can't open files on my lacie or if they do open, they are corrupt

Have you tried zeroing the LaCie drive instead of just erasing it? This will find and lock out any bad blocks there may be.

I've had similar issues before with an external enclosure and it turned out the enclosure was bad. I'm not sure if there's any way to test for anything like this, though.

Do you have access to another computer you could hook the drive up to and thereby see if the problems are with your computer hardware or software or with the drive itself?

Hi LizinKY and welcome to Apple's discussions.

I hope you don't mind me pointing out but it is not considered good etiquette nor so productive in getting your own problem sorted to tack your problem to the end of someone else's thread. You'll get far better attention and advice by starting your own.

However, that said:

I suspect from the problem you describe that you haven't formatted the LaCie. By default they come formatted for Windows.

With the drive connected powered up and switched on, open Disk Utilities in Applications>Utilities. The LaCie will appear below your internal drive in a box on the LH side of DU. Select the LaCie. Then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the drop-down box and click the 'Erase' button at the bottom. You will get a standard warning that what you are about to do may well set it train events that could mean the end of the world as we know it, but go for it anyway. If you are leaving the LaCie as one partition then that is all you need to do. OSX will now install to the drive.

If you want two or more partitions (better plan…) then select the LaCie again and click the Partition tab. Select the number of partitions that you want from the 'Partition Scheme' drop-down & drag the dividers where you want them in the box below. Select each partition in turn, name them in the 'Name' boxes, select Mac OS Extended(Journaled) for each partition.
Then, take a deep breath, and click the partition button at the bottom. As you have already brought about the end of the world as we know it by the previous step you can ignore any further warnings. Just click Yes or OK to everything and you should be good to go on installing OSX on the partition of your choice.

Have fun!

Adrian

Check LaCie's web site to see if there are any helpful troubleshooting tips there or contact LaCie's tech support to request assistance with your problem.

I am trying to install OSX on a LaCie drive as an alternate startup drive so I can use Disk Utilities on my computer's built in hard drive. I have run the latest LaCie firmware updater, and still the OSX install disk says cryptically that it cannot install system OS X on this drive -- does not elaborate on what is wrong, but just won't do it. Is there a workaround here? Am I missing something? Or are LaCie drives just incomatible?