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Apr 18, 2009

LaCie 1TB Big Disk Drive Failure....Or Not

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There are days when you just have to say, "I fuckin' love the internets!!", more on that in a minute. I bought a LaCie 1TB Big Disk a couple of years ago and it slowly became my "everything disk". The only problem with this external drive is that it is setup in a RAID 0. This means that the data is 'striped' across two 500GB drives for performance. But, if one drive fails then you lose all your data!

Very recently the drive decided to start making some strange noises while struggling to start up. The drive would also emit a loud hissing noise while running. This started to freak me out since I had nowhere to back up 1TB. I debated a while and then bought a Drobo last week! Now I have 4TB usable on the local network :)

After playing around with the Drobo I decided it was time to fire up the LaCie and back it up. Sure enough the LaCie drive failed to mount. It sounded like it really wanted to but it just couldn't. Sadness!

My first google on the subject was "lacie big disk extreme sucks" (realizing later mine was not 'extreme'). The third hit was a blog post entitled LaCie Big Disk Extreme Failure. Now this is where the love of the internet comes into play. The post had around 100 comments on it. Two of them described what was happening to my drive perfectly. The first describing the startup woes:

problems included; bad booting up, clicking noises, freezes and a complete failure to mount (link)

And the second:

The power supply adapter a made high pitch sound (not very noticeable unless up close) and upon opening the board had burnt brown areas and the capacitors where bulging out the tops. (link)

I had not noticed this noise coming from the power adapter, but low and behold mine was making the same sound. So what was the solution in the end? A new power adapter. WTF! Internets FTW! I decided that I'd shell out the $30 on the chance that it might work. Power supply arrived yesterday, and now my drive is fully functional and backed up to my Drobo!!! Happiness!