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Excellent quality drive (2009-05-11)
The LaCie 2big Triple has been flawless. Very speedy backups using FireWire 800. The drive came in the mirrored RAID format I desired so, unlike other reviewers, I cannot attest to the difficulty in selecting different RAID configurations. So with that said, this drive has been an outstanding backup drive and works great with Apple's Time Machine.

Solid and dependable (2009-04-18)
Bought four (301256U) for work back when they were over $700 each, now they're a super bargain. The USB and Firewire both work fine with WinXP Pro. The drives keep cool, and they're in removable trays. (When is somebody going to make a nice RAID box that latches in bare drives--getting tired of trays.) We've filled these up with data, streaming 25GB per day over FW800, used them for portable storage. Rock solid over a year now. "User serviceable" with swappable drives.

At home I went cheap and bought a Calvary. The Calvary worked for USB but not for Firewire (saw the drive in My Computer but couldn't actually access it) on WinXP Home. Then the Calvary died--had some kind of internal electronic failure 13 months after buying it, no warranty coverage (so the files are still present on the bare drives inside the Calvary box, I can mount the individual drives with a USB/SATA dongle to get the data off). Will never buy another Calvary product and instead I'm shopping for a LaCie 2-big right now, deliberating between NAS and USB/Firewire for home use.

Wonderful RAID1 drive - I use it as my primary shared drive (2009-04-13)
I have had this 1TB drive for about a year now, and it has been flawless. I am using Windows XP.


QUIET and COOL:
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When I was shopping around, two of the biggest complaints I saw about OTHER drives, especially Western Digital RAID drives, were the loud fan noise, and high heat during operation. This Lacie unit is quieter than my laptop hard drive, and MUCH QUIETER than my laptop's cooling fan. The unit does have a fan, but I have never noticed it. Even when transferring hundreds of GB's of data for hours (during backup to another drive), it remains very cool...barely warmer than body temp. The beefy aluminum case is designed well as a heat sink.


RELIABLE:
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I have had it for about a year now with ZERO ISSUES. Never any data lost. Never any drive access issues. It's always there when I need it.


Mirrored Drive:
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I have it set to RAID1 mode, so it is two mirrored 500GB drives (seen as one 500GB drive by the computer. When I first got it, I tested this. I transferred a folder full of pictures, then removed one of the drives, then accessed the unit, and saw the folder of pictures. I then put the drive back in, and pulled the other out, and again saw the folder of pictures on the other drive. A little extra insurance.


SHARED DRIVE with AUTO ON:
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I have this hooked up to our primary computer in our basement with all of our pictures, music, and video on it. I have it set up as a shared drive, and I am able to access it from any other computer on my home network. I especially use this to access music files and pictures on our living room computer which I have hooked up to all the stereos on that floor.

I have it hooked up through USB, and I have the power switch set to Auto. It turns itself on and off automatically when I turn the computer on and off. On every startup, Windows XP always keeps it's shared status so I never have to fiddle with anything. It basically fuctions like an internal drive.

Do see my notes about sharing a USB drive in Win XP, below, though, if you are planning to share any USB drive. Look below in the "SHARING USB Drive on Win XP Tweak:" section.


USB vs. Firewire:
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I conducted data transfer speed tests. Firewire 400 really is faster than USB. I have a laptop with a 4-pin FW400 port, and of course USB ports. I also have another non-RAID Lacie d2 Quadra external drive with both FW and USB; I use this drive as my offsite backup drive (yes, I backup my RAID unit). I selected a 1.13 GB folder containing 167 picture and movie files, and did a drag and drop copy from one drive to the other. I had the 2big, and the d2 drives hooked up in various combinations of FW to USB. Here are the results:

2Big = Firewire 400
d2 = USB
xfer 1.13 GB from 2Big to d2 = 56sec
xfer 1.13 GB from d2 to 2Big = 53sec

2Big = USB
d2 = Firewire 400
xfer 1.13 GB from 2Big to d2 = 1:00 (1 minute)
xfer 1.13 GB from d2 to 2Big = 1:00

2Big = USB
d2 = USB
xfer 1.13 GB from 2Big to d2 = 1:10 (1 min, 10 sec)
xfer 1.13 GB from d2 to 2Big = 1:15

What does this tell us?
1. If you are backing up an external drive to another external drive, it pays to have at least one hooked up to Firewire.

2. It appears that either the FW interface on the 2Big, or the USB interface on the d2 is superior since the first test proved to be 4-7 seconds faster than the second test where the interfaces were swapped.


OTHER USB vs. FW THOUGHTS
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AUTO ON FEATURE: OK, so FW is faster than USB, so I should hook up the 2Big via FW all the time right? Well, for people with desktops and 6-pin Firewire 400 ports, or FW800 ports, the answer should be YES. However, for me, the answer is no because I only have a 4-pin mini-FW400 port, which is missing the 2 power pins. This matters because the Auto-On feature of the 2Big works by sensing the power state of either the USB power or the 5th and 6th pin on Firewire 400. So when I had the 2Big hooked up to my 4-pin FW400, it would just stay on after I turned off the computer. It would also spin down after about 10min of inactivity since it had no idea if the computer was on. This caused a 10 sec delay for the drive to spin up when accessed. OK, so I solved this issue by hooking it up to USB. Now it turn on/off with the computer, and stays spinning for quick access with no delay.


SHARING USB Drive on Win XP Tweak:
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One note, though. If you are planning to use USB and share the drive on your network with Win XP, you will need to make a quick tweak. Otherwise, you will pull your hair out trying to figure out why you can't see the shared drive from your other computers. This is true for ANY USB drive:

1. Follow the instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285089
2. In step 6 of Microsoft's instructions, set the IRPStacktSize value to "50" and "Binary."
3. You must then restart after changing the registry to have registry changes enabled.

You will then have no issues sharing any USB drive over your network.


BACKUP YOUR BACKUP:
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I am paranoid. I have this RAID drive which mirrors itself, but I also back it up from time to time on two other external drives. I also don't trust any backup software, since I've had too many weird experiences with them in the past. I delete everything from the backup drive, and do a bit-for-bit drag-and-drop of my RAID to the backup drive. Sure it takes longer, but the computer can do it while I sleep. I then keep one of the backups off-site in case of house fire, or other disaster.

Why do I do this with a RAID drive, you say? Well, as the Lacie Tech Support guy pointed out, if the interface of the RAID drive decides to corrupt a data file, then it will corrupt it on the mirrored drive also. So, having another backup in case of an interface failure can prevent data loss. Not to mention having a backup off-site in case of fire, etc...

Another note: Lacie tech support initially told me there was a master and a slave drive for RAID array rebuilds, but through my experimentation, I proved that this was not the case with that support guy on the phone, and he admitted that obviously I was right, and either drive can be the rebuild source drive. Just to be safe though, in the future if either drive were to fail on me, I would first immediately take out the faulty drive, then back up all of the data to another different external drive, and then insert a new RAID drive for the RAID array rebuild. I don't take chances with my data.

CONCLUSION:
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My Lacie 2Big has been great for almost a year, and I am very happy with my purchase. Reliable, quiet, and cool.

2big LaCie HD (2009-01-09)
This is so reliable that it was wel worth shipping it half way around the world!

Slow with USB, reformatting process not documented entirely in manual (2009-01-03)
I am not a techie by any standard but did not expect such a long and complicated set up process. First, the hard disk comes formatted for Macs. The manual did not tell me how to reformat it for PCs, which I found out after searching through all the disks that came with the unit. I had to surf the Internet for information and thankfully people who had the same trouble had written about it. Formatting took almost 24 hours. Then I wanted to move files into it. Transfer is very slow using the USB connection. It's faster on my quite old Seagate drive. I don't know if I am doing everything right but I won't purchase a LaCie again.