A: Disconnect other Thunderbolt devices and see if the volume appears on the desktop.

A: The drive icons for the storage should appear on your desktop. Confirm that the Finder preference for displaying external hard drives on the desktop is selected at Finder > Preferences > General.

A: The connection type for Thunderbolt technology on the Mac is the Mini DisplayPort. While earlier Macintosh computers include one or more Mini DisplayPorts, they are only used to connect one or more monitors. Legacy Macs with Mini DisplayPorts do not support Thunderbolt technology peripherals.

A: Review the installation steps (Getting Connected) and make certain that: both ends of the Thunderbolt technology cable are firmly connected to the ports; and, that the device is receiving power via the included power supply.

A: The storage requires a cable specifically constructed for Thunderbolt technology. Use the Thunderbolt cable shipped with your LaCie device.

A: Thunderbolt enclosures must also receive power via the included power supply. See Getting Connected.

A:

• Only use the included Thunderbolt cable.
• Check both ends of the Thunderbolt technology cable to make sure they are fully seated in their respective ports.
• Try disconnecting the Thunderbolt technology cable then wait 10 seconds before reconnecting it.
• If the drive is still not recognized, restart your computer and try again.

A: Disconnect any other USB devices and see if the drive's performance increases.

A: If the LaCie 2big is connected to a USB 2.0 port or hub, this is normal. A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 device can only operate at USB 3.0 performance levels when it is connected to a computer with a USB 3.0 port. Otherwise, the USB 3.0 device will operate at the slower USB transfer rates.

A: Third-party USB 3.0 adapters: Check to see that the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 drivers for your host bus adapter has been installed correctly. If in doubt, uninstall the drivers and re-install them.

A: Refer to the product packaging or consult the product support web page at www.lacie.com/support/ to check the minimum system requirements.

A: Certain versions of Windows require additional drivers to support USB 3.0.

A: If your computer has a low-performance internal hard drive (typically a notebook or netbook computer), it can limit the transfer speed.

A: When copying files or folders from a computer to a FAT32 volume, certain characters cannot be copied. These characters include, but are not limited to:

? < > / \ :

Since it does not offer optimal performance, LaCie does not recommend using the FAT32 file system with Thunderbolt 2 and/or USB 3.0 storage. Consider formatting the hard drive as HFS+ Journaled with a Striped or Mirrored RAID Set. See Formatting. Additionally, Time Machine is only compatible with hard drives formatted in HFS+ or HFS+Journaled. If necessary, reformat the hard drive for Time Machine compatibility.

A: Ignore this message. The hard drive will remount to the desktop.

A: Hard drive space will not be reclaimed until files are deleted or emptied from the Trash.

A: After formatting, the available capacity of a hard drive will show less than advertised on the box. The difference is based upon how capacity is viewed by the operating system. For example, a hard drive that can store 500,000,000,000 bytes is divided by 1,000,000,000 to equal 500GB. This is the actual capacity listed on the manufacturer’s box. The operating system uses slightly different math, dividing 500,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 to equal 466GB.

A: See Removing and Replacing a Hard Drive for instructions on how to replace the hard drive and Manage RAID if you want to change the RAID mode.