Mac Mini Seagate External Drive

shouldnt be an issue

The reason the mac mini doesn't recognize the hard drive is most likely because it is formatted as windows NTFS. OSX cant read the format natively.
Download and install this program http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Once it is installed you will be able to read and write on the HDD. So you can then backup the data.

Copy all your data to the internal hard drive of the mini or to another external.
Then reformat the external seagate drive for mac. The the utility "Disk Utility" that you have on your mac. Select the seagate drive and click on the erase tab. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and press erase. -- THIS WILL DELETE ALL THE DATA ON THE DRIVE SO BACK IT UP BEFORE.

Then you can move the data back on.
Google search, move itunes library to external hard drive. You will find the the necessary information on how to do that.

You can then have the drive connected to the mini with your entire library. If you then use Home Sharing in itunes you can access your movies tvshows music on all your devices on your home network.

As The-Pro wrote above, you want to go through the extra step of copying everything off of the NTFS-formatted drive.

Then, RE-initialize the older drive to Mac format.
Things will go MUCH better in the future if you take the time to do this.

Also -- are those iTunes files important to you? What if the drive goes bad?

This is why you need a SECOND drive to serve as a backup of the GoFlex drive -- because keeping important files on only ONE drive isn't enough.

Instead of buying another "external" drive in an enclosure, I would suggest you get a USB3/SATA docking station and a "bare drive". To see what I'm talking about, go to amazon.com, and enter "usb sata dock" in the search box -- you'll get many hits.

The advantage of the dock is that you now have the ability to easily swap drives around as needed. And they're quite inexpensive, as well -- generally about $25. A very useful piece of equipment to have around.

For example, you could have the dock and...
1. A backup of your iTunes files on one bare drive, and
2. A "clone" of your internal drive on another bare drive.
Now you are well-backed-up against drive disasters on both the internal and GoFlex drives...

Does the seagate drive show up in disk utility? and what information is available if it does

Everything said in this thread so far is wrong.

1. OS X has the built-in ability to read NTFS formatted drives without any extra software.

2. OS X does not have the ability to reliably write to NTFS drives unless you install a third-party driver.

3. While the open source NTFS-3G and the commercial Tuxera NTFS work for enabling write access to NTFS drives, they are both significantly slower than Paragon NTFS:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

4. If your external drive is failing to mount, the reason has nothing to do with the drive being formatted as NTFS. You said you had the drive connected to your router before. Is this a NAS drive, with built-in networking support, or does your router have a USB port which allows you to attach hard drives to it?

5. Also, and I know this is self-evident, but you are making sure the hard drive is plugged in to AC power, correct? Desktop size (3.5") hard drives will not work without AC power.

6. If you only plan to use the drive with Apple devices, then you should copy your data off of it, reformat it as HFS+ (Mac OS X Extended with Journaling), and then copy the data back.

7. If you want to be able to access it directly with non-Apple devices, then leave it formatted as NTFS and purchase Paragon NTFS, or, if you're willing to put up with slow performance and possible bugs, you can use the now outdated NTFS-3G installer that was pointed out earlier. The OS X installer has not been updated in awhile, even though NTFS-3G itself has.

I have a 1.5TB Seagate external drive and it was the worst buy I ever made in terms of backup storage. It's loud, unreliable and slow. I saw in forums that removing the HDD and installing into another decent enclosure would make the thing work right, but I didn't make this test yet... perhaps I'll buy a firewire 800 enclosure.

brdeveloper said:

I have a 1.5TB Seagate external drive and it was the worst buy I ever made in terms of backup storage. It's loud, unreliable and slow. I saw in forums that removing the HDD and installing into another decent enclosure would make the thing work right, but I didn't make this test yet... perhaps I'll buy a firewire 800 enclosure.

Click to expand...

I recently bought a Seagate Firewire 800 adapter on eBay for a Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive. The price was good and it works fine so far. I also bought a 10' Firewire cable so I can hide the HDD away from my home theatre setup.

I bought an external 2 tb Seagate Expansion USB 3.0 HD. It's been dead silent, runs only slightly warm, and had been dead reliable since I bought it in April. I keep all my media on it

I have a Seagate 2GB NAS drive plugged into my router via ethernet, MBP picked it up without any software tweaks and has been stable for a couple of years now. Ok its not the fastest but it serves a purpose.

I cant get Time Machine to back up to it though so use an external HDD vua usb for that.

Like yours, my 2012 Mac mini works through a Wi-Fi connection. I don’t know if I would call the setup “user friendly” but now my Seagate external NAS drive works with Mac, Windows, and IOS at home and across the Internet.

Did you try the Paragon option that Negritude suggested? A couple of weeks ago at the end of September I set up a 1TB Seagate GoFlex drive by connecting it to my router with an Ethernet cable. The Paragon software resolved the challenge of using the NAS as a target for Time Machine without reformatting the NTFS drive. Not only did the Paragon driver work, it was free! That NTFS_for_Mac_with_restart.dm file is supposed to be part of the original software suite. If the NTFS driver is not still on your disk, Seagate provides a version for download on their website.

There were other hurdles to my NAS setup. When I visited the Seagate website I learned that “When the GoFlex Home has the latest firmware, Apple Time Machine can backup to the GoFlex Home without any special configuration.” After I updated the firmware and installed the driver a little fiddling with the setup got my Time Machine working like a clock.