Just over a year ago one of my clients moved into a new house, complete with a swish new home entertainment system that includes a Sonos home audio system. The Sonos installer was adamant that the music library had to be on an external hard drive, and they supplied a LaCie Ethernet drive for the purpose.
I was asked to provide a data network with wireless capability. This was delivered by an Apple Airport Extreme sexy white box linked to a utilitarian Netgear modem / router hidden away in a cupboard. I connected it all up and away we went. A few days later the Sonos installer rang to say they were having trouble connecting the Ethernet drive, would I sort it out for them. After hours and hours of fiddling we eventually got it working by hanging the ZonePlayer off the Netgear router along with the Airport.
The Sonos system just sprung into life so not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth me and the Sonos technician left it at that. I did smell a rat because we could only connect the clients iMac via wireless, not via an ethernet cable. But the house was wired for sound, the client was happy (and dancing in the kitchen with Mrs Client) so we left it there.
Last week I got a call, the system had gone wrong, client couldn't sync his iPod. Yesterday I sat for nearly seven hours trying to get the system back working. Having tried all sorts of things to establish a link with the LaCie drive I gave up. Hang on here, I'm getting to the point, there was a ticking noise from the drive. Like death watch beetle. I suspected a hardware failure and contacted a disk recovery company. They suggested I send them the drive and prepare my client for a bill of £200 to £700 for their services.
I thought I'd try to get some advice from elsewhere so I posted a message on a technical website, and I also emailed another client who had bought a similar LaCie drive some months ago. I'm getting to the point now, I learnt a surprising few facts about LaCie drives.
Contributors to the technical site suggested the problem might not be the drive, it could be the power supply. They sent in stories of how drives had appeared to fail, then came back online when the power supply had been changed. This included instances where there was some power but obviously not enough power for proper operation. I was amazed, I had never thought that a power supply (that odd black transformer thing) could partially work making the drive light up but not actually run correctly. Surely that would be the first thing LaCie would suggest you check?
Then I got an email from the other client, he had exactly the same experience with his drive just short of its first birthday. Being a lawyer by profession he'd badgered LaCie sales in Tabernacle Street and had been given various suggestions - including that he check the power cable. Understandably I think he just thought they meant the bit of cable from the mains plug into the transformer. So he tried another and of course it made no difference. He sent the drive to LaCie and eventually he got a new drive, minus his data.
I'm left with the thought that LaCie have a problem with power to these drives. Are they letting us down by not making this clear? I don't know, but I do know people aren't going to carry around spare LaCie power units just on the offchance that this is the cause of drive failure.
Here's the punchline - if your drive fails, maybe its the power supply not the drive that is at fault.
