These are design-driven (Seagate-owned) products ranging from simple portable drives to multi-bay Thunderbolt RAID systems. Which product you are using will determine if this is a basic recovery of a single drive, or a reconstruction of a RAID system.
LaCie uses standard Seagate and Western Digital disk drives but then uses their own bridge, Thunderbolt or RAID board. When one of these fails, the drive behind it is typically good, just not accessible.
Since 2012, LaCie has been a subsidiary of Seagate. Consequently, most LaCie products use Seagate mechanisms. The orange bumper, aluminium case and the Thunderbolt connection are LaCie components; however, the internal mechanism is usually a Barracuda or a Seagate enterprise drive.
It is helpful to know this as it will allow you to understand what you can expect from your LaCie. The LaCie Rugged truly endures all of the impacts its outer shell is designed to endure, but beyond that, the Seagate internal drive fails exactly like any other Seagate. Your money goes towards purchasing additional physical protection along with better quality interfaces but does not go towards changing how your hard drive will ultimately fail.
The complicating issue here lies with LaCie alone (the interface boards). The higher-end models have Thunderbolt and USB-C adapters, and these adapters are much more complicated than a standard USB adapter. They also fail in ways that make it appear as though a perfectly good disk has failed.
Rugged and Rugged Mini 2.5-inch Seagate disk located within an orange bumper. Provides good shock resistance. When the disk fails, it will do so normally (i.e. the way all disks fail).
Rugged SSD and SSD Pro Same case. However, instead of a disk, these models use solid-state storage. Failure of the controller with no advance warning, as would be expected of any SSD.
d2 Professional 3.5-inch desktop unit, mains powered. Before assuming the drive is bad, test the power supply first.
2big and 6big Multiple-bay enclosures for RAID arrays. This is array work rather than a single-drive job, so each individual disk within the array must be removed, labelled by bay and sent to us.
Porsche Design Slim aluminium externals. Relative to failures of their internal disks, bridge/connector failures are common.
Mobile Drive and Fuel Portable consumer drives. The designs are basic, and they fail in standard ways.
On the LaCie units using Thunderbolt and USB-C, the bridge does a lot more than just translate SATA signals. When the bridge fails, there is no sign of the unit (no sounds, no enumeration), and it looks like the drive has died when it has not.
If you have a single-disk model, please ship us the entire enclosure, including the power supply and the cable. If you have a multi-disk model, please remove all of your disks and send each one labelled as to which bay they came from. As with any single-disk external, please do not pull the drive out and attach it directly to your computer until we assess it.
The case provides very good protection: if it dropped and did not survive, then it likely received significant damage. Switch it off and send it to us. Do not plug this device back in and try to turn it on repeatedly to test whether or not it works.
Almost certainly yes, on any LaCie product manufactured since 2012. This means the Seagate donor matching process and Seagate's typical failure patterns apply.
Frequently either the power supply unit (on mains-powered products), or the bridge circuitry (on bus-powered units). Either outcome will cost less than having a failed hard disk.
And then it becomes an array issue costing from £500 +VAT. Please ship both disks (labelled by bay) and don't attempt to perform a rebuild yourself.
The cost starts at £300 +VAT for a single-drive unit and £500 +VAT for a multi-bay unit. The price will be fixed once the initial free diagnosis has been completed.