Lacie bought out – the future customer service can only get better?
There are quite a number of media companies in the north west of England. CDR – Manchester Data Recovery Services – has already performed successful recovery services for quite a few. High-resolution video takes up lots of storage space, and the storage of choice for many of these companies is high capacity external devices using a firewire 800 or eSata connection. Sometimes they are in a RAID configuration too. Most of the devices we see through with this configuration are made by Lacie or G-Tech. It seems now Lacie is being gobbled up by Seagate. Good, I say. It might go some way to improving Lacie’s woeful customer service (more of that here too).
Many of the customers are disappointed enough that their Lacie “Bigger Disk” or “Quadra” external HDD has failed, particularly when the device is less than 12 months old, and they have not caused the failure (e.g. dropping the hard disk drive). However, to perform data recovery in a safe and effective manner it is essential to remove the hard disk drive from the caddy. Unfortunately, Lacie (amongst others) ensures there is always a warranty sticker over an important screw which allows access to the hard disk drive in the caddy. Opening up the caddy immediately invalidates the warranty, regardless of whether the disk is faulty.
Warranty sticker highlighted in red – remove at your peril!
It can be particularly grating to have to pay for data recovery services and then also replace the £300+ external hard disk drive which has failed in the first place. Some manufacturers are more moderate and will honour the warranty on the basis that there is an invoice or a report from a data recovery company who have ensured that the disk has been handled in an appropriate manner.
However, we would go as far to suggest that you should simply not buy an ‘external hard disk drive’. That is to say, you are better off buying a standard internal 3.5″ or 2.5″ hard disk drive then buying the caddy separately to make it an external disk with USB or firewire connectivity. That way your warranty won’t be jeopardised by removing the disk from the caddy. Moreover, your warranty for the disk is likely to be 2 or 3 years rather than 1 year, and you will also avoid dubious and potentially disastrous additional features like the Western Digital ‘Smartware‘.