noise but I guess they all like that.

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