Lacie Drives are {BLEEP}ing {BLEEP}

Arrggh.. yet another dead LaCie external drive - That's the second one now! The first, a 500 gig firewire drive and now the USB one has died too. Nothing wrong with the actual drives mind, just the units - probably the boards inside the boxes. Are these things being built to die after a certain amount or time? I may sound paranoid, but It seems everything built within the last 5-10 years is a pile of crap that just won't last.

I'm a total Mac head - can't get on with PC's, but I have an old Dell with Window's 7 for checking websites ( I build websites for a living ) and it has been rock solid, never had a problem with it, where as my recent Macs have been a disaster. All my pre G5 Macs still work perfectly, turn on, work, behave - from a Performa 630CD (1986) to a G3 266 Desktop to a G4 Mirror-Door. Whereas my G5 Imac and G5 Mac Pro are both dead with bad processor boards and a MacBook that keeps crashing due to a useless 10.7.5 operating system. What the hell happened to Apple quality?

Anyway, rant over.

So... I had a look on the web for info on opening the case of a LaCie Neil Poulton case and only found a few words on how the case is fastened with plastic clips. I've managed to open mine and remove my terabyte drive (off to Maplin's to buy a new case tomorrow) and thought I'd share an image of the case and where the clips are for anyone else who needs to open their case up.

To open mine, I used a metal wall paper scraper or if you want, a putty knife - something thin and hard basically, Eased into the sides and gently eased apart. To stop the clips going back in I placed playing cards in it's place. Once the clips are out of the way the unit comes apart quite easily.

Three plastic clips - on both sides

Drive holder (drive removed) and the dead card

Here's the Firewire drive for good measure.

Next job, opening up a Western Digital External drive case....