FreeAgent Products

[servamatic]

Add me to the list of frustrated GoFlex owners, would say user, but it is un-useable.

After reading all the complaints and having realized I have lost over 500 gigs of data, perhaps it is time for a class-action suit.  The total lack of response by Seagate is deafening.

Seems their main response is to give you a link to a data recovery company, great response Seagate.

Never will I buy another Seagate product.

[Sahar26]

Hi, just wondering if you ever fixed this problem because my hard drive just did the exact same thing and I haven't dropped it or anything. I have 500gb of data on it. I have no idea what just happened.

[RawFoodGuy]

I had this same problem and was ready to toss my drive when I suddenly had a hunch. I came across a USB "Y" connector designed for an old drive I had that wouldn't work wth just one USB port when hooked up to a laptop because there wasn't enough power. ON some laptops the USB doesn't output the full power it is supposed to. Sure enough when I hooled my Seagate up to TWO USB ports on my Macbook Pro it ran like a champ - NO BEEPS! 

This blankety-blank problem has apparently been around on the web for years and nobody ever tried this before, no Seagate tech ever thought of it - or ever did anything at all about the problem. I don't know about you but this bothers me since ultimately it seems that the fix was relatively easy!  I probably won't be buying from Seagate again since they don't eem to care about what turns out to be a simple problem that could have been easily diagnosed if someone even bothered.

[kevinkilmon]

>tap lightly and connect.

>listen to the rubbing sound on the insde and listen for differences each time you disconnect and repeat 1st step

My 500GB seagate blah blah blah stopped working a few months ago. beeps and not being recognized. i was frustrated and just locked in my safe and thought id save it for when i felt like getting it recovered or whatever. well me and my girl are sitting here right now looking for a movie to watch and i remember having a bunch on my hard drive. i bought a seagate power thing for my old desktop internal hard drive for use on her labtop. well i read the soluton on here about a power supply thing or something about it not getting enough power....that didnt work. anyway i listened to where the beep was coming from and all that. i heard a small rubbing sound and thought that maybe the disk or whatever it is inside was rubbing...so i remember what my dad told me when i was a little kid. "if it dont work, try hitting it". so i gently tapped it. nothing changed. got a little angry and knocked it a few times.....still did not work but i listened and noticed it was rubbing differently ..knocked one last time and plugged back in and it worked. seagate sucks.

[kevinkilmon]

i assume it is fragile inside. if anyone has any questions on how you should hit your external hard drive...feel free to contact me. but seriously no joke, this worked for me. i plugged it in and waited for that stupid beep and instead heard it on my computer. feel free to question me or ask a question. i feel like a genius and a hero. if i was technical support at seagate i would totally tell everyone to hit their hard drives...lol

[MrNovember]

I'm now having this problem after several months of the device working well.

It's a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500GB external hard drive with a USB 2.0. 

When I plug it in it makes a beeping noise (about twice every second) and I can't hear any kind of mechanical noise inside. If I disconnect the device from the usb and then plug it back in it takes about 20 seconds before the light turns on, and the light will stay on even if i disconnect the removable portion. The beeping will last for about one and a half minutes. 

I have tried tapping on it and replugging it in, but that hasn't worked and I think I'm having a different problem than kevin since I don't hear any kind of mechanical noise. I might try borrowing a Y USB from work to see if the added power will help, but its always worked fine on my MacBook in the past. 

I also tried my fathers newer Seagate 500GB Ext HD on my MacBook and it worked fine (it has a USB 3.0). I tried using both the USB 3.0 and the USB 2.0 with my MacBook and it made no difference. With either USB  my fathers Ext HD worked and mine did not.

I've looked into this quite a bit and I'm doubtful whether it will be possible to recover my data. It seems like theres an internal hardware problem with the the parts that write and read. I've also read that placing the drive in a plastic bag and then freezing it in the freezer can allow you to a short window where the drive may work before probably becoming a paper weight as a result. I'm again not sure if this will work in my case where the internal damage is probably severe but if nothing else works I'll have nothing to lose. 

If anyone has any foolproof miracle solutions or thoughts on what I've provided they'd be appreciated. There's nothing important enough to warrant the cost of sending it to professionals to recover the data, but I'll still be losing a large amount of valuable and irreplaceable data. 

[gerrypo]

I recently completed a warranty exchange of a Free Agent 750 GB drive where the problem was that the drive could not be detected on USB by Windows.  When the replacement arrived I found that it also could not be detected.  As a power supply for the replacment drive I used the existing power supply module from my old drive in spite of the replacement drive being sent with a new supply module.  After fighting the problem for a day and not being able to get the computer to recoginze the drive on a desktop and my laptop I was about to give up when it occured to me that I hadn't used the power supply module that came with the new drive.  I swapped out the old power supply with the replacement and BINGO the dirve was immediately recoginzed and is now working flawlessly.

My conclusion is that these drives are extremely sensitive to voltages both USB or DC output from the power supply.  For those fighting these USB undetected problems you might try exchanging the supply with one that produces the same DC output as the one that comes with the drive and see if that makes a difference for you.  This may not be a solution that Seagate support sanctions but I would be willing to wager that voltage issues are at the heart of a lot of these strange USB problems that I read so much about on the forums.

[Cooee]

I just had this problem as well with my Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160gb. The drive wasn't spinning up could hear a beeping noise about once per minute.

I was about to give up when I remembered that I had this kind of problem when I first bought the drive. It wasn't working so I drove it back to the store, and the guy there plugged it into his computer and it came to life. I got it home and it worked fine in my PC after that. I figured that the drive over in the car must have shaken it enough to correct whatever defect it had. It had been going solid in my Linux box for the last ~5 years.

So this time around I tried the drive on different computers / USB adapters with no luck. I was starting to give up and got a bit more aggressive with the drive by tapping / banging it. That didn't do much good either. By pure luck, I held the drive in my hands one time and had applied pressure to the IDE cable, and low and behold when I turned it on the drive spun up! Considering that I had tried it in a couple of different places previously (and different IDE cables), I can only assume there is a loose connection inside the drive itself, and that applying pressure to the IDE connector fixed whatever is going wrong.

I haven't actually recovered my files yet, but Windows is recognizing the drive now with its two partitions (Linux - EXT2). I'm fairly certain that when I put the disk back into my Linux box it will work no problem.

[Cooee]

Just to confirm that the drive is working again - BUT only if I apply pressure to the IDE cable while I power it on. If I don't apply pressure I the drive never spins up and it makes a beeping noise about once per minute. Once it has started spinning up I can release the pressure and use i, (for a while it seems anyway. After about 10 minutes, which was just enough time to recover my files, I got a "Bus Error" message in Linux.

[Cantbecanit]

Cable or case socket, cable is easy, socket not so, call customer services and ask if they can assist.