You wrote:
"it's the only pay we get (being able to bend the rulez a bit to make a much needed point)"

So you said it yourself. If you want to know what exact rules
you have violated, provide a link to the rules.

You also wrote:
"I guess you're the type who just bends over and takes it like a man, eh?"

That reads like an attempted offence. I would say that's a no-no for any kind of moderator.

As for the "bait", at least we know you're a liar by now.

"I on the other hand observe a substantial boost from a faster drive"

Don't blather. Put up, or shut up. Provide some figures. Such disks are usually faster but it's not worth disadvantages (noise, heat, money) for most users who cannot take advantage of the minor difference in transfer speed or latency. If you're such a power-user, then you use some RAID array and SCSI or SATA disks. Recording lots of music is certainly not stress or heavy use by any means. It's not the amount of data
that matters. As you might have noticed, a disk doesn't weight more even if you put lots of data onto it.

Think different! The first is the important part.

I use Mac OSX (10.3.9) so the disk format is HFS+. You're right, I didn't do enough homwork before I bought the drive. The other mac stores sell other brands, but I felt more convinced the lacie devices would be better. I was aware of a site in another state that sold various lacie models but I didn't trust the transport, even if they were cheaper. And as I stated earlier, I didn't seek lacie support until my warrantee had finished. I had read about issues with external drives (from years back) & so initially thought perhaps that's just the way it was supposed to be. But something still didn't seem right when it so unreliable. 'My mistake' for not seeking support earlier. I wasn't so sure support would be so helpful for hard disk drives.

My comment re: Maxtor, refers to comments by the no. 1 mac technician when I discussed HDD options with him & others. I've known of a couple of heavy p2p users who've had bad experiences with the Maxtor drive compared to others. There was more substantial evidence ... but I can't remember what or where I saw it. No I can't provide specific details of their setups, the specific drives, etc. Just that they ended their life(s) more quickly than one would expect or hope for. Some very quickly.

The original 5400 rpm drive in this computer died 15 mths after purchase. I use this computer for video capture & so need reliable drives. But those are internal drives. The issue of this thread was the la cie external drives.

My lacie 250 external drive copies large files & large quantity of files without problem (by large files I'm mean anything up to 30 GB. However I generally split the video files so I can backup onto dvd-rw.) The 160 drive is incapable of doing this. The 250 drive has never seemed to have any reading or writing problem. Which suggests I got a lemon. As suggested earlier, the drive itself had problems when purchased or the specific model offered has issues.

Well I would normally rarely reformat a disk for the same reason you suggested. But if there's constant errors, lossed data, etc. then a reformat can lock out any new bad sectors ... also using a HDD utility. And if all else fails, well a reformat ... ie: starting over seemed the only choice. I had had severe cases of inaccessible data during the 1st 4 mths of use. None of my file utilities could repair or recover. At best, Norton was able to repair the directory problems on later occasions. But why was this happening so often. As you suggested, not to use it for anything important. I don't have the money to be going out buying new drives all the time so I use it because my choices were small.

note the use of the word 'bend'...not break...

bending over and taking it like a man was an obvious reference to not standing up for yourself (moron)

bait was in reference to comments I made intentionally to get a response out of you, and it worked..since I am in the state of mind to assume you are the liar, I of course have to resort to 'tricks' to get some sort of data out of you to try and figure out..as noted, you provided such 'data' quite nicely, thx!

data on drives eh?

I don't need no stinking data to know that a faster drive will stream audio samples faster than a slower one...it's a no brainer...and since I don't own a 5,400rpm drive any longer, I am certainly in no position to do any tests (not that I would anyways for the likes of you) and am certainly not going to go out and try and find one (Newegg.com only has 1 model in stock, and I'm sure local stores have NONE...certainly tells ya something don't it??? (moron)..but from memory (about 4 years ago) I do know I observed a definite performance increase when I bought my first packaged HDD (7,200 rpm of course) and put it in the same box as a 5,400rpm one...

too bad you have such a rotten 'tude, as you do have some decent points to make...its a shame that the chip on your shoulder is the size of Rhode Island

Peerless, just go on, I'm all ears.

3 weeks later & I finally reformatted the disk the way recommended by Lacie (ie: partitioning instead of using the erase option in Disk Utility.) When I checked it with OSX 1st aid it came up with an error that it refused to unmount. I didn't finish checking with norton b/c it was taking too long. I'll do that & copy iTunes library back on in a few days & see what happens.

A couple of days ago, it was 43 degrees celsius here. Despite fans .... blah blah... the 160 gb drive kept skipping from song to song after 10-30 secs. Since I had a backup of the entire iTunes library on the 250 drive, I changed the default to it. Absolutely no problems. Played fine!!! What's more, I can barely hear it. It's so quiet. Yet everytime the 160 drive reads, it is noisy. Well .. if it can read! I had about 20 GB of other vid material backed up on there at that time, & it refused to read them. At least since I've copied those files elsewhere.

Is Hyper-kun is sponsored by La Cie ? lol