Q: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk frustration

we're obvioulsy having very different results with the same product -- nominally the same anyway.

i used the uninstaller that came with the software to regain full use of the drive (minus the status lights).  and stop my mac from freezing, failing to reboot etc.  i didn't bother with a searching app

do you remember what firmware version yours has?  

i don't remember mine and am not about to reinstall software to find it again.

i downloaded the latest driver software kit from seagate, never touched anything that came on a stale cd.

then quickly uninstalled it.

my working situation:

-GUID format

-10.7 os

-regular usb connection

-firmware unknown, but  i just bought the drive, so maybe recent.

I never had the issues you were having. Freezing, failing to reboot...none of those.  The only issue I had was the drive unmounting itself after innactivity.  The same issue that so many have posted on Seagate forum. 

Still testing final workaround.  Will report soon.

The downloadable software from Seagate doesn't work either. It's called "Seagate Sleep Override Utility for Mac OS.dmg".  This doesn't work either. The drive will still sleep and disconnect from the desktop prompting the warning message from Mac OSX about improper disk removal.

I formatted the drive for Windows. Using the Windows utility from Seagate I set it to Never Sleep. It works in Windows. The drive spins down, but never disconnects in Windows. The drive is always available for use. 

Next I took the drive and placed it on the Macbook Pro.  The Windows formatted drive mounts fine and is usable, but after a few minutes it would sleep and disconnect. Prompting the Mac OS X warning message.

I am assuming that the problems all are having with the segate backup GoFlex Desk 2 TB drive. I also had that experience, and yesterday Jan 15, I talked to a Apple Tech support individul, and his suggestion was to go to the Energy Saver, and click 'Off" the Put the hard disks to sleep when possible!

That is what did, and have not had a problem with the Time Machine back since.

Good luck to all.

Yes that will work. The problem with that is your increasing the mean time to failure for the drive by not allowing it so spin down when not in use.  Spin down allows your drive to rest and really doubles the lifetime of your hard drive. Not allowing to spin down just wears down much faster. Turning that off affects all your drives, not just the Seagate piece of junk.  This is not heasay or urban legend, its a legitmate fact.

Useful to know that a Windows disk insists on sleeping when used in a Mac.

There are actually two versions of Seagate's utilities. I don't know if they are for different versions of the disk. One of them is just intended to fix the sleep issue (but does not seem to do so), the other has more functions (but still does not seem to solve the sleep problem).

SuperSizeIt, did you notice how long it took to sleep and disconnect?

My analysis of the simpler software (see my much earlier posts) showed a sleep 10 command, which I would have expected to set the sleep time to ten minutes. To disable Seagate's sleep I would have expected the command to be sleep 0.

But I am not enough of a programmer to be confident, and I did not try changing that line to see what happened.

The disk spins down first after 10 min or so...then in it completely unmounts with 15+ minutes.  The seagate utility is the latest available. I did run the check for latest version. The so called specific fix for the sleep issue from Seagate is the latest and doesn't resolve the issue.  The drive only works in Windows so far.

SuperSizeit, would you agree that this could be a safe work around until something better comes alone or a solution?

Thanks for the input.

None of the workarounds for the Mac works. If you use this for Windows it will work fine.  The only thing left I can think of is replacing the 3.0 interface ( bottom adaptor that the drive mounts on ) with a Firewire 800/USB 2.0 version. That would cost me another 40 dollars.  I'm beginning to suspect its the USB 3.0 Base Adaptor that is suppose to be 2.0 backwards compatible according to Seagate. Who clearly has no clue as to what they are talking about. If you read the threads, even their moderators insist the Mac Freeagent diagnostic tool has the overide sleep setting there. They don't even know how their own software for the Mac version works. LOL

Here is the thread at Seagate.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/GoFlex-GoFlex-Desk-GoFlex-Pro/Serious-issue-with-Fr eeAgent-GoFlex-2TB-on-Mac-OS/td-p/83864/highlight/true

I doubt if replacing the interface will work. Certainly I had the problem on my older drive, and I was using ither USB 2 or Firewire, can't recall which.

There is the Sleep Override Utility and also the GoFlex Software utility (which contains diagnostics). There is certainly part of the latter that affects sleep in some way, but I am not competent to say what it does. The former is much simpler. It is quite easy to read the scripts that are contained in the packages (for instance, via Quick Look and it Suspicious Package plugin), but understanding what one reads is another matter.

George, if you say that turning off Put Hard Drives to Sleep solves the problem, then I believe you since presumably you have checked. But I thought the problem with Seagate's drive was that they have their own sleep setting (15 minutes, I think, originally) that overrides the Energy Saver setting.

danco34, I think it works, but will post later to day and let you know.

Regardless, I think this is a mess. I want a backup drive that works without me worrying about it.

Thanks,

I made these changes yesterday, and it has not shut down since then. I believe it is making it's hourly backup now.

George

This is the only thing that will keep the Seagate from disonnecting itself. It's also, to me, a better alternative than using the OSX built in prevent sleep to disk feature. Simply because it allows to selective choose which drives to stay awake.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31158/keep-drive-spinning

Experts can (see earlier in the discussion) create a shell script and launch daemon themselves to do what Keep Drive Spinning does. Of course it keeps that drive spinning all the time, which suited me and may suit others. We really need a solution that will let the Seagate drive spin down and spin up again when required, as most other drives do.

As for Seagate's Sleep Override Utility, a crucial part of it is this post-install script, which I have mentioned before. As I said, I don't believe that sleep 10 can possibly override sleep.