FreeAgent Products

[YuriZhivago]

FreeAgent Desk 1 TB Desk for Mac

ST310005FJA105-RK

My FreeAgent Desk, which worked great in OS 10.5x with TimeMachine and Seagate Diagnostics, has developed few hiccups in 10.6.  The external drive works properly only if I boot-up my Mac before connecting the external drive to the power source or computer.  TimeMachine then recognizes the drive and functions normally.  When I shutdown my computer, the external drive will also power down, as it should.

However, if I try to boot-up with the external drive already connected to the power source and computer, as I normally did in OS 10.5, the external drive switches on with the computer, but the computer does not recognize it (i.e., no icon for the external drive appears on the desktop, and TimeMachine is unable to locate it.)

As far as I can tell, the external drive is otherwise functioning normally.  It elicits no red flags on Seagate Diagnostics, and works properly with TimeMachine in the first instance described above.

Is anyone else having similar problems? Is there a solution to this annoyance?

[NYPunk88]

Had the same exact issues you described and what I did was download  FreeAgent Desktop Software (bottom of the page) and unchecked the 'wake from ethernet' setting and just played with the energy settings. I think some preference files were corrupted in the upgrade because my drive would never spin down and also had mount issues. Anyways now SL recognizes and mounts the drive on startup/wake. Original link

(The Energy settings in System Prefrences also affect your external HDD.) 

Message Edited by NYPunk88 on 09-08-2009 07:20 AM

[zmanprov]

Same issue here. Oddly enough, when I sleep the computer and then wake it, the drive shows up. Have tried everthing else suggested in this forum, incl. turning off the sleep settings in System Prefs. and installing the latest version of the drive manager. Any new ideas?

[YuriZhivago]

A brief coda to my initial post: my problems persist, despite trying the suggested work-around and several others. It's a nuisance, to be sure, but I can still use my FreeAgent Desk with TimeMachine as long as I power the external drive after my Mac is up and running (and then unplug it after my Mac is off so it doesn't stall the next time I turn on my Mac). 

There are a number of threads over at the Apple forums reporting similar problems with Snow Leopard and external drives.

[bothellbill]

I have Snow Leopard on my new mac mini

the drive will not spin up attached, not attached so no diagnostics on the mac will make a difference

I have notice that the drive light comes on when directly attached to running mac but not if attached directly to Airport Extreme.

I was using this in both Time Machine mode on my mini plus as a network drive

So here is my dilemma. The drive tries to spin up and quits and cycles like this endless. Is this drive aslepp or dead.

Besides data recovery, what are my realistic options?

[cander328]

Same issue here with two 1.5 TB drives.  Seems to hiccup and then eventually stop spinning.  One is my Time Machine backup drive so this is pretty important!  Any solutions?  Is this a confirmed SL compatibility issue?  I also realize now that this has happened since going to SL.

[S.A.]

You can add me to this list. I was fine before upgrading to SL, and only noticed a problem with mounting my 1GB FreeAgent Desk for Mac after the upgrade. My problem lies while using the Firewire interface. I've tried with 2 Macbook Pros (one purchased just last week), and a Macbook, and the problem appears on all 3.

Once the hard-drive is mounted, and I 'Eject', and unplug the firewire cable, plugging it back in later will not re-mount the hard-drive; I have to play around with it a couple of times to get it to mount. I didn't think too much of it at first and put it down to having older hardware perhaps, but with my newly purchased Macbook Pro just last week, am still facing this problem.

The drive is supposed to be compatible with SL, and I don't know if Seagate have a firmware update I could apply, because 4 updates from Apple later (SL 10.6.4) the problem is still here. I purchased my hard-drive over a year back; can I return it to Seagate? Any help, suggestions or solutions will be much appreciated.