New Seagate Drives Have Real Difficulties With Linux

wtansill writes "Seagate's Free Agent series of drives are not intended to be compatible with the Open Source operating system Linux. The Inquirer reports on the problem: an unhelpful power saving mode. 'The problem is to do with the power-saving systems on Seagate's latest range of drives and the fact that it is shipped already formatted to NTFS. The NTFS is only a slight hurdle to Linux users who have a kernel with NTFS writing enabled or can work mkfs. But the "power saving" timer is a real bugger. It will shut the drive off after several minutes of inactivity and helpfully drop the USB connection. When the connection does come back it returns as USB1 which is apparently as useful as a chocolate teapot.' Via Engadget, though, there is a solution!

Comments

No more Seagate if they produce useless crap

[aim2future]

I could buy an argument as "there is a development bug, but we are fixing it soon and we are very sorry for this, but the faulty drives will be replaced".

There is no way in hell, I buy an argument like "Our drives are not supposed to work with Linux".

Either they hire complete idiots for their tech support, or this a sign of something really really bad smelling as the OOXML scandal or the SCO scandal.

Anyway, now I won't buy any more Seagate drives, at least not until Seagate has cleared this mess up.

Re:Bad summary...

[thetartanavenger]

Someone mod this guy up!! I'm fed up with this typical attitude of "omg let's sue them!!" There's no point if the situation can be resolved some other sensible way. Suing should be saved for when they start refusing to refund/replace the faulty product, not because the product doesn't quite work because they messed it up. Warranties exist for a reason!!