Seagate FreeAgent Desk External Drive on Mac

[mattyqp]

Thanks to everyone for this thread. I had the exact problem described: Seagate external drive (1.4G) that the Mac OS wouldn't completely partition and format to HFS+. I have the Windows 7 RC1 bootcamp on my MacBook Pro. I deleted the partition using Windows 7. Mac OS then partitioned the HD properly. I'm sure any version would do the trick. Take Care.

[anacapaisland]

I'm sure I could simplify this procedure, but this is what I did, and it worked, so I'm just going to keep it the same. No purchase of any fancy software required...

1. Connect your Seagate drive that only works in Windows

2. Open Disk Utility and "unmount" the partition (do not eject). Highlight the Seagate drive and click the "i" Info button at the top. Note where it says "Disk Identifier : disk#" (mine was disk2).

3. Open a Terminal Window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

4. Run the following command "dd if=/dev/disk# of=mbr count=100". "if" means "input filename"; "of" means "output filename". Fill in the '#' with your disk number from step 2. The "count=100" is just to be sure we grabbed enough. We don't actually need 100 blocks, but it doesn't matter.

5. Download HexFiend from one of these websites...
http://www.ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend/
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22589

6. Open the file "mbr" in HexFiend. Note that most everything is "00000000", except a handful of other "cells". These must be blocking MacOSX DiskUtility from being able to repartition. Replace anything in the beginning that's not "00000000" with "00000000". Click "File->Save As..." and call it 'newmbr'.

7. In the terminal window again, run "dd if=newmbr of=/dev/disk#" (remember to use your disk number from step 2).

8. Now you can open DiskUtility again and repartition the drive just as you should have been able to do if Seagate wasn't blatantly trying to milk Apple's customers by charging more money for the same thing.

9. Your done! Enjoy your cheaper "Windows-only" Seagate hard drive.

[MrsPeel]

Tried all the previous posts until I got to the Drive Genius resourcing and that was out of the question as it came up as U$99 in google...

I was with a friend on the phone all the time, who found in another forum a post which lead me to, after trying partitioning and always coming back with the failed on exit error, this:

Choose Partition in one big partition by the dropping down menu,
click in Options, the option clicked should come up as the last one (cant remember now name, sorry)
change that to the GUID (first of the 3 options)
then clik apply
then follow to erase, that did it for me....
I'm at this moment backing up with Time Machine, al brilliant!

Agree with gd6778:

I bought a Seagate 500GB a couple of years ago, it was smooth on the PC and smooth on the Mac, but whatever they did to this model...
is pure BS.
Especifications on product info do not warn you as this being a PC only, and even when you open the box it does send you to the Seagate support site where instructions are assuming you ll be able to format....
Thanks to you guys, Google and my very, very patient friend on the phone....

[MrsPeel]

Here is the post to sort this problem and get it to work

hope it helps someone else as much as did me!