LaCie 4TB Ethernet Hard Disk

Comments about LaCie 4TB Ethernet Hard Disk:

Unit worked great for a couple of years, then problems began. LaCie will do everything possible to avoid warranty service and as previous reviewer states, all support is conducted through email, which often took 72 hours between communications. When they did respond, the answers were usually vague and offered little in the way of help. Techs couldn't answer seemingly simple questions, like whether I could adjust the MTU (jumbo frames) settings to improve performance. They said "no"....but after some digging on my part, you absolutely can. The Windows XP embedded OS is a joke. I'm sure it's used in the interest of having a compact, stable OS, but it's so dumbed down that it makes if difficult if not impossible to troubleshoot the system when something does go wrong. On our system, for over a year we've been able to write files to the drive (huge video files included) with NO issues. But trying to move large files or large numbers of files off the unit results in lock-ups and errors. Hitachi's own drive tools (and other tools like SpinRite) show the drives and data is all fine on the unit, but LaCie support has no clue as to what could be causing the issues. I've gone through OS reinstalls and updates, BIOS adjustments etc. with no solution. I bought this to use as a backup and it sits in an air-conditioned server room and nothing has been adjusted since the day it was put into service. This is definitely NOT an enterprise class unit, although it's certainly priced like one. You'd be better off buying multiple external USB or Firewire drives...or building a simple server with spanned drives yourself (for a lot less money) than buying this thing.

I certainly understand that computers can go south, but when a company's own tech support people seem to know less about the unit than I do, that's a bad sign.

Comments about LaCie 4TB Ethernet Hard Disk:

When working, the product is first rate--easy setup and web management. But do not buy it. Support is worse than bad. My unit has been out of service for over a week and they are just thinking about replacing it. The only contact allowed is through email and turnaround for each step of troubleshooting is AT LEAST 24 hours. Quite plainly, the device died after two weeks of service, and it will be at least another two weeks before their warranty service has it working again. Their fast support is not a joke--it's an abomination.