Noisy LaCie d2 triple interface HD
Matti Haveri
hard drive (8MB cache) from AppleStore and it works like a dream.
...but the drive is way too noisy! It is _very_ noisy if it is on a
table (any table). The noise is loudest if the HD is upright and
somewhat less if the HD is lying on its side (the rubber feet are
attached).
The noise stops if I hold the HD in my hand or put it on a thick soft
pillow.
So it seems that the spinning HD vibrates too much and this causes
excessive resonance on harder surfaces.
I have some experience about installing and using bare harddrives (IBM
Deskstar and Ultrastar) and I think that this drive vibrates way too
much to be normal. I don't know which drives LaCie uses with these
enclosures.
I find the noise level totally unacceptable so I will return the drive.
I guess the drive mechanism may be broken but I think I'm going to take
advantage of the the AppleStore's 14 day return policy instead of trying
to fix it with LaCie support.
How noisy is your LaCie d2?
--
Matti Haveri <mattiDOThaveriATsjokiDOTutaeiroskaaDOTfi> remove ei roskaa
Larry Riffle
nemo
> I just got a LaCie d2 250GB triple interface (1xFW400, 2xFW800, 1xUSB2)
> hard drive (8MB cache) from AppleStore and it works like a dream.
Hope you have fixed this problem and that you have a silent unit now!
I plan to buy that same disk (looks like a good deal to me!) but I
wonder if it's bootable with OSX, in general bur especially with a
firewire pc card?
Thanks for your reply (if you happen to be here after all that time of course!)
Matti Haveri
nemo <ne...@nautilus.net> wrote:
> Hope you have fixed this problem and that you have a silent unit now!
I returned the LaCie drive and got OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW800/400 + USB
2.0/1.1 Enclosure Kit and installed a 250G 7200RPM Hitachi Deskstar
7K250 in it.
The OWC enclosure doesn't feel as robust as the LaCie but I like it
better because of its slightly smaller size. The HD installation was
simple but nevertheless I was surprised to see no installation manual (I
later found an installation guide on OWC site). Only a FW800 cable was
included (the LaCie had practically all FW&USB cable variations
bundled). I had to buy a 3 euro local power cord to the external
universal power suppy (I got the LaCie from a local AppleStore so a
local power cord was bundled).
And now the drive is whisper quiet! The noise level is about equal to
the silent 15" AlBook with its 4200 RPM 80G Toshiba HD. Maybe LaCie's HD
was defective and vibrated too much or maybe it was a feature of the
drive. AFAIK the Deskstar is one of the quietest drives so I got it.
I got the drive for iMovie work and it (like the LaCie) can import and
export DV just fine. It doesn't matter whether I connect the camcorder
to the PB or to the FW disk (and the FW disk to the PB either via FW or
USB2) -- the video plays OK and it is not necessary to use the internal
HD for importing or exporting DV.
> if it's bootable with OSX, in general bur especially with a firewire
> pc card?
The LaCie and OWC could boot my 15" AlBook into Mac OS X 10.3 just fine.
My old 8600 boots into X via SCSI or ATA but it doesn't support FW
booting.
...
I'm considering to start archiving DV to big 160-250G FireWire disks.
WiebeTech seems to offer an elegant solution to this with its Combodock
and more spartan DriveDock (AC adapter only) or Super DriveDock (bus
powered & optional AC adapter). I'm not aware of any other vendor
offering such products.
These devices let you essentially to use a bare ATA drive and connect it
via FireWire to your Mac. You can then easily switch the HDs because
they are bare drives connected to the ATA-FW bridge and (an optional)
power adapter. Just like big floppies!
I think using HDs instead of tape may be more reliable (I'm going to use
tape as a backup, too). Retrieving the footage is also much faster and
doesn't produce wear and tear to the camcorder. Tape may also be prone
to occasional dropouts which may accumulate when "refreshing" old tapes
by copying them to new ones.
I haven't yet decide how to store DV to the HDs so that I can easily
retrieve them later with iMovie AND Final Cut? (I now use iMovie but I
may switch to FCE later).
One option would be to save (and "flatten") a completed iMovie project
as a DV stream and split it into 5-9 minute chunks with these handy
AppleScripts:
<http://www.oakstreetsoftware.com/qtscript.html#dvsplit>
iMovie 4 can also export selected clips as DV streams so it may be more
convenient to export <9 minute 20 second chunks for the archive.
I could then rename the clips sequentially like 20021102-20021208.dv,
20021208-20030218.dv etc so that they are sorted chronologically in list
views and the file name acts as a hint to the footage's date (or
content).
Then, later, I can just import the the desired clip(s) into iMovie or FC
and split them into scenes either manually or (hopefully) automatically
in FCE.
Another option would be to save finished iMovie projects so I can
re-edit titles, transitions etc. The downside is that it is hard to
import such projects into other iMovie projects without flattening them.
One extra benefit of plain DV streams is that they don't get corrupted
like complex iMovie projects sometimes do.
So it may be easiest to just store roughly edited projects with straight
cuts and minimal titles as DV streams so further editing is possible.
Any other ideas are welcome before I start :)
han...@gmail.com
Matti Haveri wrote:
> In article <4063931c$0$5584$626a...@news.free.fr>,
> nemo <ne...@nautilus.net> wrote:
>
> > Hope you have fixed this problem and that you have a silent unit
now!
>
> I returned the LaCie drive and got OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW800/400 +
USB
> 2.0/1.1 Enclosure Kit and installed a 250G 7200RPM Hitachi Deskstar
> 7K250 in it.
> > if it's bootable with OSX, in general bur especially with a
firewire
> > pc card?
>
> The LaCie and OWC could boot my 15" AlBook into Mac OS X 10.3 just
fine.
> My old 8600 boots into X via SCSI or ATA but it doesn't support FW
> booting.
>
What version of Mac OS 10.3.x are you using? Have you experienced any
problems with data loss or not being able to boot to you FW hitachi
drive?
I just purchased a Hitachi Deskstar 160 MB internal drive and was
wondering if it supported Mac OS 10.3.5+. I'm looking around at
enclosures with a FW connection on it so I can hook it up to my 500 MHz
pismo powerbook. What have you heard about ADS Tech Pyro 1394 drive
kit?
thanks!
Matti Haveri
han...@gmail.com wrote:
> What version of Mac OS 10.3.x are you using? Have you experienced any
> problems with data loss or not being able to boot to you FW hitachi
> drive?
I'm using Mac OS X 10.3.5 and I believe 10.3.7 and 10.4 will be just as
good as far as the drive is concerned.
In addition to the OWC Mercury Elite Pro, I recently got WiebeTech
ComboDock and two more 250G 7200RPM Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 drives and
they all work OK. No problems with booting via the FW drives.