Well a few months ago. My Lacie Hard drive started blinking. ( the l.e.d. light on the frount of the drive blinks amber and yellow). It at the same time would also make a clicking sound. After a few mins, it would stop, and work normaly. It kinda freaked me out so i just never turned the drive off. It was on for at least three weeks, give or take a few days, befor the next time i turned it off. I moved foem the place were i was staying to were i am at now. When i turned it on again, it blinked and clicked, again, but hasnt worked. i have since swaped power supplies thinking that would fix it. ( i used another lacie power supply of the same type, for a lacie 500 GB hard drive) NOPE. Not shure what to do about it. Any ideas would be good. Thanks.
Had the same problem: (soft) clicking sound, orange/yellow blinking LED
Tried another power supply: nothing
Reattached that power supply back to the drive it was connected to: same problem there now as well!
Tried yet another power supply: working (all drives)
My guess is that the power supplies are the cause of the problem. Taking mine back to the shop next thing tomorrow morning...
The March 19, 2008 Guest entry had the right approach. The method using the LaCie software did not work however. The MacDrive 7 software on a PC recognized the drive and allowed me to make Mac DVD backups of the data. The drive still cannot be recognized on the Mac but at least the data is recovered.
All this time spent over an inadequate power supply which has been a known problem for it seems like years means there are bad processes in LaCie. They probably use the cover-up-the-problem approach rather than the take your licks by re-engineering the power supplies and sending them out in a recall approach. Fixing the problem is always cheaper than losing business. Reputation is the hardest thing to preserve in business.
I tried another power supply cable of a friend.
It worked fine so I think that was the problem.
Hi everybody! Just want to say that I had a blinking, red/yellow harddrive. It was also making a soft ticking sound. After reading here, I went to the computer store and bought an adapter from deltaco. Went home. Removed the harddrive from inside the "porche" box, conected it with the adapter, and voila! its working perfectly. Not making any sound - and seems very happy. I,m a fashion designer with NO tecnical skills what so ever!!!! But it was easy. TRY IT! Wont buy more lacie products, though. Have a nice day. I,m having a great one!
I had the same problems as above and it was the power supply that solved the problem for me.
A call to Lacie and they sent a new on ein the post with out any problems.
Martin
I had loud clicking and no mounting. Buying a new power adapter did not solve it. I don't know where the idea came from. Some Angel must have whispered in my ear. I decided to try turning the drive upside down. It made the click sound different, but still didn't mount. I laid it on it's side (level) and within a minute, it mounted! Now I can get any data I need off there before it dies completely. Smiling!
I have been using my hard drive for a couple of years and not one problem until today. I had moved the my computer to another room. Afterwords, I tried to fire up my external hard drive and I was getting the same problem, blinking light and clicking sounds. I was using a firewire cord to connect to the tower. After switching to using a USB cord, all is fine. I hope this helps you guys out... I'm seriously thinking about ways to backup my drives now :/
I have the porsche 500gb version (21 months old) and this clicking blinking thing started a few weeks ago. I could not fix with Mac Disk Utility BUT I DID MANAGE TO MOUNT AND REPAIR THE DIRECTORY using DISKWARRIOR....however the problem happened over and over again. If you want to get your data off, this is the best way to go. However, you may need to let is click and blink for 30-60 minutes until it whirrs correctly then you can finally use Diskwarrior....
Remove the Lacie enclosure from the HD,
Discard defective power supply
Re clicking/blinking on a La Cie external 1TB drive with a Mac. I agree with some of the above. All I did was buy a new 4 pin power supply from OWC for under $30 and it's working perfectly. Whew--lots of important videos stored there! (Make sure to match the correct specs for the power adapter.) Thanks everyone, for all the hopeful ideas.
Hopefully the earlier post has helped save some misery for any of those who use the internet to search for answers to such problems, have to feel sorry for those who don't , I guess!
To close my own experience I have finally received notice of a new PSU coming in the post from Lacie under warranty, its only taken 3 months!
However I did get better support, I make no apologies for stating this, from Computer Warehouse, where the support guy Sean went the extra mile to locate and supply a replacement PSU for my drive when I expressed my frustration. I had too, received a 'replacement' PSU that did not work, as I note one other poster did.
Its noteworthy that all new Lacie drive now have the completely new power supplies that provide only the 12v supply into the unit and these are not backward compatible with the earlier PSU and drives, wonder why they changed???????
My final resolve has been to have a new Mac Pro built with all my storage needs loaded on board, all 4 drive bays loaded with 1Tb drives, with the Lacies as 'temporary' storage and not now live all the time as they were. Its especially good not to have all those cables and leads running everywhere, one power led from the UPS and the cable to the monitor, wireless internet etc lovely! Wireless desk I guess!
Need to get something to fill the space the old Lacie's used to fill, perhaps a goldfish tank or some other frivolous item.
Happy data storage........................
Well seems like drive is failed ,check for diagnostic on lacie website
if they can be of any help because data recovery tools are expensive!!so check out some repair solution on lacie website!!
sorry for not providing any useful solution
Soft clicking - disk not mounting - swapped power supply - all good! LaCie drives are not prone to premature failure.
Hi,
I had a problem with my lacie hard drive which didn't keep working. It disappeard from my computer after 30 seconds. I did put some wedges under the lacie for raising it and letting the air cool it. Strangely the ventilation is under so if I put it directly on a table if the weather is hot it doesn't work well.
And now with those simple wedges it works.
Hi,
I had the same thing. Looking around on the web it is due to a faulty power supply.
The model of the power supply I was using is ACU057A-0512
The solution I found was to remove the drive from the LaCie casing and then put it in a cheap HDD 3.5" case for 15GBP (approx $25USD) . You can probably get these for cheaper elsewhere.
Just found this thread, and it was helpful. Same problem . . . replaced power supply and all is good! Thanks!
I faced the same problem exactly as described above. I tried different USB ports at sometime then it was working, may be there are ports that are with less power supply. But then, I faced the same problem when I tried to use it on my PC, switching it from port to port didn't work out but then changed the Cable and it worked, I don't think it is a sign of failure but rather using fire-wire that didn't come with it or shortage of power supply might be the cause.
Hi There,
Had the same issue and it really, really peeved me.
Unfortunately the pins for the other power supplies for other LaCie HDD's I had did not match this one.
On e-bay for $20 bucks or so bought a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE cable. Comes with it's own power supply too.
So, yanked the drive out of it's original enclosure, attached the cable and power supply as descibed above, and full access.
Moral: Don't panic and assume the worst. The drive may be OK, it's the other bits that are faulty.
Regards,
TecnoGeek
I have a 2TB external D2 Bigger Disk Extreme with triple interface, and a few months ago thought I'd lost the drive.. they suggested it might be a power supply issue, as the drive didn't seem to be spinning up properly and was clicking..
Sure enough, they sent a replacement PSU and it solved the problem! Phew!
A couple of days ago, I noticed it was doing the same again, but the data was still available... I went to the website to order a new power supply (even though it's still in warranty, they took ages to answer before and I ended up chasing SALES who surprise, responded very quickly!).
The website says out of stock, but by a bit of URL fiddling, it was possible to get one added to my basket, and I could checkout the order.. I didn't think it would arrive so soon, but it did...
To my horror, this power supply seems worse than the original one, and you can hear the drive revving up and spinning down, revving up, spinning down etc..
Maybe it's my fault for munging the URL to get one added to my basket? Perhaps it's a genuinely faulty PSU.. perhaps it's a faulty return because they weren't expecting an order...
Either way, when I get data off this drive, it's going onto 2 Drobo units I've configured with 6tb drives each (4x 1.5tb). That should keep my data safe and hopefully the PSU's don't go down as often as Lacie's.. funnily enough, this is the second LACIE drive I've had and the first one went through about 3 PSU's before I gave up using the drive... couldn't be trusted...
So - if you have trouble getting a response from their tech support - try sales.. they're ever so quick.. :)
Ive solved the Whole Lacie wont mount problem.... Thanks to Lacie support center, Best Buy, The internet and several Tech shops I took my crashed lacie d2 quadra 500 GB hard drive to for help when it crashed. They didn;t help and none of the stuff I bought helped either. Here is the solution: Take any of your crashed lacie Hard drives (That are clicking and making a noise to a Windows OS) FOOTNOTE: NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS, YOUR LACIE HAS NOT CRASHED AND DOES NOT NEED DATA RECOVERY$$$$$$$$ Take it to a Windows (XP worked on mine) install your lacie one button disk, after its installed properly, Run the lacie one button recovery by clicking the blinking and clicking switch on the hard drive the program will come up and show the Lacie Hard drive. Go to windows control panel and run add hardware program and search once. (if it hasnt mounted it will not find it) just let the search go through once and after it says can-not find hardware leave it open. Go to My Computer and open it, keep the window open that shows all of your drives. Wait about 4-8 hours depending on what you have going on (go to the movies or go to sleep) and come back and your lacie drive will be mounted. (THIS IS NOT THE LAST STEP- DONT GET HAPPY YET) This is whats going to burn your attitude to a new level. The Lacie Hard drive is SUPER un responsive. I advise opening just the main window and taking a look at all the folders and files you have on them. ( i solved mine by simply erasing the Video files. Final cut pro cache folders etc.) if you use your hard drive for things like editing video and audio then more than likely your drive is slightly corrupted (don't get angry) this does not mean its trashed, it means that there is a problem with file structure and a single or several files confused the hard drive. Once again your lacie is not trash. I used mine for video editing in Final cut Pro, and Audio in Pro Tools, among other things like saving photos and software, etc... Just take the time to simply delete what you know you dont need.. or even better, format the entire drive and it will be like new. Another step you can take in mounting your Lacie is to download Mac Drive 7, install it on a PC- not MAC, this process WILL NOT work on a MAC (none of these steps will work on a mac- Trust me, not matter what these nerds say, dont believe that it will- its going to cost you.) Install the Mac Drive 7 on a pc, run the Error Check and repair function and it will take about an hour depending on what you have on your drive and how many errors are found. and It will fix the drive. As stated previously - these steps will ONLY MOUNT YOUR DRIVE. Access to the files and folders on your drive will be very unresponsive. Basically if you plan on copying a movie to your desktop forget about it. 30Mb would take about 2 hours. 6Kb took close to 4 mins to copy from the lacie. You wont be able to back it up so forget about that too. Just follow the begining steps and find out what has done this to your Lacie (you know what it is!). As stated previously- I used my LACIE D2 qudra 500 GB Hard drive (that is only 6 months used) for average things like downloading, uploading, saving, etc... the same things you do, Plus I ran Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, and a S**T load of other programs on this drive and what confused or "Corrupted" my lacie and made it BLINK, CLICK, and make STRANGE
Thank you! I have a LaCie 120GB "design by Porche" with FW & USB. During an export from FCP it crashed and there where no way mount it. The disk tool in my macs could't recognize it at all. Talked to the LaCie support but they couln't tell me anything aI didn't know before. Find your comment (16) and followed your rekomendation using MacDrive on a PC AND I was able to mount the disk (some corrupted files). THANK YOU!
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The drive has probably failed. Fixya has received numerous fix requests on these external USB connected drives. Check the Lacie website for possible diagnostic software, or other options of what to do. If the drive has indeed failed, recovery of your data will be doubtful to non-existent, pretty much as the failure of a desktop or laptop PC drive.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
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I am having the same trouble as described by quite a few people on this site. Did we waste our money or what?
I have a 500GB LaCie P3 HD USB 2.0 that the other day started to behave in the exact maner as described, amber indicationlight and with a suspiciuos clicking sound. No contact with the HD. I swapped the powersupply from an identical unit and I even dismounted it from the casing and tried it in my stationary computer but with no changes. The clicking still continued and no connection established. I'm afraid I have lost almost 500GB of valuable data. I will probably never again buy this brand. =..(
Last week my 500GB LaCie Porsche drive started with the clicking and blinking when turned on, then a few days later refused to mount altogether on Mac OS X. Just blinking and clicking non-stop.
LaCie's support page suggested it could be related to the power supply. I was skeptical, but tried plugging in the power supply from a much older 125GB LaCie drive, and sure enough, it starts up clean without clicking and mounts just fine. All my data is intact.
Don't send your drive in for data recovery before ruling out a power supply problem --- this failure really can be caused by a faulty power supply.
Same problem here, formatted the drive, moved the data (lots of data) and it started clicking. A couple of days later I noticed it was warm to the touch so I unplugged it for a day. When I plugged it back in the pc would not recognize it and I cannot get it to run and my data is in limbo... any help is appreciated.
Chris
500Gb Lacie D2 Quadra with the same problem of flashing led and not mounting on the desktop (Mac G4 Mirror), traced to the power supply (57w) going down on power, both 12v and 5v supplies are available but the main power to run the drive drops to below an adequate output, hence the clicking and whirring evident from the drive with simultaneous flashing led.
Testing with another Lacie power supply (250Gb D2) this time a 34w unit got the drive up and running, however, and this is the reason for this post, this lower power PSU failed a week later whilst waiting for a warranty replacement from Lacie (5 weeks and still waiting for the new PSU from them. they have no stock)
Message for all Lacie D2 users, check the power supplies first, test with another Lacie PSU, do not run the drive on a lower rating (34w) PSU it will fry it and leave you with another failed power supply.
If you are in a tight spot use the temporary power supply to move your data to another drive and get the correct 57w power supply before running the drive again.
Don't do as I did assume any Lacie power supply will run any Lacie hard drive, they won't, fortunately I had a second back up, but am 2 drives down and no new PSU's available to buy anywhere.
Try and purchase another spare 57w power supply, something all D2 users should do for long term security, as these do not seem to be very reliable and getting warranty support from Lacie on these is currently impossible.
The lack of 57w power supplies from Lacie and its distributors across the world is surely a warning to be noted!!!!!!
Buyers beware!
500Gb Lacie D2 Quadra with the same problem of flashing led and not
mounting on the desktop (Mac G4 Mirror), traced to the power supply
(57w) going down on power, both 12v and 5v supplies are available but
the main power to run the drive drops to below an adequate output,
hence the clicking and whirring evident from the drive with
simultaneous flashing led.
Testing with another Lacie power supply (250Gb D2) this time a 34w unit
got the drive up and running, however, and this is the reason for this
post, this lower power PSU failed a week later whilst waiting for a
warranty replacement from Lacie (5 weeks and still waiting for the new
PSU from them. they have no stock)
Message for all Lacie D2 users, check the power supplies first, test
with another Lacie PSU, do not run the drive on a lower rating (34w)
PSU it will fry it and leave you with another failed power supply.
If you are in a tight spot use the temporary power supply to move your
data to another drive and get the correct 57w power supply before
running the drive again.
Don't do as I did assume any Lacie power supply will run any Lacie hard
drive, they won't, fortunately I had a second back up, but am 2 drives
down and no new PSU's available to buy anywhere.
Try and purchase another spare 57w power supply, something all D2 users
should do for long term security, as these do not seem to be very
reliable and getting warranty support from Lacie on these is currently
impossible.
The lack of 57w power supplies from Lacie and its distributors across the world is surely a warning to be noted!!!!!!
Buyers beware!
I've got the same problem as the topic-starter :( :(
I did not try out a new power supply (I'm planning to)
Any updates about this problem?
I'm experiencing the same problem with my Lacie 500GB d2. I'm sooo frustrated. It has appeared back on my network a few times, so I know the information still there, but then after a couple of minutes it just start to malfunction. The clicking thing is happening in the led light of the drive and the led light of the power suplpy as well.
First thing it thought "Power Supply". So I went to get one in the store, Best buy and Circuit City, NO LUCK, they don't sell it by it self.
I guess I have to get it from Lacie's web site?????
Now more than ever after reading all the comments from people that experience the same problem makes me feel there is hope to recover all my info, stuck in the drive currently.
I'm going to try to get a power supply from lacie, since I have tried another one from another company and did not work.
Any suggestions?
Maxtor Personal Storage Device 3100 has recently gone astray on me. Worked fine 2 days ago. Now the computer won't recognize it. Neither under My Computer, Device Manager, or anywhere. Simply won't show up anymore. Even a new USB cable wouldn't help. Hear the clocking noise in it and the occasional beep like it's operating, but can't quite tell. Power light (Green) comes on normally. The yellow/orange light doesn't come on that indicates it active.
All my USB Ports are operational. So before I can even assess if the drive has failed, I need the computer to find it first. Any help?
i have the exact same problem.... ****!! what to do??
my 750 bg hard drive is blinking
Exact same problem described by thread starter.
I pulled the drive out of the chassis and placed it in a different usb enclosure.. worked fine after that.
I'm having the same problem. But it's not going back to normal. Can you really just swap the enclosure?
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