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OK I ejected two lacie d2 hard drives (they are daisy chained) before shuting down this morning. I noticed when I ejected the 250 GB one the desktop went blank for a moment (including the top finder bar) but then reappeared after a couple of seconds minus the lacie drive.....so I just I ejected the other and shut down.
I come back just now and reboot .... only the 160 gb appears on the desktop - the other one is making a loud mechanical clicking/clunking noise every now and then not whining or rattling or anything just clunk.....................clunk................clunk clunk clunk.....clunk .........etc
I tried launching disc utility it crashed every time while 'gathering disc information' and I had to force quit it. Then I finally got it to show up in disk utility with the two partitions not mounted - I tried to erase it figuring something pretty bad has happened and I might as well rebuild it (it's just full of samples - a pain but all backed up) but it can't even erase the disk - it just clunks even more and even makes occasional loud beeping sound!!!!!!
Is there anything else I should try or just take it back to the shop I bought it from?
Is it still under warranty? How old is it? Lacie's have low reliability in my own experience and I sold my own d2 last year and switched to Glyph. I had the same problem you describe with my previous lacie drive (but I forget its model number). I eventually coaxed it back to life, but I don't remember what I did. A vague recollection that going to OS9 mode (via reboot) gave me a different "view" of the external hd that allowed me to reformat it.
You might also try doing some stuff from the Unix command line and see what shows up under devices and whether you can see any system-type files on it (those that begin with a "."). Other than that, I can't think of anything that you haven't already done (you have used Apple's disc doctor utility from what you say in your message, although there are two ways of going about this so I'm not clear on whether you used the more advanced tool or not).
thanks mhschmieder - I'll dig out the receipt ....but it can't be older than 6 months I'd say...
It was just plain old 'disk utility' in apps/utilities that I used. I could (eventually) select the drive (although its two partitions were greyed out) so in theory I should have been able to erase it (I think, but maybe I'm wrong).
Yes I'm now losing my faith in d2 drives - this is the second one to give up on me and I haven't used this one very long, or worked it very hard.
ohh...reinstalling 250 GB of samples ..... what a drag.......
Right, then the Unix command line might give you more hints and even give you some options on deleting some of the bookkeeping files that might be causing confusion at the higher-level Aqua interface of OS X.
Still, a dead disc is a dead disc. But it sounds possible that you might simply have some corrupted files on the disc that OS X uses for fast-searches/etc. When those get messed up, sometimes the higher-level OS X interface may give up.
I don't want to make any assumptions about how comfortable you are with Unix, and as it is only 6 months old you SHOULD be covered by warranty, so you may as well bring it back to the store.
And I do hate to trash Lacie, but it is also from my own personal experience as well as certain neutral websites that have run metrics on all of the hard drives out there. I know Lacie is great bang for the buck, but I would never trust them again for read/write-intensive stuff like audio.
Some people have apparantly also had bad experiences with the older Glyph stuff, but mine is new (one year old) and has improved my DP performance tremendously due to its superior read/write handling. Lacie also swaps out the underlying hard drive frequently(?) in their designs, but doesn't make much mention of this. I prefer dealing with companies that provide full specs and keep them up when new models arrive.
Another company that makes media-friendly drives is EZQuest. Slightly cheaper than Glyph (though I got an excellent discount on my Glyph drive so it was only 25% more than a Lacie). I bought one to use as my backup drive, and eventually to compare for performance vs. Glyph but I haven't gotten around to that yet. They have several different series and I bought their mid-level one since I didn't plan to use it to record DP projects.
Thanks all for your help - it was sounding so bad it was obviously in the realm of total mechanical failure and has now been returned for service/replacement under warrenty.
I certainly will no longer be buying Lacie drives again - of the two I've owned one died and had to be reformatted (lost all data) the other died and had to be sent back (lost all data). I noticed the didn't list this on the features list on the box.
