GoFlex Net & GoFlex Home

[iceweasel]

I had contacted Seagate TS about this and then pogoplug with no good results. I just discovered here that GF Home users may be experiencing the same problem so I wanted to add my experience to the list of examples.

I have a goflex net and I have had several odd things happen with the drive connected to the device.

The first time I lost "permission" to the files on the drive. I had correctly disconnected the drive from the net device and plugged into the PC. Windows (7 I believe) wouldn't allow me to access the files and folders because it said I did not have permission. This is when I contacted seagate and they thought it was a bad drive, I didn't agree. I hooked the drive up to an XP box and reset the permissions on all the files and folders by hand (what great fun that was!). My files were back, visible and accessible.  That was on a seagate external drive.

I had then made the switch of hooking up a maxtor 1TB drive to the GF net while I was working through the problems with the permissions I was experiencing on the seagate external drive. But again, I had a problem with the net losing the drive's contents. This time it was not as simple (not really simple) as resetting the permissions. In this case there was some serious drive corruption happening. This time I bypassed seagate TS and talked directly to pogoplug because it was starting to appear that some basic disk corruption may be the cause. Well, pogoplug refused to accept any responsibility for what was going on. They stuck to the line that the software doesn't do anything with the drive. But my files were still gone. I've been able to recover the files with low-level recovery applications, so I've been lucky so far.

My wife wants access to her files which were on the original seagate external drive and I'm in the process getting that reattached but I think I should figure out if there's any new firmware releases which may have addressed the problem. That's how I ened up here and was interested to see that some of the GF home users have experienced similar problems.

I just wanted add that those problems may not be unique to the GF Home, but may be in the GF Net too in case that help to find a solution.

[kenji57]

Thanks for the info icesweasel.

I had a Goflex net briefly. I stuffed up the pogoplug registration process (my fault) and so the device was unuseable. By the time Seagate Support got back to me 3 days later, I had already returned it to the store. But then I made the mistake of getting a Goflex Home instead.

I really wonder how many users actually buy these devices because they want remote sharing when there are so many reliable, free cloud services available.

I also wonder how much that contributes to the problems with these devices, with some settings saved who knows where; on Pogoplug, Axentra or Seagate servers.

For me, I just wanted to be able to transfer files to my GoflexTV without having to un-plug the drive, connect it to my laptop, transfer files and reconnect the drive to the GoflexTV every time. I didn't like having to set up a Pogoplug account before I could even use the Goflex Net and then found out the Goflex Home also required an internet account registration process before it could be used on my home network.

If multiple user accounts and your own personal cloud service are very important for you then Goflex Home or Net are worth considering otherwise I'd go for Netgear ReadyShare. I don't think that supports user accounts natively, but I also haven't heard of people losing their files with it,

[iceweasel]

Thanks for the response, it does suck to lose any data, but it's made worse that no one wants to accept the blame and fix it.

I have a Free Agent Theater (not a go flex tv) and I was disappointed when I discovered the two devices use hard drives with different form factors so they aren't compatible. That sucks. I'm not really sure whom in product development was thinking this stuff through, but maybe no one? Hopefully the GF home is better thant he GF Net. This thing SHOULD do what I want, I just haven't had much luck yet.

I was originally turned off by the pogoplug inclusion because I didn't want it, and then found I didn't have to install the software on my PC which I could live with. What I can't live with is the device losing my files.