LaCie External firewire drive doesn't show up

[skyboy]

I have an older LaCie firewire external hard drive that won't show up (as an icon) on the desktop. When I plug in its firewire cable it powers up (little blue light comes on) and sounds like it's running, but I can't "see" it. It's an older drive I retired from the studio and gave to my daughter, so It doesn't contain audio, but does have the only copies of photos/home movies with great sentimental value.

Any suggestions/tips/tricks?

Thanks!

skyboy

[Dan Walsh]

bad firewire cable maybe? Can you try a USB port? My lacie has both options for Firewire and USB and it's never given me troub's, although I did have a faulty USB cable on time.

[stephentayler]

I did have one LaCie drive disappear on me recently, and I found that if I laid it down on its front it started working again. Maybe try it on its side or whatever...... obviously if it shows up transfer the data immediately!!!!

kind regards

Stephen

[skyboy]

Thanks for the reply guys.

This drive is pre-USB 2.0, so it only has firewire ports.

I'll try flipping it around though.....

[mikebeckmotu]

Try a different power supply, if you have another LaCie handy. The Lacie drives have been good to me, but the power supplies are known to go bad at times. The weird thing is that they can appear to be working. I don't know if they're not delivering enough power to the drive or what's happening, but a couple times I thought my drive had died on me, another power supply had it running again without issues.

[forsooth]

Mike..... what different power supply do you recommend? I have 2 defective Lacie drives that light up but I cannot access the files. I'll try the laying it on it's face trick and then use the USB cable as well. I always use the firewire cable but I need to get this stuff onto another drive quickly.

After these two drives quit on me I switched to Glyph........ I think they are more reliable. I've heard about the power cable on the Lacies before but never considered the suggestions here.

I'll give it a try.

thanks!

forsooth

[mikebeckmotu]

I just resuscitated an older LaCie drive yesterday. When I plugged it in, it powered up, but did not mount. I took the power supply from another LaCie drive and used that, and it works fine. I'm not sure if you can simply replace the power supply with a non-LaCie power supply, though. I would have tried it, but I couldn't find one laying around that had the right connectors.
Looks like you can order them from the LaCie online store - mine would be about $20.
http://www.lacie.com/us/more/?id=10065

[forsooth]

Surprise, surprise! I tried one of the defective Lacies yesterday with a USB cable, laid it on it's side and Presto!...... it works and I was able to access the files I wanted. As I said I never use USB cables because they are slow but this time it worked. Thanks for the tips guys!

The other Lacie however does not want to co-operate and it just emits the 'death click' when switched on. You almost need dynamite to take one of those things apart........ nice enclosure and I'd like to re-use it but it's probably more trouble than anything else.

I have about 14 Lacies and they are switched off most of the time and I only use them when needed. I have stacks of Lacie cables Mike but I had tried several of these on the defective Lacies and they didn't work either. I wondered if there was a different brand of power cables that could be used with the Lacie just in case.

Anyway, all is well....... at the moment.

Cheers

forsooth