Lacie Biggest S2S HELP!
by scott tupper
on
Aug 17, 2009 at 4:10:42 pm
Our 3 year RAID caught a cold and since it's out of warranty Lacie hasn't been all that helpful. R/W speeds are in the toilet. Tested another array and it appears that the problem is not with the Lacie supplied 2port pci-e card.
It has wanted to rebuild itself twice in the last week, different drive each time.
I initiated a rebuild (removed drive) and that seemed to fix it, for about a day.
Friday I wiped and reconfigured (safe+fast RAID level 0+1 I think), still no love and today it wants to rebuild a drive again.
I am thinking bad storage processor in the box?
Does anyone have any suggestions or other tests to run to determine cause?
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by Jordan Woods on Aug 17, 2009 at 7:05:22 pm
it is 3 years old and lacie has a 2 year warranty, rough. It sounds like it lived an extra year past its expiration date. I would back up data, and walk slowly away from it.
it could be possible you have cascading drive failures though. Are you sure all the drives you place/replace are 100% verified good? you aren't buying drives at Fry's right? If so, never ever ever buy from them, I watched them throw drives across the floor, in their packaging... but still terrible.
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by scott tupper on Aug 17, 2009 at 7:16:18 pm
Thanks Jordan.
Even though I performed a bad sector test, drive #3 is rebuilding again!
I second your "stay away from Frys".
Would you suggest drive replacement or total unit replacement?
Frankly I have never been happy with their products, this is the second Lacie box to expire on me.
Thanks again
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by Bob Zelin on Aug 17, 2009 at 11:22:49 pm
NO ONE is ever happy with Lacie products. (oops, is Lacie a sponsor on Creative Cow ?). I have been bashing Lacie for years now, and if you look at forums like Final Cut Pro, and AJA Kona, you will see people all saying the same thing. Why would you ever buy such a product ? Want a recommendation for a better RAID array - it's easy - look to your left, and look to your right on this very forum. EVERY MANUFACTURER you see listed here makes better products than Lacie, and EVERY MANUFACTURER will treat you better, and with respect, more than Lacie will. I have never seen Cal Digit, Sonnet, Maxx Digital, Dulce, Fibrenetics, Active Storage, or anyone else that you see advertise on Creative Cow EVER treat their customers like Lacie does. And yet you -YOU MONKEY - probably never reads Creative Cow, or searches out this subject to see opinions of others who have had terrible experiences with Lacie. In the future, it is my opinion that you post on assorted forums and ask things like "what disk drives do you guys like to use" - post on various forums, and get some opinions. NEVER base your final decision on cost - because you now see what happens.
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by scott tupper on Aug 18, 2009 at 3:21:08 pm
Hey Bob thanks for the morning chuckle.
Unfortunatley we relied upon our "vendor" at the time to make this decision (don't get me started).
And you, you crazy haired video engineer ;-) the Cow IS the first place I go for insight. Power of the people! I have been reading Biscardi's low buck SAN article over and over and hey if it works in broadcast then it can work in corporate.
Money is always the issue, but thanks to you I have a bit more ammo and will go back to my manager and fire both barrels!
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by Jordan Woods on Aug 18, 2009 at 7:54:37 pm
It is possible the drives came from the same lot. If that lot had an issue in manufacturing you are seeing them all fail at the same time (cascading failure)
or the box is just bad. Hey, on the bright side, your box hasn't caught fire, like older 1TB firewire ones.
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by scott tupper on Aug 18, 2009 at 8:04:54 pm
Caught fire!?!
Bob and Jordan stop, you guys are killing me!
I like the Maxx Digital/Final Share option, can anyone comment on Studio Network Solution's product EVO?
ISCSI is interesting, shared storage definately!
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by Bob Zelin on Aug 18, 2009 at 9:31:55 pm
Studio Network Solutions is a great company ESPECIALLY if Pro Tools is part of what you are trying to use. There are a lot of great solutions on the market - it's all about your budget. Call Studio Network Solutions, Call Maxx Digital. Call them all - do your research - don't rely on a "vendor". Narrow down, based on your needs, your budget, and your reaction on how these companies treat you when you call them. Then ask again on this forum. There are lots of good choices on the market today.
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by Chris Blair on Aug 19, 2009 at 2:12:45 pm
I will chime in about LaCie.
I've had mixed results and customer service from LaCie. We've found that their consumer targeted drives fail at an alarming rate. But we have 2 of their rack-mount NAS appliances (they're just striped using spanning...no RAID to improve speed and performance), and they've been rock solid for 18 months. When I called customer service to tweak some settings, they were very responsive (although it's not possible to tweak much of anything in them).
On the other hand...we also HAD several of their desktop LaCie Biggest Disks and every single one of them failed within a year. Two or three of them were bought/provided by clients for big projects that required loads of external storage, so we weren't out any money on them, but I couldn't believe the failure rate. I literally have 3 of those big pretty silver external 1TB drives sitting on our workbench deader than a doornail. They won't even spin up to attempt any recovery.
At the time I bought the ethernet rack-mount drives, we hadn't had any failures with the other external units....but based on the failures I'd probably never buy LaCie products again. What's odd is that if you look for reviews on their products online, you'll find the same mixed bag. Some products shine, others fail miserably. Seems odd that some products are well-engineered and others are not.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: Lacie Biggest S2S HELP! by scott tupper on Aug 19, 2009 at 10:17:05 pm
So close to putting this thread to rest.
I have 2 quotes one for a 4TB Dulce ProDQ and one for the 4TB MaxxEvo 2k Expando. In terms of expandability, why is the Evo soo much cheaper than the Dulce system where I would have to buy a ProEX (their expansion box) and buy another RAID array as opposed to simply buying a second Evo array and daisy-chain it? I realize the guts for port multipling are inside the EVO, but comparing the 2 solutions doesn't seem fair.
