I have been trying Seagate’s GoFlex for Mac portable drive, which packs 1TB of storage into a small, light, USB-powered package.
The drive measures around 120x88x22mm – small enough to fit easily in a pocket or bag. Spin speed is 5400 RPM which is a little disappointing.
We have an External 3TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk drive. We connect to it over the network, by plugging it into its dock (Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex HOME). Haven't used it in ages, and need to get into it ASAP now to retrieve family pictures. (thousands of them). GoFlex Satellite iTunes export tool for MacOS This software will export iTune's playlists and media files to the GoFlex Satellite drive. Connect the GoFlex for Mac drive. Download the file Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to your MacOS computer. Extract the contents of Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to root of the GoFlex drive. Double-click Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to start the installation.
But what makes it a “Mac” drive? Mainly that it comes pre-formatted with Apple’s HFS + (Hierarchical File System Plus) file system, which is ideal for performance and reliability under OS X. A possible snag is that HFS+ is not readable from Windows by default, though Seagate has a solution, of which more in a moment.
It is worth noting that you can easily reformat the drive for Windows NTFS if you want.
There is a GoFlex app for the Mac which includes an information tab, a drive test, and the ability to disable the activity lights on the drive. I cannot imagine why you would want to do that.
Seagate’s GoFlex series has a few extra tricks. The most distinctive is that the interface is removable, which means you are not restricted to the usual USB 2.0. This GoFlex for Mac drive come with two, one for USB 2.0 and the other for FireWire 800, which is substantially faster: up to 786Mbps vs 480 Mbps. USB 3.0 and eSATA interfaces are available separately.
Currently the MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro have FireWire 800 ports. It does make sense to use the faster port when available, especially with a drive of this size, though I cannot help thinking it would have been even handier if Seagate had managed to build the two ports into the main case, rather than having them as clip-on extras.
Goflex Satellite Firmware Update
Still, the fact that you can remove the interface enables another GoFlex trick, the ability to slot the drive into a Media Sharing Dock. I’ve reviewed this dock here; it is a handy device though I have some usability concerns. I tried this with the GoFlex Mac and it worked well, an advantage being that you can access the files over a network irrespective of whether your operating system understands HFS+. Trivial point: the GoFlex drive is silver whereas the dock is black, a slight visual mismatch.
But what if you want to direct-attach your GoFlex for Mac drive to a Windows machine? Seagate has done a deal with Paragon to bundle its HFS for Windows driver. This normally costs around $40.00. It works too; though installation was not quite seamless. The problem is that the drive has to be attached for the install to work, presumably to protect Paragon from unauthorised installs. But when you attach the drive, both Windows and the Seagate Manager for Windows (if installed) prompt you to format it.
If you agree to format the drive, you will lose any files already on it, so I clicked Cancel. However, while installing the drive software I got this dialog *again* – I suppose the thing to do is to check “don’t show again”. Seagate should update its Windows manager software to be HFS-aware. Once I had the Paragon HFS+ driver installed, and restarted Windows, everything was fine.
I would guess though that most customers for this drive will be using it with Macs and will not run into this issue. It is nice to have a drive designed with the Apple Mac in mind, and with generous 1TB or 1.5TB capacity this is a solid product.
Disclosure: Kudos to Seagate for asking me to mention in my review that that the review sample does not have to be returned.
Strange one...
When I connect the HDD to my macbook pro 15' USB3.0 port (left or right side) it either takes a very long time to be recognised or fails to show up either in Disk Utility or Finder.
Goflex Satellite Software For Mac Download
However, if I plug it in to the USB keyboard (Apple) ports it very reliably connects and is displayed in finder.
Sometimes, when it does connect directly the slightest knock causes it to be ejected. The same is not true when connected to the keyboard port.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Rob
MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.5)
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