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PDR / The jobs we take in / LaCie drive recovery

LaCie · Rugged, d2, 2big, NAS

LaCie recovery for Plymouth. The case has gone dark; the disk inside it generally has not.

LaCie sells the case rather than the mechanism, which is likely why so many of these look much worse than they really are. We receive four kinds from Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall: a Rugged that stopped mounting after it fell off a bench, a d2 whose bridge board gave up without harming the disk behind it, an older Big Disk striped across two mechanisms with one no longer working, and a network box that has died around perfectly good disks. The free diagnosis tells you which of the four you have.

Nothing readable? Most jobs carry no bill Free diagnosis, then one written price Boxes come to the lab from Truro, Newquay and Tavistock

You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668

LaCie symptoms, and what each points to.

Yours not here? Start at the triage →
What turns upWhat that points toWhere to start
No light, no spin, nothing at allThe adapter or the bridge board has stopped working. Everything behind it is untouchedStop switching it on and off
A Rugged that started ticking after a fallThe heads have hit the platters. That orange bumper is very robust, but it can't withstand everythingLeave it switched off and post it in
A d2 that Windows will not mountNearly always the bridge board, not the mechanism behind itSend the case and the adapter too
One disk down in a 2big or Big DiskA striped (RAID 0) pair: each disk holds part of every large fileSend both disks in, labelled with the bay each sat in
A network drive whose box has diedRuns Linux, with the array created by the box's own softwareSend the disks by bay, or the whole box if they are fixed
A LaCie asking to be formattedA damaged file table. What it indexes still exists belowUnplug it and refuse the offer
Getting it to us: once you receive your quote, wrap it securely so it cannot shift in transit, insure it for its value, and send it tracked to the intake lab in Bristol. We cover the return postage. If you want an engineer to check the packing before the box is taped shut, contact us before sending. Details are on our contact page.

Four LaCie builds, and what gives out on each.

RuggedThe one in the orange bumper, and the one that most often turns up damaged. Inside is a 2.5in disk or an SSD and a bridge board for USB-C or Thunderbolt, in a shell designed to survive most drops. What almost always fails is the connector or the board, and neither holds anything.
d2 and 2bigThe desktop aluminium case. A d2 holds one 3.5in drive; a 2big holds two, and they may be striped together. Both need a mains adapter, and from where you are standing a dead adapter looks just like a failed drive.
Big Disk, and its kinThe older two-disk enclosures. They were sold as a single large volume, striped internally to get there. They ran warm, users rarely backed them up because they looked like backups themselves, and if one drive fails the whole volume goes with it.
The network boxesNetwork Space, CloudBox, 2big NAS and 5big all run Linux inside, with the array and file system created by the box itself. When the box dies the disks are generally still fine, but they will not mount in a PC: Windows cannot read how these disks were laid down.

What happens to a drive while it is here.

01

A number on arrival, then the free diagnosis Free

Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.

Diagnosis at no chargeA single written figureYou owe nothing yet
02

The disk is read, not the case

Nobody here sits swapping cables on a dead LaCie, hoping. We take the mechanism out of its case and put it straight onto a bench port. Within a couple of minutes we can tell whether the failure is in the case or in the disk inside.

Case, or disk insideSettled before we quote
03

Bridge boards, and the striped pairs

A disk that still spins is imaged first. Where the heads have gone, we put in donor heads matched by model and batch. Where two mechanisms were striped together, we copy each one first and then reassemble the stripe from the images, never from the original disks.

Donors matched to the modelStriped pairs assembled from copies
04

Short runs, with rests between

We read a worn 2.5in mechanism from a Rugged in bursts with pauses in between, and the awkward areas wait until all the easier ones are safely down. Disks from a d2 or a NAS get the same. These jobs may take days.

Whatever the disk gives backFolder trees kept as they were
05

You give the word, and it ships back

Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.

You see the list and decideWritten to fresh mediaWe pay the postage home

The faults we see most

  • More often than not, the case has failed rather than the disk: most LaCie units sent to us are dead on the desk, and once out of the case, the mechanism reads perfectly. Adapters, sockets and bridge boards fail well ahead of the storage behind them.
  • Ship it complete with the power adapter: the rest of the parts (like the cable and power supply) should be sent along with the LaCie. A LaCie is not made to be opened up in your home, and there is a bridge board inside that encrypts the disk, so the disk can't be read if the bridge board is not there. Once you've got your quote, and unless you have already taken the disk out, pack up the whole unit.
  • Two-bay units are often striped: if you have a two-bay unit with striping (RAID 0) enabled by default, as is common with a LaCie 2big or older Big Disk, removing one drive leaves you with half of the file system, which cannot be mounted. This means you need to make sure that neither of the drives is initialised again.
  • Repair tools will not help: if you try to use the tools on a network LaCie (for either a rebuild or reset) they will overwrite the files you want recovered. The status screen will just show you what it sees. So don't run either of them.

How far does it go? The encryption used by the enclosure is true encryption. There will never be an instance in which your data can be decrypted without having both the original board and the same password. Physical failure also has limits as well. When a head fails and breaks through to the surface finish of a disk, the portion of the surface finish containing your files is lost. However, if two disks were being striped and one became unreadable, you would still be able to access the readable stripes on the other disk.

A job out of the casebook.

PL · PLY-2026-0834FILED ✓

The Big Disk that stopped being recognised

We got this LaCie from a photographer's studio in Falmouth. It was an old LaCie Big Disk that sat under someone's desk for 10 years and one day would no longer mount. Inside, it had two 3.5in drives that were striped as a single volume. One of those had a failing head, while the other was fine. First we made a duplicate of each assembly before trying anything else. We were able to make a duplicate of the good assembly within about an afternoon. Because of the failing head, it took us several short sessions over three days to make a duplicate of the bad assembly. After we had a copy of both assemblies, we figured out the stripe order and the block size and rebuilt the striped volume from our copies. The folder structure came back as it was.

98% read backBoth imaged first

Before you seal the box.

Get these done

  • Switch it off and leave it be
  • Tell us what it does: no light, a tick, a click
  • Post the unit whole if it is still sealed
  • Send the model number off the underside

What to avoid

  • Shaking it, or trying the freezer
  • Another twenty goes at a different cable
  • Running chkdsk, or letting the box rebuild
  • Copying whatever you rescue back onto it

Questions that come up most weeks.

My LaCie no longer mounts. Does this mean the entire drive has failed?

Usually not. Typically, the issue isn't a failure of the actual physical disk itself, rather it's a failure somewhere in front of it. For example it might be the power supply, or it might be a problem with the bridge board connecting the USB or Thunderbolt connector to a SATA connector. Or perhaps one of the connectors came loose at some point in time. All of these components are located behind the aluminium case. We remove the disk from the enclosure, connect the disk directly to a connection on our bench, and immediately determine if the drive is responding correctly. Within approximately two minutes we know whether it's the disk or another component that caused the failure. If the disk is functioning properly, we simply make a copy. Making a copy typically costs significantly less than performing data recovery. That is why we offer all clients a no-charge evaluation of their failed media, and provide them with a quote after determining which component failed.

Do I send the whole unit or just the disk?

Please send the complete unit with the power adapter. Do not open your LaCie unit at home. A Rugged is secured with clips and its bumper. A d2 or 2big has its bridge board screwed to the back of the case. When data is encrypted inside your LaCie case the disk will be useless no matter which port you connect it to. Therefore we need the bridge board sent along with it. If you have already pulled one of the disks from a two-bay unit please mark which bay that disk came from. Sending the whole unit will cost just a little more postage than sending individual parts.

The 2big unit is configured as RAID 0 and one of the drives has failed.

Then your drive is striped. Most two-bay units ship from the factory in this configuration. Every large file is spread across both disks. Neither disk can be read alone. Do not attempt to rebuild or format either drive. Please send both drives, labelling each with the bay it came from. We will create images of each drive separately, figure out the stripe order and block size and rebuild the volume here. If one drive is unreadable we will tell you at diagnosis and recover everything possible from the readable stripes.

LaCie belongs to Seagate now. Does that change anything?

Not for this work. Seagate acquired LaCie several years ago, and LaCie has always used another manufacturer's mechanism inside anyway: LaCie supplied the enclosure and the bridge hardware and software. Your disk may be labelled with any manufacturer's name, and we match donor parts to the mechanism inside the enclosure, not to the label on the outside of the case. Please give us your LaCie model, and anything printed on the disk itself if you have already opened the case.

Pages people open after this.

Plug-in externals → The PC cannot see it → What the noise means → All the media we take →

A drive that stays switched off gets no worse.

Diagnosis costs nothing. We give you a report listing which files can be read, which cannot, and what is needed to get them off. Do not connect the drive until then.

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