GoFlex Net & GoFlex Home

[skimbo]

Hi all

I really need some help so hopefully I'm in the right place - apologies in advance if this seems long winded but I am trying to convey as much info to try assist anyone who helps me!

Anyway I recently bought a Free Agent GoFlex Home 2tb drive to use as a storage area to be accessed by my Mac and my PC. My trouble is with the setting up. I connected it up to my wireless router got the green and white lights and went downstairs to start the installation process on my PC. 

Everything seemed to be going great - PC firewall asked me if I wanted to unblock connections from seagate which I did. Then as part of the process I had to submit a username/account so I could access the drive remotely. I received an error message along the lines of 'GoFlex Home is unable to connect to Seagateshare.com'. I tried again a few times but still no joy and this process seemed to make my internet connection really slow down.

I went to quit out of the installation and it then asked me to reset the GoFlex Home which I duly did. I then tried re-installing but the same thing - 'unable to connect to seagateshare.com'. The dashboard program failed to recognise that the drive was on the network also and said that I needed to connect the device. Arggggh!

Spent about an hour resetting the drive and resetting my router trying to get it sorted and installed but no joy. The weird thing was by using the CMD prompt and pinging seagateshare.com I sent out 4 packets and received 4 packets of info in 110ms so I can't understand why I cannot connect via the installer program.

In frustration I thought I would try the trusty Mac - surely this would not fail me but alas the same thing happened - failed to connect to seagateshare. My mac firewall was set to receive all incoming connections also.

Last resort I thought I would try installing again this morning on my mac before badgering the forums. Had a look at some of the options on the install disc and there was a reset option. The mac scanned my local network and picked up (what I assume was the drive) at ip address 192.etc etc. Great! Thought I would check the PC also and there was a drive on my network also (something along the lines of Upnp Goflex - sorry not more specific). 

I clicked properties and got this info:

Manufacturer: 

Justin Maggard

Model:

Windows Media Compatible (Mini DLNA)

Device webpage

Clicked on the link and it took me to a page saying

Friendly name:

Goflex home: UPNP-AV

Submit query

My computer/OS

PC with windows Vista 32bit

Belkin N1 Wireless Router

Now I really don't know what to do, I'm at my wits end so I turn to you guys - hopefully you can help!

Thanks a lot in advance

Skimbo

[skimbo]

Deleted all my registry entries unistalled all software and tried re-installing. All seemed fine until I got to the Goflex Home account registration section - again the error message 'cannot connect to central server' popped up.

Is the Central server a Seagate Database on which all account are registered and stored or is it refering to my GoFlex Home drive?

Either way I started trawling the net again and found a post saying that if you have the error message I described you essentially have one of a batch of dodgy drives that won't work. The person who had the same problem as I did was told this by a vendor had his drive replaced and it worked fine.

Is this the case - is there a dodgy batch out there? Just a simple yes no please from anyone who has an idea. so I can return it if this is the case.

The idea of being sat at a PC for the 3rd night in a row trying to get it working is not appealing.

Skimbo

[dfran1]

HI,

 just so I and others can understand a little more please, you can not get into this the home by using a web browser? Not even to configure it?

I have a Mac and use xp under vmware fusion an I can get into the device with no problems, When and if you can try to dissable UPNP it made my unit much faster (of far)

Thanks but this may help others

(I have problems with 1080p video)

[skimbo]

Basically at the moment I am struggling with registering the GoFlex Home - step 2 (below).

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m15/skimbo_2006/screen.jpg

When I reach the part of the installation where it asks you to name the GoflexHome so you can log into it I get the error message 'unable to connect to central server' and I cannot set up an account. If I repeatedly try this step it does not work and then after a while it says unable to connect to device.

How would I get into the GoFlex Home using a web browser? Sorry I am confused.

I can see 3 Goflex drives on my network - I assume these are the GoFlex Home Public, GoFlex Home Personal and GoFlex Home Backup though they are not labeled as such.

If I double click on one of these drives it presents me with a username and password entry box but I cant log into them.

Driving me mad....

Thanks for any help.

Skimbo

[dfran1]

This is what I would try (I really wish seagate would respond to these, hint my post also)

1.  Try to reset the device by holding the reset button in for 1 minute, then power it off at the end of the minute while still holding the reset button.  Power back on and try using the software on your Mac (I use a Mac also)

2.  Try to dissable UPNP in your router, power cycle the router after change

3.  try to call seagate support (I think there is a way to configure it without the software but one would need to know the default user and password for that)

Please post your fix here.

Do you run any 3rd party Mac antivirus?

[mircea]

Try to go to your IP address of the device by typing into the browser the IP address. ex: 192.168.0.100, you can find it into the router( where u can see what/who is connected to your router), then the setup from browser, as a kind of setup menu appears. I had same problem. there you can setup accounts and passwds. You also need to be connected to the internet for that above.

Seagate dashboard did not work for me as well, before the above. after that it seems ok.
Dashboard recognized setup after. Let us know if u still encounter problems.

regards,
Mircea

[robyb]

Hi skimbo,

Your GoFlex Home requires access to outgoing port 22 and 443 to complete registration.  Your router most likely has a built-in firewall that is blocking these ports.  Login to your router and verify it's settings, once these outgoing ports open, your registration should complete successfully.

Cheers,

Roby!

[skimbo]

Hi all

Still no dice. I've been incontact with seagte tech support before replying to your above posts and have tried the connection via ip method you suggested - the guy at tech supprot told me to do this but it tstill did not work.

Eventually told me I needed a replacement drive which I got and tried setting up today and again no joy.

I have disabled my routers firewall, placed my computer in the dmz (basically opening it up to the world) and opened the ports you suggested Roby for my comp. and the go-flex but still nothing. Message I get when connecting via the ip method is unable to contact Seagate Share try again or click her for more info. More info jsut takes me to a pdf about the drive. Retrying a few times I get the same message and then ater about the 3rd attempt it says unable to find device.

Any help appreciated.

Regards

Skimbo

[skimbo]

Just trying again using the ip registration method and this time I got a different message:

Couldn't read XML from registration server: no element found at line 1, column 0, byte 0 at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/armv5tel-linux-thread-multi/XML/Parser.pm line 187

gosh know what this means. Again any help appreciated.

Regards

Skimbo

[nwpullman]

Hi skimbo,

I realize your problem and the frustration you must feel.

The reason is that I had the exact same problem, and thought I would end up like you.

I have a very restrictive Cisco ASA 5505 firewall (love it), that probably made the Seagate drive not be able to access the Seagate online services.

Instead of digging into the ports, configuration etc, I switched the firewall into a simple DLink that hardly has a firewall, and voila it could access the Internet.

When it was set up, i switched back again and it continued to work for me. I am now using the harddrive together with my Cisco router and it can also access SeagateShare.com.

Tell me if this helps you.

Best regards from Stockholm

Per Eriksson

[skimbo]

Thanks for the reply Per Eriksson

Sorry to sound stupid but what is the simple Dlink you are referring to? IS this something else I would have to buy?

Thaks again!

Skimbo

[denwabq]

Thanks to Robyb his solution worked for me.  I was having the same problems as you are.

I configured gateway (Motorola SBG) firewall to open TCP port 22 to allow outbound traffic and restarted my PC (Win7) to re-initiate the registration and it worked fine.

4 hours of my life lost.

[upsetclient9]

hi all,

thanks for your help, and contributions on your personal time... I can't believe Seagate is not contributing more to these serious problems!  I also wasted 4 hours on all this !  Essentially I tried everything you all did and configured everything through the web tool.  However I still cannot communicate between either my Mac or my W7 PC to my storage device... my seagate dashboard still says that I need to connect the device and my Mac is unable to connect as well during the install process so I can't configure Time Machine.

This is what I did before using the web interface:

1- opened ports 22 and 443 outgoing on all my FW including the router and my local FW (WIndows FW and Symantec for my MAC)

2- when that didn't work I deactivated all FW and anti-virus -  no connections either;

3- Configured everything I could with the web tool thinking it would help...no results either.

Anyone have other ideas before I go for a refund on this box ?

Thanks,

[TonyPa]

I have similar issues to many on this forum - now several days wasted trying to get it to work and about to send it back - I will give it one last go if I can get some advice here.

I get the message:"Please Connect Your Device to Continue" in the Seagate Dashboard.

I can access the drive via My Computer.

I can see it on the 'View full map' in the network and sharing centre.

If I type in the IP address I got so far, entering a user name and password, but now I get an error message on this - potentially a Flash issue. When I was installing it told me something like it was not compatible with 64bit? On following the link it seemed to suggest there was no 64bit Flash?

I am running Windows Vista 64bit.

I have spoken to my anuti-virus provider who hae set it up to work with the IP address so should be no issues there.

I want to use the software that came with it for easy backup as that is what I bought it for.

Can anyone give me any help?

[jjpbc]

I have the same issue.  I bought this drive solely to back up 3 PCs automatically via Memeo Instant Backup - I don't want to do anything fancy.

I did an initial backup successfully from each machine, plus incremental backups as data changed.

Suddenly, after a couple of weeks, I am getting the message "Please connect your storage device to resume backup" despite the fact that all 3 PCs are always connected to the router that the GoFlex drive is connected to.  Even when I can see the X/Y/X drives via Seagate Share, the Memeo software can't.

I have tried everything I can think of, including temporarily disabling the PC firewalls, but no success. I also have downloaded the latest firmware patch for the GoFlex drive.

If anyone has a solution, I'd sure appreciate you sharing it.

Thanks, JJ

[bam83bam83]

I hear ya! I never want to know the hours (most likely weeks) spent trouble shooting this and that on my desk-top, my wife's lap-top, my sons lap-top, as well as his X-Box 360 and now Wii. I have learned a lot of cool things though.

I just bought the Seagate GoFlex and was waiting for the sync to complete......thought it might take around half an hour......nope, try about a day......I have USB 2.0 not 3.0......either way, regarding the transfer rate, I think the "up to" 480 Mb/s are the key words here.....

Also, whoever takes the time to read this, Carbonite is a nightmare if you lose everything on your hard-drive......that's why I bought this......I want something tangible in my hands.......

Whether it's personal or business, just imagine losing EVERYTHING on your hard drive......I would be sick.......I'll shut-up now.....

bam