Seagate External Harddrive Came without Install Software

[Shacklebolt]

My 750gb FreeAgent Pro came without freaking install software. How did this happen? what is the solution? I worry that by (accidentally) trying to back up some photos onto it before I had installed the software, I might have somehow damaged the installer. But that's my best guess. Any ideas?

 

[joekix]

My 750gb FreeAgent Pro came without freaking install software. How did this happen? what is the solution? I worry that by (accidentally) trying to back up some photos onto it before I had installed the software, I might have somehow damaged the installer. But that's my best guess. Any ideas?

what are you installing?

 

[Shacklebolt]

I'm not enitrely sure. All I know is that it's locked. Okay - how do I unlock it?

 

[ColdCase]

Disk utility is what you want to use, I think. It comes with the OS, so no install SW needed.

There usually is no install software, unless you are installing a third party backup or utility program. Sometimes plug it in and play, but often you need to open disk utility (in the Mac utilities folder), find the drive and format it to how you want to use it, perhaps with a couple partitions.

 

[Sun Baked]

looked, windows only sw...

FreeAgent Pro software and drive formatting works only with Windows, but drive can be reformatted for Mac using Disk Utility:

* Power PC G3, G4, or G5 processor running OS X 10.3.9 (or higher), or
* Intel Core Duo or Core Solo processor running OS X 10.4.6 (or higher)


So for the Mac it looks like you will be using the software that came with the Mac OS.

 

[DaveF]

You don't need installation software for an external hard drive. Plug it in and partition / format it with Disk Utility.

 

[Cave Man]

My 750gb FreeAgent Pro came without freaking install software. How did this happen?

It should have been on the hard drive itself as a .DMG file. The drive is formatted as NTFS, so you should have been able to retrieve it.

what is the solution?

If you really want it, just go to Seagate's web page and download it. It's free. But there's really no need to. As others have pointed out, Disk Utility will do all that you need. And you do want to reinitialize it.

 

[Shacklebolt]

<sigh>

Got it. I thought because it was locked (read-only) it couldn't be reformatted. This was, however, not the case. Thanks.

 

[Cave Man]

Just make sure that when you initialize it you use the Partition tab in Disk Utility to set the GUID Option if you plan to boot from it with an Intel Mac.