RANT: LaCie could do the world a favor by going out of business.

I hereby withdraw any previously implied recommendation or endorsement of LaCie products.

Warning: endless rant below.

Spoiler

Well, the warranty of my LaCie storage server, about which I have posted here occasionally, expired two months ago.

One month ago, one of the five SATA ports quit working.
Three days ago, a second quit, this time with an overload that burned off part of the power connector on the hard drive.

I pulled the thing apart, it being out of warranty, to see what the board was on the inside. It's a MS-96D8. All I can find online is a few Chinese pages that make no sense. It's a custom job to fit inside the box with a surface-mounted Atom processor, custom power connector and the five SATAs. If I had a spare, I could replace it and get the machine running again in about five minutes.

I contacted LaCie to find out how much a replacement board will cost. This is when I found the true danger of LaCie products.

- If a device is out of warranty, they will not touch it.
- The internal parts are custom, and you can't buy them anywhere.
- As a courtesy, I can get a discounted price on a new replacement device (this model is no longer manufactured).

For what I paid for this device, such an attitude from the company is completely unacceptable. If they would let me send it for repair at some cost, -or- sell me the part I need, that would be acceptable. But to completely orphan it without warning is another thing. Imagine if the car you bought two years ago could not be taken to any repair shop, because the car manufacturer refuses to sell parts to the repair shops, and their engine is so different than other cars that no other parts manufacturers make parts for it either!

So, my next project is building a new storage server using standard, easily available parts. At least they used standard SATA drives inside that box instead of some custom interface, so I can re-use those.