Without warning I lost 500gig of media....The drive is 1 year old, I need my media but can't aford to have data recovery which could cost $2000+. Does anyone have an idea of how I can get my media off this drive that is not be recognized by the computer? I'll be calling Lacie on Monday because I'm still ubder the warranty. Their site's FQA states that they don't retrive the data. I have an issue with this especially since I'm still in the warranty period. Any input would be appreciated. I know what to do movig forward (redundancy) but I need to save my media.

Thanks!

S

I lost everyting on a LaCie one  time that was under a year old - a director I work for had his Lacie tank in less than two weeks.  I will never purchase anything with the Lacie name on it again. 

You might get somewhere opening the enclosure and hooking the drive up internally and seeing if your system will read it.  Is it making any noises or just not being recognized by the system anymore?  That is what mine did - Windows would see it and just say "this drive is not formatted...".  Gotta love it.

g-technology.com.  Their drives will keep you running.

When I put my ear to it I can hear that dreaded sound of clicking which I know means a bad sector.....Thanks for your input.

I've been unimpressed with the build quality of LaCie for quite some time.  Any company that depends on surface mount soldering to hold a connector in place definitely doesn't get my vote.  And you can add to that the notorious heating issues with some of their lines.  The exterior styling is attractive, though.

You may be able to physically remove the offending drive and recover it using something like Spinrite.  You will need to be able to mount the drive in a PC and boot using the Spinrite software.  Since I believe that model is actually a RAID array you should process both.

Once Spinrite has recovered the sector you should reinstall the drives in the LaCie case exactly as they were and get everything that you need off them.  Then bin the LaCie!

Of course the above will void the warranty.    If your media is more valuable to you than the cost of the LaCie, then try it.  If not, replace the LaCie.  Of course if you do that, you will still be left with a drive that has a poor track record when used for NLE applications.

Actually, just re-reading your original post, you probably have one of the grey 500 GB drives.  They're a single drive unit that relies on thermal conduction for cooling.  That's OK for the intermittent access in a typical office environment or for backup storage.  It's not OK for the continuous access that media streaming for a NLE requires.  You can expect premature failure even if they replace the drive with a similar unit.

You're right. Will I still be able to use your steps to recover the data

It should be possible, and you don't need to return the drive to the LaCie case to access it once you've recovered it.  It should be readable plugged directly into your PC.