LaCie Enclosure Failures: Common?

[Netrilix]

I've had a LaCie external hard drive (250 gb, triple interface) for a little over a month now. This morning I was going to back up my laptop to the external, and the laptop wouldn't detect it at all. At first I thought it was my laptop's finicky firewire port, but the drive also failed to show up on USB2. My ~200 gigs of data were more important than the warranty, so I opened the thing up and threw the drive in one of my desktops. The drive works fine, so obviously the enclosure has already died.

My question to you: Would you recommend staying away from LaCie external enclosures, or do you think this is just a fluke?

(Other information: The hard drive itself is a Seagate Baracuda 7200.8. Thing cost me around $230.)

[Keiron]

Welcome to the forums!
Now that that's done with, I would go with another enclosure, and just put that drive into it. I see no reason to spend another $230. Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=92) has many of them, and it would be very simple to install your drive into it.

[Netrilix]

Yeah, there's no way I am going to buy another $230 drive now. I'm talking about in the future, if I ever need a second external.

Edit: Thanks for the welcome!

[Keiron]

Just build your own, usually cheaper, and it lets you get whatever kind of drive (I use only Western Digital's) and what kind of enclosure (sounds like you want firewire and something that looks good).
This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145657) drive while a little ugly seems to have a pretty good track record on Newegg. This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155212) one on the other hand seems to be better looking.