Gents, I've just bought a LaCie d2 250G box, today. The paper instructions say that it's MAC OS formatted and that I should refer to the Win instructions for reformatting it NTFS. The cd tells me that when I go into Disk Management, it'll show up as a drive, I right click on the partition and carry on from there. Problem is, it doesn't appear in the drives list. Windows knows it's there because I get the usual "bong", and "Safely Remove" reports it as "LaCie Group SA LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0 IEEE1394 SBP2 Device".
I've sent a request for help to LaCie, but thought that somobody else here must have gone through this already.
I'm trying it on a Vaio laptop, firewire connected. I've confirmed that the Vaio's fine by connecting ADS Pyro firewire drives, they're fine, and the Vaio will happily talk to my Pan DX100 and Sony Walkman.
Any ideas?
Ta.
Hi
In LaCie-speak 'Mac OS formatted' is likely to mean DOS FAT32 I think - because a Mac can read/write to this but can't write to an NTFS drive (because M$ doesn't care to release that file system API code to the wider world).
Usually a FW device shows up as 2 things - the FW controller bridge, as listed by you, but also the drive itself. Its the latter that has to be selected to initialise the hard drive.
The drive should also show up in device manager, so have a look there. Just wonder If the FW bridge is being found but the drive is not installed correctly, perhaps the slave/master is wrong or the connector is loose, just a thought
It shows up in the "Safely Remove" list as a dcevice, but not in Device Manager under Disk Management.
I might have some more time tonight for a deeper investigation. Since the ADS drives work, I know the port's fine, so I'll connect an ADS drive and poke about to see how it gets reported, then try the same with the LaCie.
I'm beginning to wonder if XP Home is missing some significant parts, because I had similar problems when trying to get a desktop (XP Home as well) to recognise drives that had been striped on a Promise Raid in Win98. I solved that by plugging them into a Win2000 machine and reformatting there. Maybe that's what I have to do with the LaCie as well. Trouble is that it takes me a few days to get access to a Win2k machine.
So here's what I've found:
Right click on My Computer, select Manage.
Select Disk Management, and only the other drives in the Vaio are listed (C and D, two partitions on an 80G drive, called "Disk 0"). The LaCie isn't there in the list pane. In the graphic pane, I've got "Disk 1, Removable, No Media". I also get "Disk 2, Unknown, 232.88GB Not Initialized" and it shows the usual partition map. So, thinking that this is the drive, I right-click on the graphic and the popup menu offers "Properties" and "Help", with "New Partition" greyed out. I can't find any way to initialize it.
So then, I accidentally right-clicked on the disk name rectangle to the left of the graphic, and got a popup with Initialize on it. Bingo. Did that and reformatted and it appears as a drive.
Ho hum. You just have to persist and poke about in places where you don't feel safe.
Panic over.
For now.....
I'm leaving this thread up, because, although it makes me look a bit of a pillock, it's an object lesson I've learned the hard way; just because the instructions on the box don't make sense doesn't mean the job can't be done, you just have to persist.
Hi
From what you describe it does sound that the drive as supplied was Mac HFS+ formatted - LaCie has been much more likely to send out FAT32 drives to Mac users (which causes a whole raft of problems for video/audio software users later down the line), so its ironic that in your case they supplied a Mac-formatted drive to an XP user :o
I got it from Dabs, and there was no mention of it being formatted at all in any of the blurb I saw before purchase. I was surprised to find it was Mac formatted.
Older and a little wiser :)
If the drive has FireWire 1394b, that would likely be the explanation of why it's Mac formatted - Apple was an early adopter of this faster FireWire standard, and 1394b ports are fitted to all new desktop PowerMacs but still far from common on Windows PCs or most IBM PC Compatible motherboards.
Having said that, I'm amazed that a man with your inherent curiosity hadn't poke around a bit more deeply in Disk Manager - though, of course, if you'd done that at a time when there was no unformatted disk attached, you'd not have seen what you did eventually see with the LaCie attached.
Bob C
Generally, I try to keep away from the innards of these wireless sets, they frighten the hell out of me. That's why I ask questions rather than poke at random. I'm also rather worried when I find I have to use a menu item saying "format", knowing that one wrong move can delete quite a bit of history. Does that ring a bell? :D
Alan,
What drives me mad about computers is that you give them an instruction and they have the cheek to ask whether that action is something you always want to do.
Trouble is, one time in about 5,000, the answer is no, but I get so conditioned to blindly responding yes that, on the 5,000th time, something rather unpleasant happens.
And that's the excuse I'll continue to make about the time a couple of years' back when I formatted, under DOS, using Fdisk, the C: drive of my main office PC.
Mind you, it was in the early hours of the morning, too.
So, honestly, I can't think what you mean!
;)
Bob
We've all got a story like that buried somewhere :)
Trouble is, all my stories seem to be on the internet, not buried!
;)
Bob
I had a similar experience with a Lacie triple interface 500Gb drive I bought about 3 months ago.
I tried for about a month to get it to recognise it connected via USB2 - managed it about 3 times the first of which I had to format it. That time I captured some video onto it OK. Also generated a 6 minute uncompressed HDV MOV file - about 80+Gb all OK. Copied various files around. The drive seems OK but can't depend on it. I have a 250Gb Maxtor firewire on as well which sometimes I unplug to make it secure from other users - ie kids. The first time I did this the Lacie drive vanished and I could only get it back about twice. I bought it from DABS too and unfortunately went past the 30 day replacement time by a couple of days so I sent it back as faulty. That was about 2 months ago and I haven't had it back yet. When I do I'll revisit this item and see if it helps.
I'll be interested if your Lacie drive "disappears" if you ever use you PC without it.
Incidently as DABS have NO support I tried Lacie. Their support is as much use as a chocolate teapot. Also tried Microsoft who wanted about £50 to help me with it.
Hmmmmm!
I agree about the support, LaCie sent an automated reply asying that they might deal with it, then nothing.