Are LaCie products PC friendly?
 

I would like to know if LaCie products are user friendly and reliable when used on PCs. I have seen them marketed more for Apples and that is my concern. I just got a LaCie USB/Firewire PCMCIA card for the laptop and want to know if there have been any known issues.

The hardware you have probably works on PC. To check, go to the support section of the lacie website and see if you can download PC drivers for your product.
Or check the website to see if it says the device is compatible with PC/Windows.

For Lacie Firewire drives:
You DO have to check while file system you are working in.
FAT32: compatible on both systems, 2GB limitation
Mac file system, NTFS / Windows: Won't work on the other platform without special software (about fifty bucks)

I have 2 LaCie external hard drives connected via firewire. No problems. I'm running XP SP2.

i have a lacie 250gb external, works like a charm on my pc...no problems what so ever

Thanks for the info folks. If there are any issues the with this LaCie card, I'll be sure to post them. One thing that I have noticed is that the shell for these cards are identical for all "different" makers which indicates that one manufacturer is making them for all of the resellers and just placing different decals on them. With that being said, why is there such a price difference between brands? I am willing to pay more for a truly better product but it's aggravating to see these identical cards with $20.00 price differences!

I now dislike LaCie because of this. I think this is just like generic vs. brand name drugs. If you are correct about rebranding the product with a decal, there is no difference but the brand name counts for something with many people. LaCie's external drives are Maxtors stuck in aluminum cases (I know this because I've had to pry several open, but I've already complained about this on another thread). They don't make much of anything except maybe their monitors and calibration tool - I don't know about those. They make much of their money on rebranding things by putting them in shiny cases with cheap FireWire or USB controllers. I just try to be aware of the rebranding practice now, which is hard. I think this is just a standard business model. I've certainly seen it outside the computer component industry: http://209.41.170.70/cains/products/copack.cfm

With some products, it's actually one manufacturer making the stuff and then another company sells it with their branding.

DVD media is a good example of this. Taiyo Yuden makes DVDs for a bunch of other companies.

Thanks for that link Zach. That's about the just of it. I asked the B&H computer rep if this was the case and he confirmed it. He said the difference though was the service on the backend, that's what you may be paying more for. I can agree with that. The least these manufacturers could do is change the cosmetics on each brand a little more to complete the illusion. This side by side comparison shopping on the internet has really educated us.

my two cents
 

I have a LaCie 400 GB external HD connected via FW 800 to a home built PC. It's worked well, although I have experienced some weird behavior when capturing video...sometimes my PC "forgets" that the LaCie is there and terminates the capture. Don't know if this is a PC thing or LaCie thing...I've since gone to capturing on a internal 250GB HD, then storing duplicate files on the LaCie...

Cheers!

Andrew

LaCie card is going back!
 

Well, I got my LaCie card today and it seemed to work fine when I put it in the PCMCIA slot. It and all of the onboard ports were immediately recognized without incident. I then place a brand new, Sandisk Micro Cruzer 1 gig flash drive in one of the USB 2.0 ports. That was recognized as well. Here's where the trouble starts. When I tried to cut and paste a 700 Mb video file from my PC to the flash drive, the thing just locked up. I mean I couldn't do anything. The mouse wouldn't even move. So I pulled the card out of the slot and was able to move the mouse again. However, when I reinserted the card, it was not recognized and neither was the USB drive. I restarted the PC and loaded the card again along with the USB drive and the same thing happened. I was getting real frustrated by this time. So, I loaded LaCie's USB 2.0 drivers, which I later found were not necessary for XP according to their site, and restarted again but this time used another Sandisk drive that I had already used for a while. At first there were no issues with cutting and pasting a 300 Mb file several times back and forth. But, when I put the second USB drive in the second LaCie USB port on the card, the PC locked up again and would not respond until I released the card from the slot.

Both USB drives work fine in the PC USB ports so it's not them. It's this overpriced, hoopty, bucket LaCie card that is the problem! I went to LaCie's site and found that they don't even have toll-free tech support and I stayed on hold at .35 cents per minute for 5 minutes until I hung up and decided that card was going back. B&H was great and is shipping another brand ASAP. Unfortunately, I think they're all made by the same manufacturer because all of the shells look identical, just different decals and most importantly, different prices. What a sheep I am!! Bahhhhhh!!!

12v power option
 

I forgot to mention that this LaCie card has a 12v power input and power adapter (plugs into wall) that you can't see in any of the manufacturers product images. At first I was thinking that would defeat the need of portability but it turns out that power input is optional to use for devices that actually need power through the USB or Firewire ports on the card. All combo cards, and maybe others, probably have this feature since their shells are identical as I stated earlier.