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Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Compatibility

TWO2SEVEN

TWO2SEVEN

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 27, 2010
3,531
741
Plano, TX
Yes the Go-Flex should come with the drivers to facilitate reading and writing to both Windows and OSX (It has a Seagate specific driver that allows the drive to mount and be written to by OS X when formatted NTFS. It will not be useable with Time Machine when formatted NTFS so the backups will have to be handled manually.
 
Partition your hard drive. Make one Mac Journaled for Time Machine backup. Make the other partition exFat to be used on your Mac/PC system. Macs can only read NTFS but not write to them (unless you have a special driver/software).
 
squeakr said:
Yes the Go-Flex should come with the drivers to facilitate reading and writing to both Windows and OSX (It has a Seagate specific driver that allows the drive to mount and be written to by OS X when formatted NTFS. It will not be useable with Time Machine when formatted NTFS so the backups will have to be handled manually.
Click to expand...

I should have been more clear. I don't want to backup my system. I want spare copies of my music, pictures, and important documents.

Sounds like I should be able to switch back and forth between the systems like I can with my USB flash drive. Is this correct?

Thanks for the help so far!
 
Yes that is correct as long as you leave it NTFS formatted and use the drivers included from Seagate for the Mac side. If you want to reformat into exFat so the drivers aren't needed then you limit the Windows support, as it needs to be an OS greater than XP (not sure on Vista, but win7 is supported for sure). The NTFS format is the most popular and has the greatest flexibility/ compatibility.
 
I currently have 2 GoFlex drives. One is formatted HFS+ and only used for Time Machine backups. The other I formatted with ExFat, which I use with both my Mac at home and my PC at work. Windows 7, Vista, and even Win XP (with an update) can read/write ExFat with no problems.
 
Thanks for the correction, i didn't know XP was supported finally. Good info to know. I too have several of them as well. I link the ability to swap docks as needed to get the fastest throughput for my needed situation.
 
squeakr said:
Yes that is correct as long as you leave it NTFS formatted and use the drivers included from Seagate for the Mac side. If you want to reformat into exFat so the drivers aren't needed then you limit the Windows support, as it needs to be an OS greater than XP (not sure on Vista, but win7 is supported for sure). The NTFS format is the most popular and has the greatest flexibility/ compatibility.
Click to expand...

Thank you!
I don't plan to change any formatting. I will just be using it as plug and play.

Thanks again everyone!
 
squeakr said:
Thanks for the correction, i didn't know XP was supported finally. Good info to know. I too have several of them as well. I link the ability to swap docks as needed to get the fastest throughput for my needed situation.
Click to expand...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704

Just a disclaimer that I have not actually tested ExFat on an XP machine, as all the PCs I currently use are Win7 but I did come across this when I was researching for compatibility.
 
ExFat works on Windows XP SP3 plus patch from Microsoft. I've used it for my work laptop. However, MacDrive Pro 9 is my preferred software in Windows 7 because it can access OSX RAID drives like the Lacie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk.
 
New GoFlex's have an issue with sleep mode and Lion. Essentially they'll spin down and refuse to spin up, and when they do they'll totally hang Finder. Just had to return two I had as a result. Pay a visit to Seagates board,there's like a 60 page discussion thread on the issue.

Fortunately I bought mine at Costco so the return was painless. Went with WD MyBook's instead with no issues.
 
Ccrew said:
New GoFlex's have an issue with sleep mode and Lion. Essentially they'll spin down and refuse to spin up, and when they do they'll totally hang Finder. Just had to return two I had as a result. Pay a visit to Seagates board,there's like a 60 page discussion thread on the issue.

Fortunately I bought mine at Costco so the return was painless. Went with WD MyBook's instead with no issues.
Click to expand...

I've been using a GoFlex drive for about three months and haven't experienced that.
 
Ccrew said:
New GoFlex's have an issue with sleep mode and Lion. Essentially they'll spin down and refuse to spin up, and when they do they'll totally hang Finder. Just had to return two I had as a result. Pay a visit to Seagates board,there's like a 60 page discussion thread on the issue.

Fortunately I bought mine at Costco so the return was painless. Went with WD MyBook's instead with no issues.
Click to expand...

I have one and it only does that infrequently. This is on firewire 800. I have not used the drive much on USB (came with both interfaces).

I'll take the few instances I have had with this over the complete meltdown of the 2 MyBooks I had (one is still living in another enclosure--and getting it out of the MyBook enclosure was a royal PITA).



Michael
 
Ccrew said:
New GoFlex's have an issue with sleep mode and Lion. Essentially they'll spin down and refuse to spin up, and when they do they'll totally hang Finder. Just had to return two I had as a result. Pay a visit to Seagates board,there's like a 60 page discussion thread on the issue.

Fortunately I bought mine at Costco so the return was painless. Went with WD MyBook's instead with no issues.
Click to expand...

Is this for only new GoFlexes? I've been using both of mine (bought a year ago), and neither has had any problem at all. I Upgraded to Lion 1 week after release.

(Of mine, one is on FW800 HFS+ (TM Backup), and one is USB 2.0 ExFat (Mac/Window xfers) ) Neither has had issues.
 
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