Reformat Seagate FreeAgent Go
If you haven’t seen Seagate’s FreeAgent Go hard drives, your life is not yet complete. They are the most portable, attractive, and convenient external hard drive. But they have one downfall… they are not cross platform. In this day in age, you don’t see many hard drives that are specific to a platform, but unfortunately for some reason, this is so for the FreeAgent Go.
Seagate does offer a Mac version of their hard drives, but charges more for them than their PC counter parts. This tutorial will show you how to make a windows FreeAgent Go hard drive work on your Mac!
First and foremost, this Seagate drive will not work on any mac not running on an Intel processor. Mac’s that came before Apple switched in Intel do not output enough power through their USB slots to power these hard drives. So instead of getting an awesome hard drive, you get a glorified music box that beeps at 3 second intervals. Bummer I know, but something to keep in mind.
It’s quite simple to make your hard drive Mac compatible actually. When you plug the drive into your Mac for the first time, your computer will pop up an error stating the drive you inserted isn’t formatted correctly, and asks if you would like to. Click yes. In case this error message doesn’t pop up, you’ll have to manually open Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility).
In the application, select the hard drive on the left side of the window. Select Erase (aka: reformat) from the top menu. For the volume format, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Type in a name for the hard drive, and click Erase.
You’re done! Now wasn’t that simple?
If you want your drive to be cross platform, you can choose MS-DOM (FAT), and you’ll be able to use it on both a Mac and PC. So why not use this? Two reasons: 1) If you plan on just using your hard drive on a Mac, it’s always better to format it into a Mac native format (Mac OS Extended). and 2) – probably the biggest reason – FAT formatted drives can only store a file that is 4GB in size or less. 
July 5th, 2009 // Random |
 
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Hi,
I bought a new Free Agent GO 640GB I tried reformatting it using Disk Utility but I keep getting a “The underlying task reported failure on exit” message. It can only be formatted to MS-DOS (FAT32). i also tried partitioning the drive but that also fails. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Hey,thanks a ton!
It worked like a charm!
thank you. seagate’s website, faq, troubleshoot and all that crap took me hours to sort through. i had my drive running in 50 seconds thanks to your post. thank you again.
I just bought the windows version Seagate 1 TB FreeAgent Desk ext drive.
to use it for my imac. Will it work? do I have to erase reformat like the other drives discussed?
I bought a FreeAgent 500GB HDD for using it on my Windows XP and iBook G4 (PowerMac) computers. It works normally on my Windows PC, and it mounts normally on my iBook G4, but it’s read-only. How can I use my Windows PC to change the HDD so that it accepts writing on my iBook?
This is my 4th HDD; the older ones (120GB and 160GB) I swap all the times between PC and Mac (with FAT32 file system). The FreeAgent drive is the first one which doesn’t work normally on my Mac.
My iBook G4 doesn’t seem to have a problem with the single USB cable.
My FreeAgent 500GB drive came with the NTFS file system, which was read-only on my Mac iBook G4 (PowerMac, MacOS 10.4.11). My iBook could not reformat it to FAT32. The drive worked well on my Windows XP computer, but this one too refused to reformat the drive to FAT32, which would allow me to use the drive on both computers.
However, I managed to reformat the drive to FAT32 on a friend’s MacBook Pro (System 10.6). Now it is working well on my iBook G4 and Windows XP computers.
I’m using an iBook G4 with 1.2Ghz PowerPC processor and it is running fine (after formatting it using this tutorial). I just copied 15GB of my music onto a 320GB FreeAgent in one hit without any beeps, dropouts or error reports. Perhaps the lack of power is reserved to only the desktop systems…
Mac book Pro on the way…finally goodbye to PC.
Whats happens to all my Data on my PC used Seagate?? Do I lose it all?
Please help…I’m a tad bit slow in the IT knowledge thing…cheers/ahsante
Take the hard drive out of your PC and put it into an external hard drive cage with USB connection. Something like this: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1251011
Then just plug it into your Mac. If it’s formatted NTFS, you may need to download and install MacFUSE: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
Your MacBook Pro will be able to read the data on your Seagate drive, so you can just copy your data to your MacBook Pro computer. Then you may reformat the drive to the format you prefer.
Thank you for your advice. I took a Photography class this semester and all the computers being used were Macs. I was told that in using the catalog system in the Lightroom program, it will take a lot of room, more than my jumpdrive can handle. So when I used my Seagate harddrive and did the similar swipe, I was able to use the Macs and therefore complete my assignments.
But on the other hand, I’ve noticed when I tried to go back to PC, it won’t pop up. It’s like both times (in my family’s computer and my laptop) it’s like I have never connected Seagate in the first place. So what gives? I thought the change can make Seagate compatible in both ways?
Thanks!!! That worked perfectly!!!!
I was silly and didn’t read the box before buying it. Shame that HD’s are not being made for compatibility both ways, since mac’s are so popular these days. Thanks again.
Drew
Andrew Watson Design
Hi there,
I have a MAC OS X and i followed your instructions above, but its not letting me ‘erase’ – a window pops up saying “Disk Erase failed with the error: Could no unmount disk”.
What do i do?
Thanks
Did you find a solution to this issue? I’m getting the same error message and I’d really like to use this with my macbook pro and my husband’s pc laptop.
Open Disk Utility.
Choose Go in the Finder Apple menu (at the top of the screen).
Select Utilities.
Double-click the Disk Utility icon.
Choose the Seagate drive in the left window. If the drive is not showing, see step 3 below.
Choose the Partition tab in the right side of the Disk Utility window.
In the drop-down menu that says “current volume scheme”, select one partition.
Press the Options button and select Guid Partition Table.
Change the Volume Format to MacOS Extended.
Click Apply.
Warning: This operation will erase all data on the drive, so before you continue, verify that any data on the drive is backed up somewhere else.
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.
If the partition fails on Leopard,
Thanks a bunch!!!
Costco was getting rid of their stock of Seagate FreeAgent Go 250GB, so I bought most of what they had (6 or so). I was thinking that it would be great for traveling and for my business information. Well yeah I run every thing on MAC and PC computers and the sales guy told me with 100% that the drives would work on both…. Couple of days later it was looking like I was stuck with worth less drives to give away at the holidays. So REALLY thanks!!
Pretty interesting stuff. I accidentally bought a hard drive for the PC when I have a Mac. I noticed that the hard drive comes with some internal software. Would this software still work on the Mac, or would I have to buy the hard drive specifically for the mac? Is the included software just for backup purposes?
So after following your re-format will the HD be fully functioning (meaning not read-only) on both a mac and a pc at plug-in or are there additional steps.
If you want the HD to be cross platform, choose MS-DOM (FAT) as the volume format. The downside: It won’t be able to store files more than 4GB in size.
The reason Seagate sells a Mac version for more money is that it comes with an additional Firewire 800 connection. It has nothing to do with the format of the disk; as this blog entry shows, that is easy to change.
Personally I’d by the more expensive drive to get the faster transfer rates.
Can’t you partition it, one part mac formatted the other windows?
What if your Mac is running on an Intel processor already? Does that mean you still have to format the windows Seagate drive?
Yes, you still have to reformat the drive no matter what to work on a Mac. Only Intel Mac’s are able to use the drive though because Power PC’s don’t output enough wattage through their USB drives to power the hard drive.
I plug the Freeagent 320GB on my Mac, went to Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility… but i do not see it anywhere!
help please
Just got my Seagate Free Agent Go and panicked when I saw it said it was only compatible with PC. THANK YOU!!! -T
TKS A LOT!
I just bought two seagate hard drives in an airport free shop, and I`ve been told that it would work in my mac.
Thanks. really.
Thanks a bunch for the help! Is there a specific erase option we should use? (0 pass, 35 pass, etc)?
I’d recommend either using the Don’t Erase or Zero Out Data. They are security measures for the data you’re erasing, so if the drive is new, it’s not necessary to protectively erase the data on it.
Anything more than these options are purely for if you’re erasing sensitive data you don’t want someone with recovery software to get at.
how do you recover the files deleted?
I assume that this deletes all the files on your HDD? Is there a way to save the files on my HDD and yet make it Mac-compatible?
Yes, it would erase all the data currently on the drive. There’s no way to reformat the drive and retain the data on it. You’ll have to back it up elsewhere and transfer it back after you reformat it. Sorry.
Seagate would lead you to believe that you have to purchase the more expensive Mac version to be safest with a Mac, so thank you for clearing this up! I needed a drive in a hurry and the PC version is only one I could get. Luckily I have an intel Macbook Pro, so the voltage should be sufficient.
They tell you that you can use a “Y” connector to get more voltage from two USB ports, so it would be nice if it came with one. I’ve purchased other USB 2.0 drives that already come with the “Y” connector, so I don’t see why Seagate just doesn’t provide one. How much more could it cost? Seems they are trying to make money off the Mac users.
I agree. It doesn’t make sense why they need to have one for Mac and one for PC. Any other hard drive or flash drive you pick up would work perfectly on both.
At least there’s a workaround.
Hey thanks! Your simple and clear instructions were the only ones that assisted me in this re-format.
thanks! this definitely helps. how do i recover data erased while reformatting the drive? i chose the lowest security option since it said the data would still be available. is there a data recovery program i should use? please help!! thanks.
Hey, nice to see someone post something like this, very helpful and elaborate… Sucks that these drives aren’t cross platform compatible though.