Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk frustration

Despite the fact that some of us have been able to resolve the issues with silly workarounds, I will never evey buy another POS Seagate anything again. I will also never recommend this POS company and product to anyone again. For over a year or two, Seagate never fixed the problem and allowed users to deal with the headaches. Seagate also continues to sell these POS drives with the lable PC & Mac compatible. Thats a load of BS. So thanks to the users for helping us all find a workaround, but no thanks to Seagate for your crappy products and service.

Are you getting the random clicking though? What's interesting for me is when I transferred from my ntfs external to the 3tb seagate I constantly got the 8062 error, whereas with the 1.5tb 2.5 seagate to 3tb seagate (daisy-chained) I got the 36 error, which sounds like a sleeping issue. More annoyingly is the constant clicking from the 3.5 seagate, which sounds like its sleeping and then waking, constantly. I say this because the noise is in no way related to writing or reading from the drive, during which it is practically silent (plus for the seagate there).

If this clicking is normal, then fine, but that, and the issues with sleep/transfer are enough to make me want to exchange it for the 3tb studio from WD, price be ******.

I have noticed neither clicking nor errors.

One reason I favor Seagate is that the Barracuda drives my last GoFlexes were built on have been especially silent drives over years (I have not torn this case apart to know).

In response to SuperSizeIts comment, I agree, any product that requires users to trouble shoot into the Bash Shell on a Mac and delete driver files is not one I would recommend. I am just happy to be able to use it. Taking it back would have been the **rational** thing to do. The other thing you can do is strip down the drive and throw it into a PC or Mac box computer. The last GoFlex I got was so discounted it was cheaper than buying a hard drive.

Well just an update. 6 days and no errors. 1.6TB of MP3's loaded into Itunes just fine. TM partition works fine too. Both the 2TB and 3TB STAC's have had no issue after removing the seagate files. And the 2TB drive is still NTFS partitioned with paragon for NTFS loaded and is working perfectly.

I know for myself saving the $50 for the Seagate over the Western Digitial Caviar Black was the reason I bought the drive, after doing a little research and living the pain I did, I think I agree with many here, Seagate is out for me.

While the WD is more expensive it appears to get little complaints, has a higher MTBF rating, and outperforms the Seagate in every catagory. See here. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/western_digital_caviar_black_2tb (dated but the specs on these drives haven't changed in 2 years, the capacities are just bigger.)

Just glad it's over. Thanks to all who assisted.

OK, I'm not sure what this tells us (I'm having the same frustrating problem with a newly purchased Goflex 3tb and 4tb for backup), but at the suggestion of another discussion I restarted my iMac (mid 2010 running latest version of Lion) in "safe" mode and it hasn't hung up yet. To start in "safe" mode hold down the shift key when you start the Mac. Apparently this will bypass Seagate's "management" software that MAY be causing the problem.

The system runs incredibly slow in this mode so it's not a viable solution, but it might help to narrow down the issue... What a pain!

It looks like heide-frankfurt is 100% correct. I went out and bought a WD Mac firewire drive and used a seagate firewire adaptor that I borrowed from a friend gor my goflex 4tb and have been able to copy between the two drives with no problems at all. Right now I'm at 693gb copied and counting with no pauses or problems. Thus, I'd recomend returning the drive for a firewire (or USB 2.0) drive or get seagate firewire adaptor. Shame on Seagate for marketing the drive as Mac compatible when it is clearly not!

I wrote about this earlier in the thread, and others have confirmed that the problem is the Seagate drivers, not the USB 3 adaptor. Remove the Seagate drivers and the problems disappear.

Only with the Goflex Desk for Mac that works. The other Goflex Desk labled Mac & PC on the box failes even after removing all Seagate files. The only way to keep it mounted is to install the keep drive spinning extension and se it to keep it awake every 15 seconds.

The best thing to do is exchange it for the "GoFlex Desk For Mac" version, and remove all drivers. The drive so far works as it should with either the 800 FW or USB 2 interface.

Well, that is not my experience. The drive-spinning trick did not keep the drive spinning (for me), but after removing the Seagate drivers (and rebooting), the drive began (and continues) to perform flawlessly.

Are you sure you removed the Seagate drivers?

Yes its all gone. Thats why this was such a hard fix to figure out. The drive is so screwed up it has odd behaviour with a variety of Macs and configurations.... The only true real fix is to get the Mac specific drive and delete all the Seagate software. Then the drives behaves just like other brands.

OK,

I took Peter's advice and here's what I did last night. I used "find file" to find the seagate driver - it was in the system extensions folder and the name was something like "seagate storage driver", a kernel file). I dragged it to the trash but didn't empty the trash in fear of making a big mistake. I shutdown my Lion iMac and reconnected the Seagate supplied USB 3.0(2.0 compatible) base to the Goflex drive and restarted. The mac showed the drive with the orange USB icon rather than the Seagate drive icon (I found this encouraging because it appeared the Mac wanted to use it's system to control the Goflex).

I dragged and dropped a 230gb folder of home video's to the Goflex and kept my fingers crossed. Good news, after 2 hours the folder copied with no issues! The drive was even "asleep" this morning and woke without a problem when I opened it. Also as I've already posted, when I tried my Seagate firewire/USB 2.0 adaptor (using firewire to connect), there were also no issues either.

Thus, my guess is that the Seagate drivers can't handle the USB 3.0 management correctly with a Mac. By letting the Mac do all the work it's recognizing the drive as a USB 2.0 drive with no issues. The drivers don't have a problem with firewire as there's no compatibility problems like there are with USB 3.0.

I know every instance may be different so I'm not sure why SuperSizeIt is still having a problem. It's too bad Seagate couldn't get the driver issue right in the first place. Better yet, their instructions should say something like "For Mac only use reformat to Mac extended journaled with the disk utility" and forget about their propriatary Mac drivers.

Good luck!

Hi guys,

I was considering buying one of these Goflex Desk USB3.0 2TB (STAC2000303) drives and getting the Firewire 800 Adaptor. I need the drive for video editing and thought that it would be a decent buy as some sites reported that it was a 7200 RPM. I did notice that the Seagate's site didn't even mention the speed of the drive so I was automatically dubious. Does anyone know for sure what the speed of the drive is? Also if anyone has used it for HiDef video editing via Firewire how has it performed? Obviously if it is indeed a low speed drive it's not really gonna cut it.

I'd much rather purchase the Goflex Desk for Mac FW800/USb 2.0 2TB (STBC2000100) as it's exactly what I'm after but for the life of me I can't find anyone here in Australia that sells it! If I was to purchase it from the US would it be a matter of just converting the plug fitting so it fits into Australian power outlets?.. Is the power rating on the brick 100-240 volts? We're 240 here in Oz.

I was originally going to go for one of those Western Digital FW800/7200 RPM drives but was really won over by Seagate's design in regards to adaptors. I really like the idea of being able to get a Thunderbolt adaptor in the future and retaining the HDD.

If anyone can help out with any of my queries it would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

I can verify, after weeks of frustration and multiple formats and clean installs of Lion 10.7.3 that the drivers are the cause of the issue. You lose the activity / storage capacity lights, but you gain a perfectly functioning harddrive. Isn't that the important part, anyways?

So trash the drivers, and enjoy the harddrive!

It is possible that your mileage may vary, but this worked perfectly for me and it was REALLY starting to drive me crazy.

Good luck.

i was able to fix my goflex desk with doing away the driver, thanks again for this forum! and i thought my imac or lightroom is broken!

I'm having the same problem with this FreeAgent GoFlex Drive 2TB. Freezes constantly, ejecting the disc doesn't work and I have to unplug the USB cable AND Reboot because I get a FCPX error saying that the drive is in use when I relaunch FCPX......Frustrating