Found a lacie 120GB desktop storage, but have ??'s

I never really knew what the silver thing that was on my computer desk was. It always turned on when my fathers ibook turned on. A few weeks ago my sister cleaned all my fathers stuff off the computer table since he passed away we just put it in storage. Tonight I went down to see if it was a backup desktop harddrive. And sure enough it is. It's a 120GB drive, that has 3 connections on the back. The only one i know about it is, a round one with like 4 or 5 pins in it. I've seen the connection before but dont know the name of it.

If I find the wire that is for this, can i just hook it up to my dell computer? Or do i need software for it? If that is the case, i dont know where it is or if we even have it. I've never seen any lacie software in the book and books of program cd's we have.

Is it just cheaper to buy a larger desktop harddrive nowadays anyway?

All the ones I've ever used just plug straight into a USB/Firewire port (using the standard appropriate cord) - the round one may be a power cord perhaps.. some are USB powered, however. I've never put drivers on for any of mine and they all work fine

500GB for like $120. Memory is cheap now of days.

2005GLI wrote in post #4185611
I never really knew what the silver thing that was on my computer desk was. It always turned on when my fathers ibook turned on. A few weeks ago my sister cleaned all my fathers stuff off the computer table since he passed away we just put it in storage. Tonight I went down to see if it was a backup desktop harddrive. And sure enough it is. It's a 120GB drive, that has 3 connections on the back. The only one i know about it is, a round one with like 4 or 5 pins in it. I've seen the connection before but dont know the name of it.

If I find the wire that is for this, can i just hook it up to my dell computer? Or do i need software for it? If that is the case, i dont know where it is or if we even have it. I've never seen any lacie software in the book and books of program cd's we have.

Is it just cheaper to buy a larger desktop harddrive nowadays anyway?

That connector is for the power brick. All of the silver LaCie drives used it. The brick will be a mid-line style, and will either be labeled as LaCie or Rexon.

Since you said there are 3 connections on the back, and if the round one is the power input, then the other two must be firewire 400. If the connector wasn't one of those three, then you have 2 firewire and one USB (since there can only be one usb port on an external unless there is a built in hub).

-Phil

gonne bring this back up. is 120gb alot? My fiancee is thinking of buying me a 500gb external hd for christmas as someone said memory is cheap. Is it possible to have this 120gb drive hooked up with the 500gb driver as another backup?

and another question after reading thru about bunch of threads im a lil concerned about any future driver purchase crashing. I know they'll crash, but some where reporting it to be very early. Between the 2, which would be a better purchase, lacie or seagate?

2005GLI wrote in post #4224039
Between the 2, which would be a better purchase, lacie or seagate?

I personally don't have any experience with LaCie but have seen several reports of Locie failures posted on POTN. Seagate and Western Digital are reliable, at least in my experience.

120Gb of space is quite good (store about 25,000 RAW from 20D). You can use it as second backup for those extremely important photos, or files, in addition to your 500Gb coming soon. You can take a picture of the back of this 120Gb storage and post it here. I'm sure the experts can tell straight away what the connectors are.

Seagate.
LaCie is a funny little company that re brands stuff with there name on it, they make the things like the box for the external drive, but buy the electronics for the controller and the actual hard drive from elsewhere,.
The drives inside could be from anywhere,

Mac people are more familiar with them as in the old days they were one of very few companies making lots of nice Mac add ons..

The point is, with the hard drive, when you buy a Seagate, you know exactly what brand drive is in that box. With the LaCie, it could be anything.

That being said, I would still get the power brick and get it working (the connector I believe is called "mini-din" )
but get a nice Seagate as well

Just check out the manufacture warranties. The Seagate's come with a 5-year, and the LaCie's are much shorter.

First off, sorry about your father's passing. That's always a painful event.

I've had the LaCie Firewire 400 120GB drive attached to my PC for several years with no problems. At the time it was purchased, there weren't many cost effective alternatives for external HD's.

I'm always amazed at advice on web sites. You probably have a perfectly good drive, but "memory is cheap", so just lay out another $120 for a different HD. I don't get it. IMO 120 GB will hold a lot of images, more than enough for the average amateur. Periodically, you'd probably want to dump off some of those files to CD's or DVD's anyway, as an alternative backup strategy.

Please do not be put off by some of the comments regarding LaCie's reliability. I've seen plenty of posts on various sites regarding crashes of WD & Seagates also. That's just in the nature of HD's. The one valid point is that when you buy one of those, you know whats in the box. For me, that hasn't made a difference with this unit.

Regarding your original question, assuming yours is the firewire version, the top round socket is for the power brick and below that two firewire slots. One connects to the computer and the second allows you to connect a second firewire drive in a chain. The only identification besides serial number mine has is a sticker with "T 5148 LL/A" on it. Don't know if that's the model number or not.

No software is necessary as all you need do is connect it to your computer, power it up and Windows should recognize it. You would then access it through "My Computer", where it should show up as another hard drive.

Perhaps if you need more information, you can look at LaCie's web site www.lacie.com. They may not list your particular model anymore, but use the "Contact Us" area and you should get some help.

Good luck,

thanks guys for the feedback. Im going to dig in the pile-o-dads computer stuff. Just boxes and boxes of stuff that he just never tossed away. Im sure I'll find the wires somewhere. If I do i'll see if i can hook it up to the dell tower and get it to work. I'de be curious to know wahts on it too.

I have used LaCie drives of all kinds for years, and without any problems. In fact, I am still using an external LaCie CD burner that I have had for over 8 years. I keep on using it because it has never given me any trouble. Along a couple of other external drives, I have two LaCie hard drives, one of Porshe design in 500GB, and another 160GB USB/Firewire combo. I have had Seagate hard drives fail, as well as Western Digital, but I still keep on buying them when I need to. Any drive can fail when you least expect it.

If you don't have enough USB ports on your computer, you could always buy a small self-powered USB hub. That way you can connect several drives to your computer. You can have not only photos on a 2120GB drive, but some movies as well.

One thing you can do with the hard drives you save photos at, but ones you don't have to access in a daily basis, is to disconnect them from the computer. I don't remember how to do that on a PC, but on a Mac you must first dismount the drive by dragging its icon to the trash can. Once you do that, the hard drive disappears from the screen, and then it's safe to turn it off or disconnect it.

No problems whatsoever with about 5 or 6 different LaCie externals (not all mine) (FW, USB2, and triple interface. Porsche design, Brick and Rugged)