LaCie harddrives

[Yorick]

One of my harddrives, a LaCie 160GB stopped working one day. So I sent it in to LaCie. They couldn't fix it. Said it would need data recovery, which would cost $1600.

I'm broke.

It did have most of the material backed up. On another LaCie drive.

Which also broke down a week later.

Both drives still under warranty.

So I sent the next one in.

I sent an email - do not erase or formatt the drive.
I made a phone call - do not erase or formatt the drive
I wrote on the box - Do not erase!

Without any communication from LaCie, I get the drive back yesterday.

Formatted. It had a faulty firewire port. Nothing wrong with the drive itself.

So now, I'm screwed. I've lost music. I've lost confidence in the drive. I know that shoudl I send it in, LaCie will ignore any request to not erase the thing. Data recovery is now impossible.

The rudeness of it all is astounding. I'm sure their policy is "well you shoudl have backed up", but I can think of a thousand scenarios, where due to the timing of a drive failing, a person CAN'T get the drive backed up.

It's like the builder of your house coming in to fix a leaky faucet, and throwing out all your furniture in the house.

It's like you going in to hospital to have minor operation on your ankle, and the doctor amputating your leg.

I mean, we wouldn't accept this in any other industry. The violation is extreme. The data is not theirs to throw away. Why don;t they take more care with peoples property? It boggles the mind. I'm not the first, I won't be the last.

I could imagine someone commiting suicide over this. It's really really upsetting to lose art you've created. It IS a struggle to put it out of my heade and move on.

I'd sue them, but I have no money.

Anyone else had this happen to them? Any lawyers here wanna do a pro bono class action for us?

It's not going to end here. The company needs to fix up it's communications, and the industry needs to frix itself up. We tolerate practices unthinkable in any other industry.

Imagine buying a new car. You drive it home. The brakes don't work. You call up. "Oh that just needs the latest patch. Bring it in and it'll be fine".

I mean get real.

Would we get served a meal in a restaurant unfinished? If we do, we're pissed off!

I like the builder analogy coming in to fix a tap, and destroying all your belongings in the process, to make sure the house is fine.

Unacceptable.

I will never buy another LaCie. They breakdown, and they erase your stuff. Pass on the message. Don't buy LaCie unless you want serious inconvenience.

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

That is a bummer Yorick. THat is shocking! You should definately take this further.

Can't you take them to a small claims court or something?

[johnny]

Bummer mate, sorry about your loss. I had a similar incident a few weeks ago, except in my case i knew my hard drive wasn't the problem. They kept telling me to format first before they'd sent a repairman. I kept refusing to do that, because there's too much valuable stuff on my harddrive, which in some cases (mods, music, movies) could be lost forever. They asked me why i didn't have a back up then. I have a 80 Gig harddrive, with almost 70 Gig of data on it. If you're gonna have to make a back up of that, you'll need a second harddrive. I asked if he bought a second car just in case his first one breaks down ?

[Yorick]

It's messed up Johhny. If they CAN save the data, they should. How hard is it, before testing the drive, to take the stuff off, format the drive, and then put it back on? How hard is that? They have the means. All attempts should be made to keep the drive as it was before failure. I mean, why bother sending it in for repair? Why not just send out a new drive???? The only reason I would want the drive repaired is to save the data!! So they delete the very thing I wanted saved!

Ross, how would I go about that? What small claims court would I go to? They are in Oregon, I'm in NYC.

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

Well Yorick, I don't know which court you would go to since Im over here in the UK. But, you could give your lawyer a 'quick call' (i.e. a no charges one) and ask him about it. Alternatively you could email the company and try and settle it out of court.

I know what you mean Johnny; it's pointless really. I mean what is the point in buying a second HDD anyway, that would just mean a waste of money. And backing up everything is very tedious and pretty pointless unless you own a server or something or you have some specific reason to. Also, if you had a second HDD you wouldn't really have the problem in the first place, so they would be out of a business.

[Yorick]

The irony is guys, that I have eight external drives. The two LaCies which were backing each other up, both failed.

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

Jees. That is very bad. Very very unlucky. I suppose that's just life in a nutshell, one minute its all going good, then something like this happens.

[Arledrian]

Sorry to hear about that, Yorick. That really is awful, especially when you stored all the music you made onto those drives. I guess now you'll be extra careful in future, backing things up onto external discs and CDs. I'll certainly steer clear of LaCie, so in any case, thanks for the warning.

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

[img]graemlins/offtopic.gif[/img]

Hey Arledrian! That sig is soo great!

[Arledrian]

Thanks dude. [img]smile.gif[/img] It's the first of many.