FreeAgent Products

[Heshbot]

Two questions I have for y'all:

1) Did you install the software that was preloaded on the drive when you got it? the software that reformats the drive to be mac compatible and installs drivemanager?

2) Does this software I mentioned above affect all freeagents classics? For example, I had an older one that I had not installed the software for, but the newer one I had, and suddenly the problem started occurring on the older when it had never before. 

If you could please answer these, I'm working on a fix currently. I think I might have a solution in the works. 

[dreamstring]

Heshbot

1) Yes I did...unfortunately

2) I don't have any earlier version of the drive so this (freeagent desktop) is the only seagate I have. And it'll probably be the last one!

I hope this will help you working on your fix. I would be really grateful if you could let me know when you get the fix done? I try all the suggestions mentioned above and nothing seems to work. Seagate's support was also as clueless last time I contacted them (the last answer I got from them was something along the line of "...unfortunately there's nothing our software can do to help you...".

BTW, would it actually help to uninstalling the drivemanager? Anyone?

[superrep]

Problem: I use Adobe LightRoom for my photo editing and cataloging. When I transfered my photos to a 750GIG Freeagent I suddenly stareted having failed writes and my cataloge database would become corrupted. Luckly OSx disk manager would repair it, but any edits since the last save would be lost. I traced the problem to the fact that the Freeagent would go to sleep after 3 minutes (factory setting for new drives) and the LightRoom write function would timeout before the disk had enough tme to wake up.

Solution:  For some reason, Seagate Engineers did NOT put a sleep interval time adjustment in the OSx version of the Freeagent drive manager utilites program, but they did put it in the PC version. Seagate tech support told me that I would have to reformat the disk for the PC, install the Freeagent drive manager software on a PC, set the sleep interval to a longer time or to NEVER, then reformat again to OSx and recopy my photos back to the drive. This should fix the problem.

After creating two backups of my photos library, I decided to see what would happen if I did NOT reformat, but just tried the Freeagent utility to reset the sleep interval from a PC while the drive still had all my data in the OSx format.

It worked!

Since I had purchased 3 Freeagent drives, I went ahead and tried resetting the sleep interval to NEVER on them as well. Again it worked on both drives, so now I have all 3 of my Freeagent drives with the sleep set to NEVER and NO lost data in the OSx files. My problem of corrupting the LightRoom database has gone away.

The FreeAgent drive utility needed to reset the sleep interval from a PC can be found here:  

http://www.seagate.com/support/freeagent/desktop-recovery-efigs.zip

I hope this helps someone who has been as frustrated with this Freeagentsleep function on their MAC as I was.

Chet

[Heshbot]

Superrep,

Restart your computer and then tell us if it still works. I also did what you did, and it worked until i restarted my computer.

also the fix i was working on doesn't work. I got my drive warrantied, and now it is starting to do the same sleep problem again. 

[zlemur]

Following up on my post of 10/2/08 (#53 above), I'm back to report that two of my FreeAgent drives have suddenly reverted to frequent sleep mode.  I've brought them back to the Windows PC to reset the sleep time several times, but the next day they are back to the same bad behavior.  By bad behavior, I mean going to sleep every 60 seconds or less.  The newest of my FreeAgent drives seems to be retaining its longer sleep setting.  I'm not sure about my fourth FreeAgent drive, which I haven't used lately.

What caused these drives to work properly for about one month, despite regular overnight shutdowns, and then suddenly revert to frequent sleep mode?  I have no idea!  I'm still using OS X 10.4.11.  The only significant change to my Mac is that I have upgraded Photoshop to CS4, but I don't know whether that has anything to do with it.  In any event, without a Mac-based solution to this problem, these drives are most definitely not Mac-compatible.  And now the Windows-based solution isn't working either!

Message Edited by zlemur on 11-03-2008 09:48 AM

[Erin]

I am just researching this issue after it becoming more and more of a problem of late.  For me I have noticed when trying to transfer large amounts of data there is a failure message.  More importantly when working on my Macbook Pro via Firewire in PS3 Bridge.  I open up 150 RAW photos and I am adjusting them in RAW converter in Photoshop.  The drive powers down during the time lag to adjust all the RAW settings.  When I hit DONE and Bridge applies all the RAW settings, the drives repowers up to save the changes, but the next thumbnail image I select while back on the Bridge mainscreen turns wacky and gets totally corrupted.  I cannot get the file to read correctly no matter what I do!  I need to go back to the original file on a different part of the drive and re-import it into this folder.  If I edit a 1000 image job, this happens to 4-5 images each time I go into RAW and then begin clicking on the next images to open up.

I need a new 1tb drive like the one mentioned above and I am afraid to buy another Seagate 1TB.  I did not have this problem with my other smaller Seagate drives when operating off Tiger.  I am running 10.5.2.

Question:  If the drive is still under warranty, can I get a refund, and I'll just buy another 1TB drive and switch companies.  E.g. if I am not so tech savvy to try all these solutions, can't I just return the drive (even though used for 6 months) and get my money back? 

[xisini]

I am planning to buy an external drive for backing up(time machine) and use the extra space for processing large 3d animation files. So i made a search about it. My requirements are firewire 800,1tb or larger space,mac compatibility,16-32 mb cache and low temp and noise with a reasonable price(around $400-450). Actually I was happy when i saw FreeAgent Desktop for Mac meeting my expectations .But the incompatibility and stability issues seems serious from here.

I am wondering , any seagate technicians respond to this topic or they are just taking courses to learn the definition of support. I hope somebody from seagate will make an anouncement. Because they are losing customers here...

Regards, 

P.S: I will be glad if you make a recomendation acording to speciallities that i listed above.

[AlanM]

Hi:

Thanks for your participation in the our forums so far. Please remember that this is an online community where many of the responses come from other users, such as yourself. The forum is not a replacement for Customer Service. Seagate representative do from time to time come to lend a hand answering posts but not necessarily on a continual or frequent basis. If you have immediate needs, your best bet is to contact Customer Service directly whether by phone, email, or chat.
Thanks.

-AlanM
Moderator

[buck68]

I've just purchased a FreeAgent Pro 320GB - the one with the interchangeable interfaces. I purchase the "Pro" model because it has the Firewire module, and I use many Macs some of which don't have USB2.

I've been servicing Apple computers all the way back to the Apple II and now as a consumer I should say I'm very pleased with the look, feel and build quality of these units, having sold various brands over the years.

However, I too have been suffering with the 60 second spin-down problem but would like to make a point or two.

These units do run reasonably hot, so a frequent spin-down is possibly more desirable than having them spun up all the time. That said, 60 seconds seems far too short for a default. Some report that using the Windows Tools to set the time doesn't seem to be permanent and whilst I could easily do that, I want a more permanent mac-only solution.

In trolling around the Seagate site, I found that the software for the non-pro ( but "classic" ) version of the drive does recognize the drive but all this allows me to do is use it for automated backup (which I don't really need) and perform what appears to be a SMART test and other tests over Firewire

Frustrated, I downloaded the Seagate Diags for Macintosh, even though it said it does not work with FreeAgent Pro drives.

Now the tech in me began investigating. The installer said it would install the MaxtorPowSecDriver.kext and/or the SeagatePowSec.kext kernel extensions. But all it installed was the MaxtorPowSec.kext. I looked at the archive.pax.gz inside the installer and the SeagatePowSecDriver.kext was there, so I extracted it and placed it into /System/Library/Extensions/ and fixed it's permissions. After a reboot, I discovered that the drive now had a FreeAgentPro icon. Further investigating and testing revealed that the drive now seemed to adhere to the system's "Disk Sleep Timer" as set in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist. From Apple's own Energy Saver preference panel, the spin-down setting is either on or off, (on defaults to 10 minutes) but you can change the time in the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file and reboot or there may be other GUI utilities that allow you to change it.

Either way, I now have my FreeAgentPro obeying my system setting, although it seems to spin down 1-2 minutes ahead of other drives. It also has a custom icon that I like and one minute after spin-down, the "Perimeter Status Light" dims - a nice touch.

I should probably contact Seagate support and ask them to send me the link to the full FreeAgentPro installer (255MBs worth) because it isn't freely downloadable (at least not from Australia) and I would like to turn off the "Perimeter Status Light" completely - a function only available in "FreeAgent Tools" but I fear my serial number might indicate that I'm not entitled as I didn't buy the "Mac Version" of the drive, despite it being a "Pro" model with Firewire.

A tip. If you want the "Seagate Diagnostics for Mac" to install the extension without the fuss, create a folder called SeagatePowSecDriver.kext and drop it into /System/Library/Extensions/ before you run the installer.

So far, I've only tested this on 10.4.11 on a PPC. I don't know if this extension is Intel savvy or not. Perhaps others could try this and see if it works?

I wish Seagate would offer JUST the extension required to make this work for free download.

BTW, if it doesn't work, and you lose your data - it isn't my fault-I assmume no responsibility for the use of this method as a work-around.

Message Edited by buck68 on 11-23-2008 05:02 PM

[!desperado]

I had installed default drivers, then "drive manager", tried moving to PC to fix spindown... etc...

I also installed the Diags for Mac package a few days ago, and in my case it seems to have installed the MaxtorPowSecDriver.kext extension. the drive has not spun down yet. YAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! (ahem)
 
I'm running 10.4.11 on a 1.67 PowerBook G4. My drive is a 320 FA desktop USB model (it now shows a FA Pro icon in finder)