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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!
for me to POOP on!
Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer sat at their usual booths at Monk's, their favorite diner.
"Gee, George, it's a shame about Susan," Jerry offered, trying to sound sincere.
"Yeah, well ... yeah." George was still trying to cover up his
glee at escaping the marriage vows by his fiancee's untimely death.
"Still," Kramer said, sipping his soda loudly, "it's kind of a good thing."
Elaine looked at him, shocked. "How can you say that? A woman has died."
Kramer put his glass down with a bang. "I think it's kinda obvious that Georgie-boy here needs to get a little more pussy before he settles down."
"What?" Elaine was stunned.
Jerry just nodded. "I agree."
"Hey!" George said, outraged, "I'll have you know I've had plenty of pussy in my life."
"I can't believe you're all sitting around here talking about this in front of me," Elaine said, shocked.
"Oh, get over it," Jerry said. "You're worse than the rest of us when it comes to talking about fucking."
Elaine glared at her former boyfriend, then calmed down. "I guess you're right about that."
"Who cares about that?" George said, still angry. "Let's get back to me. I've fucked a lot of women in my life! Dozens! A hundred at least!"
"A hundred?" Jerry scoffed.
"OK, maybe a couple dozen," George said, a little humbled.
"Name 'em," Kramer shot back.
"Name 'em?" George said. "I can't name 'em. I can't remember their names."
"OK, then, tell what you do remember about them," Jerry said.
George thought. "Well, there was Susan, of course. Then that one woman with the male roommate. Then the woman whose grandmother's funeral I went to. And that antique store woman. And the one who I wanted to think we were gay. And that woman I dated, then Jerry dated. And that woman who got the nose job. Boy, I had to screw her with my eyes closed."
"OK, that's seven," Jerry said. "Who else?"
George thought, then admitted. "That's it."
"Seven?" Elaine said, snickering. "That's it?"
"Hey," George said, getting angry, "it's not how many boats are on your ocean, it's how big the waves are."
"What?" Elaine said.
"I think you mean, 'It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of the ocean."
"That makes no sense," George said. "It's not how many boats .."
Elaine cut him off. "What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying I'm a great fuck," George said, proudly.
"Ha!" Kramer said. "I'm the best fuck at this table."
"Gentlemen," Jerry said, scoffing. "I beg to differ. I'm the best fuck here."
"Ha!" Elaine snorted. "You couldn't even make me cum in all the times we fucked."
"That's because it was before I got good," Jerry countered. "I've had plenty of women since we screwed, and they taught me a thing or two about fucking."
"Well, there's only one way to settle this, you know," Elaine said, sitting back, folding her arms.
"What's that?" Kramer asked.
"Another contest," she said.
"You mean, like when we saw who could go without beating off the longest?" Jerry asked.
"Exactly," Elaine answered. "Except this time, I'm going to have to be the judge, so I should get some of the money up front."
Jerry looked at Elaine in disbelief. "Are you saying ...?"
"Yup," she said, smiling. "I'm going to have to fuck all of you."
George couldn't believe his ears. He's wanted to bang Elaine ever since he met her, but he'd always been a little afraid of her. "Are you serious?"
"Sure," she answered. "You guys all put up $500 each. I get half, and the winner gets the other half. Deal?"
Jerry shrugged. "I'm game."
George nodded. "Count me in!"
"Giddyup!" Kramer shouted.
They shook hands on the deal.
"OK, how do we decide who goes first?" Jerry asked.
"Pick a number between one and 10," Elaine said.
"Two! No, Six!" George blurted out.
"Which one you
...different power saving mode I don't understand the dilemma. I don't think you know what that word really means. A dilemma (Greek - "double proposition") is a problem offering two solutions or possibilities, in particular two solutions neither of which is acceptable. The two options are often described as the horns of a dilemma, neither of which is comfortable.Microsoft plays a LARGE role in the big vendor's product development. Vendors like Dell, Seagate, Western Digital, nVidia, etc. all get new feature information and are pushed/bribed/coerced into supporting "new standards" that break old functionality. Microsoft can easily push a fix these days before the products are released.
The vendors think this rocks because they get to have a leg up on competition and have a new device for a period of time without them. Microsoft likes it because it makes everyone else look "incompatible." You know, why risk being "incompatible," life is just easier if you use Windows. Right? NOT!
For, well what its worth, even having to deal with the occasional crap like this, Linux, Macintosh, and hell, even FreeBSD are more "productive" systems in the sense of "real" usability: consistency, reliability, and availability of most common applications.
I'm sorry but power management in Linux is seriously broken and until it gets fixed, I won't be using it as my laptop is my primary computer and the lack of proper working power management is a big issue as it severley hits the battery life.
I'm now going to be no doubt flamed and told I'm stupid because there are "solutions", although these look strangely like workarounds, but all of these solutions involve disabling the power management. Wow, great. Thanks a lot. So if your "solution" involves disabling the power saving features, don't bother posting it because it's not a fix but a botch.
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(BTW it's amusing that you added "deliberately" in there. As if Seagate purposely made it incompatible. Next I suspect you'll say that the evil MS must have paid them off.)
It would be nice for it to work with Linux, sure. But you have absolutely no right to expect it to.
"Seagate reports today that they have taken a .0001% hit in the market because Linux users do not buy their hard drives anymore."
Linux community is cheap and watch as no solution comes out of this; it is the beginning of the end for Linux desktop/storage.
Seagate dominates the market with quality hard drives, best warranties and reliable in case anybody has been living under a rock.
Maybe it is time for the Linux/OS community to accept NTFS like they should have a long time ago or maybe just accept they showed up late to the PC market.
It's deliberately defective because they didn't design it around Linux's borderline defective power management? Or are you suggesting the drive specifically violates a standard?
To me it sounds like Linux makes assumptions rather than actually probing the device and determining it's defaults.
wonder if seagate got a lil bit of pocket change for that stunt.. what ? not like it havent happend before.. paramount is the latest that comes to mind. wouldnt be the least surprised if ms had something to do with this.. any chance to make a dent in the competition and they'll take it ... or make it!
This one is neither. It does what it is intended to do. This entire article is complaining about the drive not working in a situation it wasn't intended for.
It's a Slashdot ookie cookie, in other words.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The hardware companies already do offer 'standalone' diagnostic apps. Simply put though, for 99.99999999999999% of the hardware issues encountered, there's no need to reinvent the wheel for every diagnostic program, it's just as easy to code it as an app to run under Windows, which is why the market has moved that way. I've got a slug of tools that fire up into a Windows PE environment off CD and give me more than just access to HW diag, but the ability to connect to windows shares and perform network based recovery tasks as well. No reliance on the user's existing install, and just as much ability to cope with brain dead bios / hw conf as a DOS based util.
In short, it's far EASIER for diag companies to rely on an established base OS and GUI than to code their own from scratch for every new product. They used to rely on DOS, they've moved on as Microsoft has.
If you aren't convinced, step up and launch your own diagnostic tool kit line and base it on something else. If the world beats a path to your door, you win.
And I'm only returning the hostility you started with when you decided to tell repair shops how it should be done. : )