I bought one of these fancy-schmancy LaCie harddrives on a recommendation from a coworker a couple years ago, he was using them to store pictures he was processing for our employer. One of those drives with the fancy "designer" case etc. Well, this afternoon the particular drive died. My computer wasn't recognizing it and we thought it was a lost cause. But my husband never sees a "dead" piece of hardware that he doesn't like to open up and investigate, and usually revive. The case is designed without screws, but he managed to pry it open. And lo and behold, what do we find inside the plastic (but made to look like metal on the outside) case, a cheap desktop Seagate drive! I suggested he take it out and hook it up to a desktop, and sure enough we were able to install it in the desktop and it worked fine-the case is going in the trash.
So the moral of the story is-when you buy a LaCie drive, you are getting a cheap drive in a pretty and expensive package. I read a rumor they sometimes use Hitachi drives, but since they hide the real drive inside and don't admit on their Web site that they are using third-party drives, you really don't know what you are getting, so buyer beware.