goflex external drive, finder hangs

bizillustrated wrote:

...I bought an interim solution, a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 3TB drive, which attaches via USB cable. I only have USB2 on my MacBook Pro, so it's working that way, even though the drive supports USB3. I don't have any Thunder on my Pro.

I formatted the drive for use only with the Mac. I find that I can copy files one or a couple at a time from the HD to the GoFlex, but if I launch big "Copy this 6.04GB set of folders over" even when all the files are in the same folder, Finder will process on it for a while, then it will just hang. Sometimes with 2 hours left, sometimes with About a Minute left...

My experience with two GoFlex 3TB USB 3.0 externals is that with extended use they overheat, something a number of reviewers have commented on. Seagate tries to get around that by having them spin down when not actually doing something, but if you have a large file transfer job, the transfer rate will slowly decrease (you can watch that with Activity Monitor). It's slowing down because as the drive heats up, transfer errors are being generated. The speed drop is more noticeable for me because I'm using a USB 3 connection with a PCIe card. But the errors will occur as the drive heats up. The only solution I found was to pry the top cap off, take the drives out of their enclosures, drill some vent holes along the bottom of the enclosures to allow cooling air in, and with the cap off the top, let the hot air out after reassembling the whole thing. It made a real difference, though on a 1TB transfer, it still overheated. And, of course, it wrecked the warranty.

At the same time, 6 GB is different from 600 GB which is what I was transferring when I first discovered the overheating problem, so there may be something else going on. BTW, if you touch the GoFlex after extended use, it'll feel mildly warm. If you have the cooling holes drilled in the bottom so you can actually reach the hard disk, you'll find it too hot to touch.

I should add that the spinning down of the drive is internally controlled, and has to be deactivated using Seagate software. Since I did that immediately when I got the drives, I can't speak from personal experience but I've read that when the GoFlex does decide to spin down, it tends to lock up the Finder.

I have a GoFlex 2 TB that seems to be experiencing the same issue. The only way to clear the hang is by unpluging the USB.

I bought this to serve as a backup for both a PC and an iMac. I successfully copied 300+ GB from the PC to the drive in one shot. No complaints. But, when I try to copy large amounts of data with the drive plugged into the iMac, I'll get finder hangs just as described above. These are sometimes accompanied by "error -36", whatever that means.

I did install the GoFlex S/W on the iMac and on the PC.

I did not notice the spinning down/slowing down behavior as mentioend above, but I wasn't looking for it either. But, I am wondering if that is it, especially because I had no problems with the large transfers from the PC.

I guess I'm suspecting that the GoFlex is simply not as compatible with the iMac as Seagate would have one believe. Very disappointing.

iMac 27", 3.1 GHz i5, 8 GB, OS X Lion 10.7.3

danfrommountida wrote:

The only way to clear the hang is by unpluging the USB.

If the drive is bus-powered, try external power, either from a suitable adaptor (if it has an external power port), or from a USB power supply via a USB-Y cable. (Make sure the USB power supply's current spec exceeds the drive's specified requirement by at least 0.2A.)

fane_j wrote:

If the drive is bus-powered, try external power...

The Seagate GoFlex Desk externals have a separate power adapter which plugs into a base that handles the interface with the computer (you can get USB 2/3, Firewire, eSATA, or wireless) which the drive in its enclosure then plugs into. Between sleeping and overheating, they tend not to play well with Macs. But they offer a really good deal if you're looking for a large, fast Barracuda XT for internal use, especially now that the USB 2.0 only externals are being cleared out in favor of the USB 3.0's with the new style enclosures that actually have a bit of ventilation, and HD prices in general are beginning to come back down to earth.

@fane_j : The GoFlex Desk device I'm using comes with a wall-wart power supply.

There's a huge number of post entries on the Seagate Forum related to these problems:

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

The bottom line seems to be with Seagate software. Most of the consensus now is that if you can just delete everything that was installed by the Seagate installer, your GoFlex drive will work just fine with regular Mac OS.

Some say the uninstaller, if you can find it (I couldn't), works fine, while others say don't bother.

There are a couple of recipes for deleting stuff, but nothing blessed by Seagate.

Someone suggested using the "Find Any File" application to find stuff with "Seagate" in the filename. I got 150 or so hits!! Do I just delete all of that stuff? I'm betting that would get one into trouble.

Yikes! What's a newbie to do?

I'm guessing that what I want to do is to uninstall the Seagate software and then test. If it works, I'll keep the drive. If it fails, then it's back to the store ...

Are there any recommendations on this forum that can answer and/or clarify the notes from the Seagate forum, particularly with respect to uninstaling the stuff that the Seagate installer scattered around?

Many thanks,

Dan

danfrommountida wrote:

...Are there any recommendations on this forum that can answer and/or clarify the notes from the Seagate forum, particularly with respect to uninstaling the stuff that the Seagate installer scattered around?...

Can't help with search and destroy of the Seagate software because the forums made clear how intrusive the Seagate software was so I skipped it from the start, except for the program to turn off the automatic spin down controlled by the GoFlex base rather than Mac OS.

But I can say all the troubles I've had with the GoFlex were unrelated to that software because I never used it. The overheating problem could be watched as the transfer rate started sometimes over 100 MB/sec (USB 3.0) and some hours later dropped to maybe 15 MB/sec. The SMART record for the drive (available once I installed the bare drive in a bay in the Mac Pro) showed massive overheating coupled with high transfer error rates. I have found that while slower, WD MyBook Essential drives run cooler and more consistently and don't need any additional software to function. I just reused a partition on a MyBook that was originally attached to my MacPro 1,1 back in 2006 and it worked perfectly, just slowly.

Looks like it's time to scrub the drive (with the PC) and haul it back to town. Thanks.

Still need to get rid of he software it left behind, though.

Sigh ...

Message was edited by: danfrommountida