ST305004FDA2E1-RK, Mac OS X 10.5 and your..
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Mac OS X 10.5 and your external drive…
I ordered this drive because of the capacity and the price figuring that when it arrived I would simply reformat it as HFS+ and plug it into my Macintosh Network. The problem was that every time I tried to use Disk Utility to reformat it I kept getting an error (I forget the exact verbiage). Not only that but when I attached it to my PC running XP Home it wouldn’t even recognize it as a hard drive - it thought it was a DVD drive.
I poked around on the Seagate website and found this troubleshooting procedure which solved my issue:
1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
2. Click on the Partition tab
3. Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.
4. Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided:
5. Click on the GUID Partition Table radio button
-OR-
Click on the Apple Partition Map radio button
6. Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Format, etc.).
7. Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
8. Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted.
Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility
I can’t blame Seagate, the box clearly said the drive was for an XP or Vista PC, so that’s why I am giving it 5 stars. I am anticipating that this drive will perform as well as the 300 gb external Seagate I have been using for the last three years
Update (2/5/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.
The featured review for this product, Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive ST305004FDA2E1-RK Silver Electronics, was written by Charles E. Paulsen.
The average rating for this item is out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.
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Tags: 1 tb external hard drive, 500 gb, 500gb, desk, docdare55, external, external hard drive, external hard drivel, external hard drives, freeagent, freeagent-pro, hard drive, hard drives, recommend, rtfm, seagate, simplicity and funtionality, the 500gb wonder, usb, usb hard drive
Posted on: April 14, 2010
Filed under: Reviews
Reviews (3)
Charles E. Paulsen
March 16th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Mac OS X 10.5 and your external drive…
Rated 5 stars.
N. W. Campbeln
March 31st, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Started out great! Then it died… LEMONS!
As has been mentioned on here and other sites (Tiger, New Egg, etc) this drive is from a great company with a great history, but this LEMON POS has gotta be weeks from being recalled.
Mine worked great under OSX with MacFUSE/NTFS-3G and XP for about 2 weeks. Then the little punk died along with 200gig or so of my data. The disk didn’t move off my desk the entire time, no drops, knocks or otherwise.
I love Seagate and I really love their FreeAgent drives (which is why I bought this even after reading the negative reviews here and elsewhere) but this model is a LEMON! DO NOT PURCHASE THIS DRIVE! There’s a reason other reviews have mentioned instant RMAs, these things have a high failure rate - hence the no questions asked returns.
Seagate: Recall this POS and reissue a new model with these issues fixed. This is sullying your good name!
Ken A.
April 3rd, 2010 at 8:32 am
Fastest Failure Ever
I write this review to urge you to steer away from purchasing this product. After reading the four positive reviews on Amazon, I was excited to dive in and place massive quantities of video and audio on my new, shiny, iPod-like designed Seagate drive. I opened the drive on December 23rd and started by backing up all of the data I currently have externally stored. That worked well enough but with fairly slow transfer speeds.
The real kicker is that today, December 27th, after 5 days of using my new drive, it has started to click loudly and I can no longer read the data from the drive. I have tried many different techniques to bring my drive back to life with no luck. Very depressing. I strongly encourage you to not purchase this hard drive despite the relatively low cost and high capacity. I did not drop, kick, or otherwise mistreat my new drive.
On a surprising note, I made the purchase from [...] through Amazon, and when I called them with my issue, they immediately sent a shipping label to my Gmail account and they indicated that I should expect a full refund (including shipping) within the next few days. I will have to wait to see if it is as straightforward and quick as he claimed, but if it is, I could not imagine asking for a more responsive and sympathetic vendor (I believe the specific fellow’s name was Ricardo - thanks Ricardo if you’re out there).
I don’t know if the failure is a one-in-a-million event, but your data is valuable to you and losing it is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. For your own protection, please do not let the low cost and familiar brand name entice you to buy this drive.
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