LaCie Power Supplies

In 2006 and 2007 I bought five LaCie external disc drives, mostly the d2 or d2 Quandra models with a capacity of 500GB. I also bought two LaCie Mini 500GB drives, the kind that match a mac mini and sit neatly underneath it.

In 2008 the power supplies started failing. The light would flash but the drive wouldn’t mount. With more than one drive I was quickly able to swap power bricks and confirm the problem. LaCie, to their credit, replaced each power supply without complaint, although on one occasion it took a while as they were out of stock. This happened four times with the d2 drives.

Last week it happened again. This time I ordered a drobo, ripped out the drives from the LaCie d2s and installed them in the drobo. As soon as I got that up and running one of the LaCie mac mini power supplies drives failed! Luckily I’ve now got a large stock of power supplies so I’ve just swapped it over.

Six power supply failures out of seven drives. Not good.