Our experience with LaCie was not positive. For my kids school we purchased two 2TB drive units the bigger brothers of the units reviewed. One failed after a few months and was promptly repaired. The other's power supply (wallwart) failed and had to be replace. The first unit failed again after 14 months and since it was off warranty, LaCie refused to repair it as it does not repair out of warranty units. I suspect that one of the 4 IDE drives is bad, but there are no tools to determine which is defective. So, LaCie expects you to discard the unit, or maybe search the internet for clues on how to fix it.
I was told "In today's market smaller storage products have become a consumable product and out-of-warranty repair charges are not cost effective. " Note, "smaller" includes 2TB, 4 drive units with 6 components that may fail: power supply, controller board, 4 hard drives that are covered by 12 month warenties.
My personal opinion is that this policy may make it easier for LaCie, but it it the height of environmental irresponsibility and should be rerewarded by their customers accordingly.