LaCie

LaCie Big Disk 500 GB d2

• 2010-13-09 power supply fails, gives ticking noise, like a time bomb
  • LaCie 500 GB d2 Big Disk, power supply 706479, 34 W, 5V 2.0A, 10W and 12V, 2.2A, 26,4W
  • LaCie » Identifying your power supply
  • LaCie » Identifying your power supply » 706479 info tag
• [Failed Lacie d2 Ethernet Big Disk (RAID) http://forum.hddguru.com/failed-lacie-ethernet-big-disk-raid-t9271.html]
• Runtime.org » RAID Reconstructor
• VirtualLab Mac OS X » RAID Reconstructor

De eerste partitie van 64 blokken bevat bad blocks en wordt daarom niet gebruikt. De tweede partitie bevat een HFS Plus file system.

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/rdisk1' #: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: GUID Extra 976794270 @ 64 (465.8G)
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=976794334 (465.8G) DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

2010-10-29 Yahoo! Data recovered!

• Bought a Sweex 3.5" IDE Enclosure for €20 at ParaDigit, Nachtegaalstraat, Utrecht.
• Opened enclosure. Was somewhat hard, because the two tabs to push where initially not visible. First you need to slide off the two black strips on both sides. Initially this can be hard because they seem stuck, but they're not. Use some force to release that stickiness.
• Opened the LaCie 500 GB d2 FireWire Big Disk.
• Took out the two separate 250 GB disks.
• Connected the disk closest to front of enclosure to Sweex power and IDE cables.
• Connected power supply and turned on switch.
• Disk Utility shows the disk but claims it is an unknown disk and asks to initialize the disk. Of course not, since the disk is part of a RAID 0 configuation.
• But disk is recognized and seems in good condition.
• Powered down the disk and detached cables.
• Repeated procedure with second disk, the one in the back of the LaCie enclosure, closed to logic board.
• No response in DIsk Utility.
• Powered down disk.
• Copied jumper settings from first disk to second disk and repeated procedure.
• Disk Utility now sees the disk and the HFS+ file system and mounts it! Cool.
• Quick and with care copied all data to internal MacBook disk.
• Checked data on completeness and correctness. Everything appears to be fine.
• Only weird thing is that Disk Utility mentions it as a 500 GB disk, while it is a 250 GB disk. Probably to previous RAID 0 config in LaCie enclosure.
• It surprised me to find all data and find it in fine shape. I guess this is because the total was less than 250 GB, therefore fitted on a single disk and did not need space on the second disk. Wonder if RAID 0 works like this. I thought RAID 0 would stripe data over n disks so that you always need same n disks to get complete and consistent data. Weird.
• Now that all looked fine, I put the first disk in the Sweex enclosure, and, assuming that it contains no data whatsoever, erased and re-initalized the disk. Copied all saved data back to this new disk, gave the disk the same name as before (Neon) and reconnected it to the original computer (Mac mini).
• There it is! Volume Neon alive and kicking on the Mac mini again, including my complete iTunes library, my daughter's Garageband efforts and a ton of movies.

Will probably avoid buying LaCie in the future. The seem incompetent on their own hard disks, do not cooperate in providing disk parameters, nor support you in trying to recover your data.