# Change Hard drive in Lacie?



## Matsaki (Mar 19, 2006)

I have an old 80 Gb LaCie Firewire 400 external hard drive. Does anybody know if I can change / upgrade the actual hard drive inside? 

(I did not check if it's a IDE or SATA yet)


----------



## jh2112 (Mar 19, 2006)

Probably (without research!)
I changed a duff ide drive in a maxtor external fw/usb which worked.
If it's broken anyway, there's no harm in trying if you have a spare drive lying around.


----------



## ElDiabloConCaca (Mar 19, 2006)

Yes, you should be able to replace the drive.

Some external drive manufacturers, though, "hard-code" the drive capacity into the enclosure's firmware -- meaning that if the original drive was 80GB and you put in a 200GB drive, you may be only able to "see" 80GB (the size of the original drive).  Maxtor was known to do this with their external enclosures.

Best thing would be to contact LaCie tech support and verify that this is not the case before spending money on a new drive.  I highly doubt that LaCie would do this, but, better safe than sorry...


----------



## Matsaki (Mar 19, 2006)

Thanks


----------



## Pramod_Mac (Mar 20, 2006)

Matsaki said:
			
		

> I have an old 80 Gb LaCie Firewire 400 external hard drive. Does anybody know if I can change / upgrade the actual hard drive inside?
> 
> (I did not check if it's a IDE or SATA yet)



My Lacie 2-1/2" Inch (Porch) drive failed recently and I have replaced with another 2-1/2" drive and it works like a champ.... you have to be very careful while opening though...

Good Luck
Pramod?


----------



## ra3ndy (Mar 20, 2006)

I've never had a problem with replacing a LaCie drive.  Just find the screws and take it apart carefully.  Those cases tend to have a lot of parts, especially their 3.5" cases.


----------

