GoFlex, GoFlex Desk, GoFlex Pro, GoFlex Slim, & GoFlex Turbo

[edupues]

Hello.  I bought a freeagent goflex for work.  Now, at first I tried with an esata adapter.  It disconnects continuously. I install all the software available, so that there's is no recognition on the Seagate manager.  After all failed, I plugged it with the normal USB that comes with the external hardrive and then it went OK on the Seagate manager.

How can the hard drive be recognized and get fixed using the esata adaptor I bought? I would like to know, since I don't want to throw it away, being in Ecuador and having it bought on the US.   

[AlanM]

You said it is not detected in the Seagate Manager? That software is not supported with GoFlex drives. It's for FreeAgent drives.

What about the Seagate Dashboard, which is bundled with the GoFlex drive?

[edupues]

hello and thank yo0ur for the answer.  However I try almost everything.

I use the bundled software that comes along (seagate dashboard) and  right now it "sees" the goflex (1tb). 

But it still disconnects (right now is detected but soon I will start to transfer some info to be sure... this fixing is getting a lot of time).  I have an inspiron dell M5010.  I went to dells page and updated the bios (from a06 to a10) and the esata  driver (AMD Serial ATA Controller (AHCI)) (both of them are in dell support page)  but still no fix.

I try to connect via usb 2.0 and voila, I manage to configure via SeagateManager that it doesnt go to sleep (as I have seen in other forums) but... -let start to transfer some info-  I sense my pc getting dense and for moments a little slow AND after 2 minutes it just disconnects....

Im replying because I think I have tried out every possible way to make the Esata cable works...  I went to the bios at the startup of power up, but on esata it is selected AHCI (instead of ATA).. so... what can I do about this? Seems like today will be the biggest frustation ever.

[Plutotype]

Hi AlanM,

I think your answer is confusive. Seagate has these types of external drives according to their website:

FreeAgent® GoFlex™ Drives
GoFlex™ for Mac® Drives
FreeAgent® Desktop and Portable Drives
Seagate® Replica™
Expansion™ Hard Drives
BlackArmor® Network Attached Storage

The thread starter asked about the first one I think. Does the FreeAgent® GoFlex™ Drive has the term "Freeagent" in its name? Yes. So I dont understand that you wrote he should handle the drive as it were not an Freeagent drive but rather "GoFlex drive". It is an Freeagent drive but with GoFlex modularity.

Now to the software thing:

Recently, I opened and closed a case wit Seagate support ref:00D0hhzl.5003EBlRp:ref, where I was asking for the original installation software that came along with my Freeagent GoFlex 1.5TB USB 3.0, because it has been deleted accidentally by me. I have also the E-Sata GoFlex adapter and Im under Win7 64-bit SP1.

According to the Seagate download pages, there is not free download for the software but I had to contact tech support and get the link with the code to the software file. Tech Support got my serial number of the drive and sent me the link to the installation software.

What do you think, what kind of software did they send me? I got a link to Seagate Manager, which according to you ( being moderator here ) is not working with Freeagent GoFlex. Thats what I call confusion.

I forgot to mention, that after succesfull installation of Seagate Manager, I wanted finally to disable the power saving features for the drive. So I set the power setting to "never".

Then I clicked apply, ok and closed the Seagate Manager. I re-started it to check if the setting was changed and....was not - instead of setting "never", there was again 5 minutes setting.

What should I do, to get either the right software for my GoFlex drive or how can I set "never" in the power settings?

Thanks

Pluto

[AlanM]

Can you possibly provide a screenshot?
Are you sure this is Seagate Manager, not Seagate Dashboard?

The Dashboard comes with the GoFlex line of drives. The Seagate Manager came with FreeAgent, which are older drives.  The Manager is not necessarily supported with GoFlex drives.

Seagate's Marketing department is not what I'd call the most original in the world, and they decided to call these newest drives "FreeAgent GoFlex". 

If it has "GoFlex" in it, then it is a GoFlex drive.

If it only says "FreeAgent", then it's a FreeAgent drive and it's an older model.

I know it's confusing, but that's the way it is. 

If you are 100% sure you were given the Seagate Manager, then you need to reply to the tech support email and remind them that you have a GoFlex drive, not a FreeAgent drive, and that you need the Seagate Dashboard and Memeo.

[edupues]

Well, so far I think I have tried almost everything, the only thing left is to give the laptop and the Goflex to somebody else, which in this case will be next month, and if the stuff I just did didn't work, well I'll have to use the normal slow USB transfer (Seagate goflex never again, If you want speed don't go goflex) I'm very disappointed cause I used to have 2 Seagate that never have had any problems.  Those were plain USB, but bigger.

What did I did from last time? I updated almost everything possible from dell (bios, esata, sata, video drivers, sound drivers, utilities, chips and even the touchpad (cause I saw somebody nailed it by updating the video card). 

Then I restart couple of times and try again... the transfer rate was to slow and after 5 min it disconnected.  SO I uninstall every Seagate software: the dashboard and all the memeos stuff.  Then I check with the freeagent software if my goflex was indeed never going to sleep.  Ok it was.  Then I uninstall that.

Then I finally reinstall the original software that came with the goflex, with the goflex plug with esata cable.  Then I choose to install the memeo autosync to install.  I choose the 40gb folder I need to backup and started the back up.  that was before I started to write this reply.  Too bad it stopped at 350 mb. 

So the only thing left now is a clean install of windows with esata drivers included from scratch.  Or IS There a Solution?

My error is always  0x8007048f  that's what I think a proper windows 7 install is necessary.

[Plutotype]

Hi,

will contact tech support for sure, but its crazy. Why do they require serial Nr. then when they send wrong software to me anyway?

Thanks

Pluto

[AlanM]

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Plutotype wrote:

Why do they require serial Nr. then when they send wrong software to me anyway?

---

Well, that's a very good question. :-(  

It wouldn't be the first time that a tech support agent had made a fairly elementary mistake. I'm sorry about that, as it's obvious that the mistake has cost you time and inconvenience.  I'm going to contact the supervisor of that agent to make sure they don't screw it up again.

[deasley247]

I've struggled with this for almost a week and was about to give up, but I finally got it to work.

I have a Dell Inspiron Zino HD 400 that's equipped with two eSATA ports.  It's running Windows 7 Home Premium x64.  I intended to use the native Windows backup solution to perform weekly scheduled backup of the 2 TB internal drive.

I bought the following items from Amazon.

1. 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex USB 3
2. FreeAgent GoFlex eSATA Upgrade Cable
3. USB + eSATA to eSATAp Cable

As the drive arrived before the eSATA cable, I performed the initial installation and testing using USB.  Everything worked great except the backup was too slow running over USB 2.0. 

The eSATA cable arrived a day later and I was happy to see it that it was recognized immediately.  Things when south with I attempted to perform the backup.  The backup would start ok but would stall a few minutes later, followed by the drive disconnect problem others have reported. 

If I physically disconnect and reconnect the eSATAp cable the drive would reappear only to disconnect again when I either restart the backup job or attempt to manually copy files to the drive.  Interestingly, browsing the drive using Windows Explorer didn't cause the drive to disconnect.

Suspecting that the drive was not getting enough power I plugged the USB port into a USB power adapter (5V 1.0 A) to no avail.

The Seagate diagnostic tool reported no problem with the drive.

I was planning to return the whole thing to Amazon since I really didn't want a 1.5 TB that only works at USB 2.0 speed.

The last thing I tried was to UPDATE the AMD chipset drivers from Dell site.  As these drivers were dated 10/12/2009 I really didn't think they would install at all because Windows Updated probably had since installed newer drivers.

Rebooted the computer and performed my first successful (FAST) backup over eSATA.  It's been working several days now, multiple restarts and complete backup jobs.

The 1.5 TB GoFlex drive mated with the eSATAp upgrade cable is a great high speed backup and recovery solution.  I'm disappointed that Seagate hasn't taken the lead in the trouble shooting and customer education on this drive-disconnect problem. I hope this help others get the full benefit from the product.