I am a bit annoyed, as yesterday the second (!) LaCie 250GB external harddisc stopped working within two weeks. On the first one, which I had used for about 15 months, most of the images of the past year were stored (about 2/3 I also have saved on DVD). From one day to the other, it became impossible to switch it on. The second one I bought only a month ago (as the first one was almost full) and started using it not much more than a week ago. Not only that I am afraid of losing the data, it also prevents me from continuing my work. I never thought that external hard discs were that unreliable (especially as I though with LaCie I bought a quality product, the higher price (as compared to a no-name product) of which is also gives me higher reliability).