FreeAgent Products

[wlao]

Hi everyone, 

I bought a FreeAgent Desk Mac 1 TB to use as a spare/back-up/emergency drive for a number of computers (most Macs) at my home office. The first task for this drive was to back-up a Linux-based NAS containing some 500 GB of data. The drive had to be reformatted before backing up - no problems, the NAS took care of that nicely. Then the NAS happily copied files to the FreeAgent drive for a while, until the drive suddenly became read-only...

After searching the net (and this forum), it seems that the problem was that the FreeAgent drive quietly went to sleep while being bombarded by files from the NAS, and when it woke up again, Linux thought that it was a different drive, and that the original drive was gone... 

OK, no big deal. Just to change the sleep time of the drive to "Never" and that should be it. Since I reformatted the drive the installation files for the Drive Manager were gone, but I just had to go to the Seagate homepage and download them ... not. The Mac version of the Drive Manager were nowhere to be found, only the PC version. 

Well, well. Found out (through some frustrated threads on this forum) that you couldn't set the sleep time with the Mac version anyway, so I downloaded the PC version (FreeAgentCN.exe), rebooted a Mac in BootCamp and WinXP and installed it. Since it complained something about dotNet being too old I had to install XP SP3, but after that I could finally start Drive... err.. Seagate Manager and change the sleep time.

Not so... This is what I saw:

 

No matter how hard I clicked, the sleep setting wouldn't reveal itself.

Now, more than a week later and after having installed this piece of crapware on tree different computers: two times in native Windows, three times in Parallels/VMware, two times in MacOSx (I found the Mac version from a link buried deep down in a discussion thread), the closest I have come to being able to change the sleep time was when I found and installed and OLD PC version of Drive Manager, in which the Adjust Power Settings button was present but disabled.

I am now a very frustrated customer, and wondering I am the only one having this problem? 

[wlao]

Am I really the only one having this problem with a Adjust Power Settin button that doesn't work?

[AlanM]

This might be a useful thread to watch.

[wlao]

Alan, thanks for replying.

However, I have already read through that thread (and even posted in it :-) and it doesn't really solve my problems. It seems to me that the solution provided there only works when you are using the drive in Mac OSX. I tried it, and it didn't do anything to help my original problem: the drive still locks up when using it with my NAS, and I still can't change the sleep time from the Windows application, neither through Drive Manager nor Seagate Manager.

And I haven't found anyone else that seems to have my problem... 

[SamCa111]

Try installing all the .NET frameworks on WinXP. Also install the service packs for them. You can find them on Microsoft downloads.

[hENNIFER]

I have this exact issue on;

Windows XP 32 Bit

Windows XP 64 Bit

Windows Vista 32 Bit

Windows Vista 64 Bit

Windows 7 Beta 32 Bit

Windows 7 Beta 64 Bit

I suspect since we download the http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seagate_diag_mac.dmg (as provided by AlanM in http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=freeagent&thread.id=3723&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 ) we don't have 'control' over sleep settings on our drive.  4.4.10 or whatever the version included in the seagate_diag_mac.dmg disk image.

What's even more disheartening is the fact that when this drive is plugged in via FireWire 800 and your machine is TURNED OFF - the next time you boot you get a "Unknown Firewire Device" in System Profiler and the drive won't mount until either the power or data cables are re-seated. (as noted in http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=freeagent&thread.id=3723&view=by_date_ascending&page=2 as well as my thread which is http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=freeagent&thread.id=4787 ).

I hope that some day Seagate will release a perfectly working driver so that the FreeAgent Desk | Mac can actually work like a industry professional would expect.   I enjoy using this drive and have paid for it so I would be dumb to not WISH it worked well.

But how "free" is this agent if I have to disconnect the drive every time I cold boot?  Sure, I can just put the machine into sleep and then when it comes out OF SLEEP the drive is mountable.  But when I turn the machine off?  Come on - the numbers are starting to show themselves in the forum.  FIX YOUR FREEAGENT DRIVES!  I shouldn't have to baby the drive to get it to work - I should be able to connect/install the drive AND FORGET ABOUT IT.  If I knew about this hassle ahead of time I wouldn't have bothered buying a Seagate but I thought I'd switch from WD for my next drive.  I should have known better.

At least I now have a door stopper for my studio entrance.  A 1TB door stop.

My Western Digital My Studio 1.0 TB Fw800 device works without issue.  Same port.  I'm troubleshooting the Seagate FA Desk | Mac 1TB with no other devices plugged in on my current OS X installation.  I've tried many flavours of Windows to try to inspect every last detail possible on the drive - and don't have a Firewire 800 card for any PC I own so my troubleshooting is limited - however I have tested another Fw800 device in my Mac so I know that the Mac port is KNOWN GOOD.

Best of luck in solving our problems,