I’m really quite surprised – my third LaCie product has failed tonight. This time, the LaCie Etherdisk Mini. Out of three EtherDisk Mini’s, two have died. The first suffered a drive bearing failure, the second has just powered off and refuses to power on for more than a second – not even long enough to boot the operating system.

I’m not quite sure what to say, but this is my third of four LaCie products that have failed within 3 years. The first, a LaCie Big Disk 500GB unit – suffered a head crash. The second, the other LaCie Etherdisk Mini suffered a bearing problem, and now this unit, another LaCie Etherdisk Mini, powered itself off, and won’t remain powered for more than a few seconds.

I maintain several backup copies of my data, so losing one disk won’t result in data loss – but reliable storage is very important for anyone. I consider the failure of these products to be of substantial concern. Be certain to make a copy of any data you’re storing on a hard disk to a second hard disk – in case of unexpected failure. While any hard disk from any manufacturer may fail unexpectedly, I’m disappointed in the number of failures I’ve experienced with LaCie in particular.