Seagate FreeAgent Desk External Drive on Mac

[gd6778]

NO! Thankfully! did you try another computer - maybe w/ an older OS? different cables? Also try to repair with DiskWarrior?

[westAD]

I used disk warrior to rebuild the connection, but that's hit or miss whether or not it finds the drive. I could test it on a pc I have... but I wonder if I have to reformat the drive? I'll try a different usb cable but has that been an issue for anyone else?

Again it seems to drop or loose the drive when I put the computer to sleep, and I get the warning when I wake up the computer that I didn't eject the device properly (the seagate drive)

[gd6778]

Don't reformat! I meant try it on a mac w/ an older MAC OS! like 10.3.9, 10.4.x or 10.5.6.
10.5.7 and my last Seagate "windoze-oriented" purchase didn't play well together. while the prob was caused by seagate, i suspect that 10.5.7 makes it more problematic (as mentioned in this thread).
Maybe it's defective. get another drive asap and copy everything to it. contact and send the other one back to seagate. I don't think it's worth messing with too much - it's your data, after all. All companies have bad batches of products.
if it's a windoze-based HD, try to wipe it on a windows machine before you return it.

You didn't mention if/that it was specifically related to sleep. Is that the only time? If it's ONLY a sleep issue, then include that in your search for help!
If you remove "seagate" from the words in google, you will see that other brands have issues too = 10.5.7 to blame?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Good luck! and if you post, you might include OS, and hardware info.

[westAD]

Thanks for the info... I'm using Mac os 10.4.11, on an intel core duo iMac.

The sleep cause is the only consistent time that I can see it happen. it may have also happened in some combination of restart or shut down and start up, but that's not as consistent as sleep.

[gd6778]

it may not have been caused by anything more than mac os - and/or seagate.
google - the more more specific the better you'll do. include seagate HD model, any error messages in quotes, etc.
i'd still try another mac - same exact conditions.
Also, try without other peripherals (hub, devices - firewire usb)
That's all i can think of.
Good luck.

[westAD]

Thanks again for your help gd6778.

[wethackrey]

I have several other FreeAgent drives purchased over the past few years. Some are USB "Windows" drives and others USB/Firewire/eSATA and Firewire only. I've never had a problem formatting any of them.

Today I bought a new (white) 1TB FreeAgent Desk. I had the same issue you mention. The drive came formatted as FAT and would re-format as FAT or any of the Windows formats but would fail doing a single Mac OS partition of any kind. Formatted capacity on the drive is 931.5GB. What eventually worked was setting up a 930GB partition and a 1.5GB partition - both Mac OS Extended Journaled. I have yet to figure out how to unformat the 1.5GB partition so it won't mount so, at the moment I have a rather useless little partition mounting, but the main partition is nearly as big as it should be.

The Drive Genius idea is an interesting one, but considering you need to spend $100 in order to use it to partition a drive, it would be cheaper to spend the extra bucks on the Mac version. By the way, the 1TB USB 2.0 drive cost $119.95 at Frys today. A Mac USB 2.0/FW800 drive was 159.95. May be worth the money for the faster interface and no hassles.

This doesn't seem like an intentional move by Seagate, More like some little software glitch. I know an exec at Seagate. I'll see if I can get an answer from him.

[wethackrey]

After weighing the alternatives, I bit the bullet and purchased Drive Genius today. It's software I should own, considering what I do for a living, an the fact that I have at least ten external drives for various Macs.

So... I bought a license for $99. And yes, it does handily format the FreeAgent Desk USB 2.0 "windows" version drive into a single Mac OS Extended Journaled partition. Very nice software actually.

Here's a marginally related word to the wise about external drives, Seagate included: Make sure you're using the correct power supply. Most external drives these days that use a coaxial power connector require 12VDC on that connector. They also require adequate power out of the power supply. Using a supply built for a smaller drive may not work on larger drives. For example I have a Maxtor 1.5 TB external drive from about a year and a half ago. It contains two 750GB disk drives and requires a 3 amp 12VDC power supply. The smaller 2 amp power supply provided with a FreeAgent drive doesn't provide enough power to get the 2 drives in the Maxtor chassis spinning.

I have easily a dozen 12VDC coaxial connector power supplies collected over the years. The polarity of all of them is the same, but they vary in output current from 1.2 amps to 4 amps. The 4A supply will power any drive I have.

I have one FreeAgent drive that worked well for two years on the 2A supply that came with it. Then it stopped mounting. If I connect it to the 3A power supply from the Maxtor, the drive mounts right up. I have to assume that the FreeAgent drive is physically requiring more start current to get it spinning now than it did when it was new.

The lesson here is, if you have a drive that's getting flaky, only mounting part of the time, try connacting it to a higher current power supply.