FreeAgent Products

[Consumerist]

I had my Freeagent Desktop quite happily when using Tiger (OS X 10.4) but my recent transition to Leopard has proven quite difficult for my Freeagent Desktop.

When I reboot sometimes it will register as a USB 1.1 device and run at a snail's pace. A quick shuffle behind my computer with the USB ports fixes this problem but it is much a pain to do that especially when I forget and my automated backups take hours to run.

My other problem is that the drive can make some of my software hang. This is especially apparent in iTunes where my library is stored on the Freeagent and the application hangs but when I disconnect the Freeagent, I do this because I can't even eject the drive and shutting down just causes the computer to hang, it frees up iTunes. This is especially worrying since the drive contains my backups and this sometimes happens with my backup software.

My computer is a 24" iMac 2.16Ghz, 2GB ram.

[chicaneuk]

Hiya. Just wanted to come and back this chap up with identical problems on another FreeAgent drive here. I know we're not the only ones either. Running OSX Leopard (10.5.1) also and have a USB connected 320GB Freeagent on a 1.66GHz Core Duo Mac Mini. Interestingly i've just booted into Windows and the drive seems to be performing perfectly.. so it seems to be OSX issue with the drive? Thanks.

[billytkid]

Hiya, just like to say I've got exactly the same issue. When using system profiler the freeagent (500GB) drive shows under normal usb, however if i remove remove it and re attach it shows up under the high speed usb. Definately an issue somewhere!

[gregy]

Another "me too." Under Tiger I had no issues with my (external) FreeAgent 500mb drive. After Leopard upgrade, transfer speed probably approximates the speed at which I type! Xbench reports speeds in the neighborhood of 0.25 MB / sec for the various tests (my other external drive, an older firewire one, has speeds of 10 - 30 MB / sec). Cycling the drive power and / or unplugging and reconnecting it don't seem to matter. Neither does making it the only external USB device. This is on a one year old MacBook Pro with all high-speed USB ports.

[gregy]

The following fix -- partitioning the external USB drive twice using the correct partition scheme -- fixed this problem for me.

I can't claim originality -- I got the idea from a Time Machine thread on apple.com (which I can't find now).

Unplugging the external USB drive and cycling power was not working for me -- so there may be more than one problem here.

Here's what worked (note that this will erase the disk!):

1 - Open Disk Utility and highlight the disk description (not the volume name).

2 - Choose the "Partition" tab (which won't appear if you have the volume highlighted).

3 - In the Volume Scheme pull-down, select "2" (or any other number 1).

4 - Click the Options button and choose the GUID Partition Table (if you've got an Intel Mac -- other choices are explained on the page that appears).

5 - Click "Apply."

6 - Now repeat steps 3 - 5, except create a single partition (Volume Scheme = 1).

That should do it!

While you've got Disk Utility open, you may want to check your drive format as well.

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cross-posted in:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6050391#6050391

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6050393#6050393

[bobf]

I'm yet another "me too."  I tried the recommended fix, but it's still running at the "up to 12 MB/sec" speed.  I couldn't run a 2 minute Quicktime file, it's so slow.  The drive is useless to me like this and I'll be returning it unless tech support can help me.

[furtive]

I'd like to chime in with the exact same problem.  I have a WD FreeAgent Desktop 500GB, it used to run at 480mbit/sec with Tiger, but now when I try booting from it in Leopard it runs at 12mbit/sec instead.  I'd say this is Apple's fault and not Seagate's but I'll be darned if I can find a solution... restoring my disk image (67GB) is taking me > 24 hrs, it used to be done over night on the EXACT SAME HARDWARE... this is killing me!  Please Seagate guys, talk to Apple, this bug is making everyone look bad!

For the record, I'm on a Macbook Pro Core Duo 2Ghz 15" with a WD FreeAgent Desktop 500GB, and this problem is most obvious when trying to boot from the external drive.  System Profiler clearly shows it as being 12mbit/sec when I know this wasn't the case before.

[furtive]

I FIXED IT!

On a hunch, I decided to turn off my Bluetooth Keyboard, Bluetooth mouse and Bluetooth phone, disconnect the cables on the external drive, reconnect them and reboot... success! 

All of the above mentioned devices show up as USB 12mbit in System Profiler... with them disabled and a reboot my drive shows up as 480mbit... success!  I hope this works for others.