Thought I would post an update. I contacted LaCie support and they have said all three drives are replaceable under warranty, which is good news.
The bad news is I have taken them all apart to put the drives into my PC to see if that worked. They have said the warranty is void if I open them up.
Have to put them back together and hope they don't notice!
good luck HKNewbi!
Ha ha, I hadn't thought of that!
Screw 'em I guess. If they don't replace them and I have to trek out to Kowloon Bay to hear this they will rapidly discover that LaCie external Porsche designed drives also make very good Lacie External Porsche designed bricks!
That was also my 444'th post - is that a bad omen or am I being too superstitious?
Happy belated Halloween! hehe. I use a Chinese-made enclosure with a 9cm cooling fan and a LCD temp readout. It's worked flawlessly so far. I turn it off immediately after use, and I don't run anything off it. So far so good...
Hey Jay, can you tell me where you bought it? The usual suspects (ie wanchai, Mong Kok, SSP etc)?
I like the idea of a cooling fan. Those Lacies are almost too hot to pick up after a few minutes of being on.
If they do decide to replace my three drives (I am trying to figure out which drive goes in which box with with serial number) I end up with 750Gb of storage space that I don't really trust. How handy.
Raid 5 the 3 of them?
Perhaps, but then you have to have the RAID controller.
I haven't direct knowledge of this, but from what I understand, they should be all the same drive type.
Do you need 250Gb/750Gb all at once?
Can you do what Jay and what I do? i.e. run everything off the internal drives and use the external USB when necessary (for storage and backup). Then you won't need to have the external drive on.
By the way, is your computer a laptop or desktop?
If you looking to get a new external enclosure (and you have a desktop with a spare slot) I recommend that you get an enclosure with a SATA interface (as well as USB). I heard that they are far superior in speed to USB. Also, if possible to allow SATA HDD. Then you won't be buying outdated technology and you may use it internally.
Yes, I would need a RAID controller, I wasn't serious. The drives don't need to be the same size but it makes sense or you can end up losing some space.
I don't need 750Gb! It is just because as each drive failed I bought a replacement. I will probably just mirror each drive overnight to have a back up (when I get the replacements).
Alternatively I might take them out of their cases and install them internally.
It is a desktop. My SATA connections are all internal so no good to me for an external drive. And you are right when you say SATA is far quicker than USB.
Don't know if you have noticed, but USB really gets its knickers in a twist if you, say, copy two sets of files onto the drive at the same time.