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camarao

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 24, 2005
16
0
Lisbon, Portugal
I've just bought a Lacie D2 Extreme 250gb and I find it noisy or perhaps it's not in good conditions.
It is connected to the PC via USB 1( I will connect it to a powerbook next week ).
I can hear a kind of fan ( or maybe is the drive rotating. Is it suposed to be always rotating ? )which makes an high pitch noise .
And I can hear some strange noises like some metal thing is scratching the case. This happens sometimes (as an example,this happens when I select all the folders in the drive and then right-click in properties ) . Is this normal ? Everywhere I read it says this drive is silent but mine is not.
 

NATO

macrumors 68000
Feb 14, 2005
1,702
35
Northern Ireland
I wouldn't worry about it to be honest, I've had 2 Lacie d2 drives and although they dont produce fan noise, they're not that quiet, making clicky/clunky noises. Doesn't seem to affect the performance though..
 

simie

macrumors 65816
Aug 26, 2004
1,192
71
Sitting
The noise you hear is the drive mechanism.

The strange noises like some metal thing is scratching the case, is the arm as it moves the heads overs the surface of the platters.

The other sound is the platters spinning, the drive normally spins at around 7,200 rpm, so expect some noise.
 

camarao

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 24, 2005
16
0
Lisbon, Portugal
I've just noticed that my Lacie D2 Extreme Triple Interface 250 gb external hard drive has a Maxtor drive inside. I've heard that Maxtor drives are noisier than other brands such as seagate. Do you think this is the problem ? Do Lacie D2 have all the same Maxtor drives inside ? Maybe it's better to return this drive and search for another model ... Any sugestions ? It has to be fanless, 7200 rpm and firewire 800.
 

DeathHD4Cutie

macrumors newbie
May 1, 2005
2
0
What about a loud beeping sound and then not mounting?

My LaCie d2 Extreme triple interface 250GB hard drive has stopped mounting (again). This time, it makes a loud beeping noise before the computer (PowerBook G4 Titanium, OSX 10.3.9) gives me the "drive contains no readable OSX volumes, do you want to initialize?" message. I typically hit "Ignore" or "Eject", not wanting to lose the 200GB or so I have on it. Most is backed up, but not all (yeah, my fault). I've tried Disk Warrior and Data Rescue X, neither of which see it. Disk Utility sees a FireWire drive, but identifies it as a Maxtor 2TB drive and doesn't let me repair, scan or anything but erase.

This happened two months ago, but without the awful noise and Disk Warrior was able to mount it.

Any thoughts before I call LaCie and start yelling again?
 

JDar

macrumors 6502a
Dec 7, 2003
529
2
camarao said:
I've just noticed that my Lacie D2 Extreme Triple Interface 250 gb external hard drive has a Maxtor drive inside. I've heard that Maxtor drives are noisier than other brands such as seagate. Do you think this is the problem ? Do Lacie D2 have all the same Maxtor drives inside ? Maybe it's better to return this drive and search for another model ... Any sugestions ? It has to be fanless, 7200 rpm and firewire 800.

I think LaCie uses different vendors for their drives, but certainly a lot of them are Maxtor. I've got three of these going in different places and they are a little scratchy sounding now and then but none are noisy. Sometimes the surface they are sitting on transmits the noise and a bit of padding under might help.
 
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