We purchased a FreeAgentPro 750GB FW/eSATA/USB2.0 (Classic, aka Black vertical case) two days after Thanksgiving 08.
Worked out of the box plugged into the front FW port on the Mac; installed the FreeAgent software and drive was healthy.
A few days later, I went to plug it into the back ports with existing cable and it wouldn't mount. I have used that cable for two other FW drives chained together for years, so the cable and port are fine.
I kept messing with it and could get it to mount, except if I turned on the other drives in the FW "chain" or if I had unplugged the drive (the power button doesn't always respond, etc.) And there was times when the drive just stalled...after a few minutes of use, the Finder would show files were there, but you couldn't access them. THEN, today while playing music, it would pause for a few seconds during a couple songs, like it had to spin back up or something.
So today, in an attempt at troubleshooting, I was going to plug it in using the USB...and BAM, now both the Mac and the PC see the drive, but it is "unformatted!" That is, I don't have any access to the contents of the drive.
Something happened to "unformat" the drive. The contents are probably still there (music and family photos) but the "header" is gone.
In summary, there are two issues:
1. Randomness in the FW connection in mounting.
2. Critical Failure causing loss of formatting.
I have filed a service ticket with Seagate, but was wondering if anybody else had had this problem. In the meantime, anybody know of a good, reliable external harddrive, looks like I'll need one....(sigh).
