LaCie 500G d2 Quadra constant spinning/clicking, SLUGGISH!

Hi! A couple of things. First with it attached click on the spotlight icon in the top right corner of your screen and see if spotlight is indexing one of your drives and especially the one in question. Second, if Spotlight isn't the problem the drive's directory may be having problems from possibly disconnecting it without dismounting the drive's icon. If spotlight isn't indexing then use the disk utility to repair the drive. It's also possible the Lacie is having power supply problems. Tom

I had this problem with an external drive and thought it might have died on me. I ended up leaving it on for a couple of days and it finally stopped. I don't know if it was the virus scanner or maybe spotlight indexing the drive but it eventually fixed itself and have not had the problem since.

Virus scanning software is a known cause of sluggish Time Machine behavior: Mac OS X 10.5 Help: If Time Machine is slow.

Also, your backup drive must not be formatted with the "MBR" partition scheme, as commonly supplied with drives not specifically intended for use with Macs: Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine stops backing up to external disk. According to LaCie, your d2 Quadra should be pre-formatted appropriately, but it is possible it is not.

To find out what partition scheme it uses, launch Disk Utility & select the drive from the list on the left. This will have the name you have given the backup volume indented below it. (Take care to select the drive above & not the named volume below.) Read the partition scheme from the last line of information that appears at the bottom of the window. This should not say "MBR" or "Master Boot Record." If it does, follow the instructions in the article above, noting that the drive will be erased during formatting.

If none of this helps, the drive may be defective or its file system may be corrupted. To check for the latter problem, run Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" procedure on the backup drive or volume. (It makes no difference which one you choose from the list for this step.) Make sure that you use the version of Disk Utility supplied with Leopard for this & not an older one from a Tiger (OS 10.4) source.

Additionally, LaCie has a web page specifically devoted to Time Machine that may be of some help: http://www.lacie.com/more/?id=10050

Ive solved the Whole Lacie wont mount problem....
Thanks to Lacie support center, Best Buy, The internet and several Tech shops I took my crashed lacie d2 quadra 500 GB hard drive to for help when it crashed.

They didn;t help and none of the stuff I bought helped either.

Here is the solution:

Take any of your crashed lacie Hard drives (That are clicking and making a noise to a Windows OS)

FOOTNOTE:
NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS, YOUR LACIE HAS NOT CRASHED AND DOES NOT NEED DATA RECOVERY$$$$$$$$

Take it to a Windows (XP worked on mine) install your lacie one button disk, after its installed properly, Run the lacie one button recovery by clicking the blinking and clicking switch on the hard drive the program will come up and show the Lacie Hard drive. Go to windows control panel and run add hardware program and search once. (if it hasnt mounted it will not find it) just let the search go through once and after it says can-not find hardware leave it open.

Go to My Computer and open it, keep the window open that shows all of your drives. Wait about 4-8 hours depending on what you have going on (go to the movies or go to sleep) and come back and your lacie drive will be mounted. (THIS IS NOT THE LAST STEP- DONT GET HAPPY YET)

This is whats going to burn your attitude to a new level. The Lacie Hard drive is SUPER un responsive. I advise opening just the main window and taking a look at all the folders and files you have on them. ( i solved mine by simply erasing the Video files. Final cut pro cache folders etc.) if you use your hard drive for things like editing video and audio then more than likely your drive is slightly corrupted (don't get angry) this does not mean its trashed, it means that there is a problem with file structure and a single or several files confused the hard drive.

Once again your lacie is not trash. I used mine for video editing in Final cut Pro, and Audio in Pro Tools, among other things like saving photos and software, etc... Just take the time to simply delete what you know you dont need.. or even better, format the entire drive and it will be like new.

Another step you can take in mounting your Lacie is to download Mac Drive 7, install it on a PC- not MAC, this process WILL NOT work on a MAC (none of these steps will work on a mac- Trust me, not matter what these nerds say, dont believe that it will- its going to cost you.)
Install the Mac Drive 7 on a pc, run the Error Check and repair function and it will take about an hour depending on what you have on your drive and how many errors are found. and It will fix the drive.

As stated previously - these steps will ONLY MOUNT YOUR DRIVE. Access to the files and folders on your drive will be very unresponsive. Basically if you plan on copying a movie to your desktop forget about it. 30Mb would take about 2 hours. 6Kb took close to 4 mins to copy from the lacie.

You wont be able to back it up so forget about that too. Just follow the begining steps and find out what has done this to your Lacie (you know what it is!).
As stated previously- I used my LACIE D2 qudra 500 GB Hard drive (that is only 6 months used) for average things like downloading, uploading, saving, etc... the same things you do, Plus I ran Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, and a S**T load of other programs on this drive and what confused or "Corrupted" my lacie and made it BLINK, CLICK, and make STRANGE

its not power supply or anything else... do this and it will work..

So you can't really recover data from the drive, but mount it so that it can be re-formatted and used again? I'm not sure I see the point of keeping a hard drive that can lose data on a whim...

I have several Lacie drives, including 2 identical Lacie d2 Quadra drives. One of my drives started having the clicking situation. I thought it was hosed. Turns out, when I put the drive on the other drive's power supply it worked fine. So the issue was not the hard drive, but the Lacie power supply.

I just bought the Lacie 2Big 2 TB Raid1 drive to replace it. I'll just put the other drive in the sock drawer as a spare and toss the power supply.