Mark,
I have posted the below in response to a similar thread but wanted to post here as well.
I've been in IT for nearly 27 years in a variety of capacities, be it overall Administration of networks or, more recently, working in a Network Operations Center for a Fortune-500 company where we monitored in excess of five thousand servers worldwide on a 24/7/365 basis. I purchased my first Seagate circa 1982: a 10MB disk at a price of $705.00. (Why I recall that is anyone's guess - grin).
Throughout these nearly three decades, Seagate disks have been my first choice. While all drives will fail regardless of whom the manufacturer is, I can say with a high degree of confidence that Seagate's have been very robust.
However and having said that, I need to state unequivocally that in my humble opinion (and based on my overall knowledge gleamed in nearly thirty years) that there does exist real and definite issues with these FreeAgent drives and the Mac. I am sick and tired of having them (usually) dismount when entering sleep mode; I stress the word "...usually..." as this is patently not a consistent behavior.
As annoying as that is, even moreso is the ludicrous process that I have to go through when booting this Intel-based iMac with it's Extreme 1.0TB and 1.5TB disks (There is also a a WD 500 disk in the chain). All are FW800.
To wit, when booting and without failure only one of the Seagate drives will mount. It may be the1.0TB that mounts or it may be the 1.5TB that mounts...it's akin to throwing a dart at the board. But one of them will mount and the other will not. A second warm boot will then show both Seagate drives present. That problem is cast in stone and that behavior can be banked on. This will also happen with or without the WD in the chain, which always mounts.This issue happened on my G5 with OS-X 10.4.x and as mentioned it is happening with this iMac with OS-X 10.5.x.
If you have any suggestions I am wide open for them. But in good conscience I cannot and will not recommend Seagate products if the User(s) are using a Mac and I would caution anyone else to do so, unless they want to be fielding call after call from frustrated User(s).
Again, any input greatly appreciated.
