Seagate FreeAgent Desk External Drive on Mac

P

PaulJB

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I have a Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5 TB that I got for a really good deal. It says on the box that it is for Windows but I would like to put it on my Mac. Is there anyway to do this? I have a Windows box I can stick it on if I have too but I would prefer the Mac.

Thanks

Paul
 
Just plug it into your Mac. Magic -- it works! ;)

If you intend on using the drive solely with Macintosh computers and do not need to access the drive locally (via USB, etc.) with a Windows computer, I would highly recommend reformatting the drive to HFS+ format (a more Mac-friendly disk format). You can do this via "Disk Utility", located in Applications > Utilities.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Just plug it into your Mac. Magic -- it works! ;)

If you intend on using the drive solely with Macintosh computers and do not need to access the drive locally (via USB, etc.) with a Windows computer, I would highly recommend reformatting the drive to HFS+ format (a more Mac-friendly disk format). You can do this via "Disk Utility", located in Applications > Utilities.
Click to expand...

Sorry, it doesn't work since it is for Windows only, Seagate does have a 1.5TB version for Mac but costs $70 more. I bought the Windows version too thinking I can reformat it to use on Mac, but Disk Utility won't recognize it.

Anybody?
 
It seems that there are a lot of reports that the FreeAgent drives do not work with Macs... here's just one:

http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/thread/1004420133.aspx

If that is indeed the case, then no amount of finagling is going to make it work with your Mac.

I find it hard to believe that one drive will work on Windows but not Macintosh -- there's nothing "Windows-specific" or "Mac-specific" about a disk drive. In other words, there's nothing about the drive that should make it Mac-incompatible as long as it adheres to the USB 2.0 spec and has an SATA/IDE bridge chip that's compliant.

Not to mention that there are other operating systems out there -- Linux, UNIX, Solaris, etc. It seems strange that a disk is "Windows-only." Blows my little computer science mind, as it seems to be more trouble to make a disk drive incompatible with certain operating systems.
 
Not sure how i found this, but there is a work around!!! Yay! I dont have to ship it back!!

If you go to Disk utilities on mac
Select the drive heading
then select partition
split the partition into 2 even partitions.
both mac os journaled
tell it to apply.

this may or may not error out, but it erases whatever partition manager they are using to prevent this drive from being used on the mac.

then you can reformat as 1 partition with no error.
 
This stunt alone will insure I never buy a Seagate external. For any reason. Ever.
Way to go Seagate...
 
This did not work for me. After successfully creating 2 mac partitions, I received an error when I tried to erase/make it 1 drive again.

What DID work was using a 3rd party app - Drive Genius - no complaints from it.
After this, I was able to use Mac's Disk Utility to slice and dice and then reconstitute it.
The clue as to whether you've removed the hidden voodoo is in Disk utility. Click on the ERASE tab.
If the Volume Format defaults to MS-DOS (FAT), you have a problem.
If you see Mac OS Extended (Journaled), you're good to go.

I like Seagate, but this is BS!!!
 

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ahh.. well good find.. it worked for me.. perhaps i left out a step when i was frantically trying to erase the drive.
 
I've since read elsewhere that:
- TimeMachine may function as an alternate app to wipe the drive and then allow you to rewipe it normally in DiskUtility
- This may be a Mac OS 10.5.7 issue not Seagate.
 
What do you mean it might not be seagate? they sell the same exact model for $60 dollars more and say that one is mac compatible, but this one is not?

I have never seen a usb/firewire/esata drive that would ever TRY to prevent you from reformatting it. This drive prevented me from reformatting it, and when I searched seagates forums i found many posts saying it was not mac compatible. That if I wanted a mac compatible drive to get the desk drive MAC version. ($$ChaChing$$)

Seagate was trying to impose a Mac-Tax.
 
I tried reformatting for the Mac and got the errors too, but got it to work when I went back and reformatted to MS-DOS (FAT). It works.
--
Edit: Yeah ok, nevermind. Works for piddly stuff you don't need and not in ways that actually matter. Damn.
 
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FredP101 said:
What do you mean it might not be seagate? they sell the same exact model for $60 dollars more and say that one is mac compatible, but this one is not?

Seagate was trying to impose a Mac-Tax.
Click to expand...

My feelings exactly! This cements my resolve never to buy a Seagate product again.
 
I figured out that it was only the end partition that failed format, so in Disk Utility I just made 2 partitions with the second 1 GB and left the second as free space. The first one worked perfectly. So I just had to loose 1 GB to get it to work nicely. Whatever...
 
lbj said:
This stunt alone will insure I never buy a Seagate external. For any reason. Ever.
Way to go Seagate...
Click to expand...

That's why I stick with Western Digital. They have never failed me once and they are cheap. Plus I think they give a one year warranty in which they will replace the hard drive once you send it in (heard this from other experiences from friends).
 
anyone having a problem with the drive not mounting after a few weeks?

It's been formatted macOS journaled and works for a bit, but eventually it won't be recognized and I have to go through several rounds of restarting, unplugging and plugging back in to get it to mount.
 
NO! Thankfully! did you try another computer - maybe w/ an older OS? different cables? Also try to repair with DiskWarrior?
 
I used disk warrior to rebuild the connection, but that's hit or miss whether or not it finds the drive. I could test it on a pc I have... but I wonder if I have to reformat the drive? I'll try a different usb cable but has that been an issue for anyone else?

Again it seems to drop or loose the drive when I put the computer to sleep, and I get the warning when I wake up the computer that I didn't eject the device properly (the seagate drive)
 
Don't reformat! I meant try it on a mac w/ an older MAC OS! like 10.3.9, 10.4.x or 10.5.6.
10.5.7 and my last Seagate "windoze-oriented" purchase didn't play well together. while the prob was caused by seagate, i suspect that 10.5.7 makes it more problematic (as mentioned in this thread).
Maybe it's defective. get another drive asap and copy everything to it. contact and send the other one back to seagate. I don't think it's worth messing with too much - it's your data, after all. All companies have bad batches of products.
if it's a windoze-based HD, try to wipe it on a windows machine before you return it.

You didn't mention if/that it was specifically related to sleep. Is that the only time? If it's ONLY a sleep issue, then include that in your search for help!
If you remove "seagate" from the words in google, you will see that other brands have issues too = 10.5.7 to blame?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...agate+external+hard+drive+sleep&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Good luck! and if you post, you might include OS, and hardware info.
 
Thanks for the info... I'm using Mac os 10.4.11, on an intel core duo iMac.

The sleep cause is the only consistent time that I can see it happen. it may have also happened in some combination of restart or shut down and start up, but that's not as consistent as sleep.
 
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