Any issues using FreeAgent Desk with Time Machine?

From what I have seen on this forum this is a problem with most Seagate GoFlex drives.

Probably a drive/enclosure interface error of some type along with a OS error initializing the drive.

Formatting the drive fixes it for a time but eventually it happens again.

Yeah sorry I saw/read "Seagate" & "Desk" and immediately thought of the GoFlex line.

I've been using a 1.5TB Free Agent (Seagate) drive solely as a Time Machine backup since May, 2010. I have had very rare hiccups: fewer than 10 failed backups, but these were cleared easily by disabling TM, "ejecting" the drive, then reversing the process. In sum: great success.

Sorry to say, you may have a lemon drive or maybe something as mundane as a bad cable. Try a new cable, and connect directly to the Mac, not through a hub. If it isn't a big financial hardship, I'd put that suspect drive aside and start again with a completely new one.

Note: typically these external drive boxes contain a power source and some USB electronics, plus the completely independent disk drive itself. The power source or USB electronics are most likely to be at fault. The disk drive itself may be fine.

As far as I know, almost any USB drive may be used with MacOS.

HTH

I have this same drive. It's a USB drive intended for PCs not Macs. At the time, Seagate offered Free Agent drives specifically for Macs. They weren't just pre-formatted to HFS+. They also came with different energy-saving settings in the firmware. The Free Agent Desk for PC that you and I have has additional energy-saving features designed for Windows-only. When used with a Mac, the drive will "sleep" or spin-down at the wrong time, even during Time Machine backups, resulting in file system corruption on the Seagate drive.

Seagate support recommended disabling the drive's sleep features using a Windows utility, but that didn't actually solve the problem. In fact, there is no way to completely eliminate the problem, but you can reduce it greatly by disabling sleep and hard disk sleep on your Mac (via System Preferences).

For me, disabling sleep completely allows me to use Time Machine on the disk, but clones will still fail periodically.

You can try to live with it or put it on Craigslist and sell it to someone with a PC.

I have this exact same issue and it is aggravating. I too thought it shouldn't matter as long as the disk was formatted correctly. I chatted with Seagate support and they sent me the link to disable the sleep function. And while it helped a little, it did not solve the problem. My external drive ejects periodically and it has errors all the time. So I run disk utlity after awhile and fix them and every now and then, just erase and start over. It doesn't give me much confidence in my back-up.

I think Gunny Sack nailed this. I was too cheap to buy a Mac Seagate drive for $60 more and I won't make that mistake again. The aggravation is not worth it.

know1der wrote:

I think Gunny Sack nailed this. I was too cheap to buy a Mac Seagate drive for $60 more and I won't make that mistake again. The aggravation is not worth it.

Doesn't matter if it is for Mac or Windows. It's all dependent on the format of the drive. A drive is a drive is a drive is a drive. The same drives used in all Mac computers are the same as drives used in all Win PC computers. There is NO difference except for the format.

Your mistake is the firewire port and it really isn't your fault. I have a Seagate FW + USB base that I can plug any SATA drive into and whenever I try to use it with Firewire the thing always disconnects at some point. Using the USB side it never disconnects. Not sure if it is Apple or Seagate that is at fault. I lean to the Apple side.

Firewire is a DEAD technology and poorly implemented on the newer Mac's.

Nope Shootist, I'm using USB.

From Gunny Sack:

Seagate support recommended disabling the drive's sleep features using a Windows utility, but that didn't actually solve the problem. In fact, there is no way to completely eliminate the problem, but you can reduce it greatly by disabling sleep and hard disk sleep on your Mac (via System Preferences).

This has been my exact experience and I'm with Gunny on this.

I agree that a drive is a drive is a drive - that's why I bought what I did. That being said, I've run this down with everyone knowledgble, from Apple to Seagate to Genius' to other people who I know are extremely proficient at this and they all concur, there is something hard coded in the Seagate that will not give it up 100%.