I just bought a new 320GB Seagate 'Freeagent' external USB hard drive & it's all nice & peachy - except for it's auto-off feature. The drive spins down after a certain amount of time idle & this confuses/hangs my music playing software (Amarok) when I try to add new tracks to the playlist (because the drive is off!). So does anybody know of a way to disable this auto-off feature? Without voiding the 5-year warranty on the drive, of course...
Install the FreeAgent tool that came with the drive, and you can set sleep interval in there to "never"
Workstation 1: Intel i7 950 @ 3.8Ghz / X58 / 12GB DDR3-1600 / HD4870 512MB / Antec P180
Workstation 2: Intel C2Q Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz / X38 / 4GB DDR2-800 / 8400GS 512MB / Open Air
Workstation 3: Intel Xeon X3350 @ 3.2Ghz / P35 / 4GB DDR2-800 / HD4770 512MB / Shuttle SP35P2
HTPC: AMD Athlon X4 620 @ 2.6Ghz / 780G / 4GB DDR2-1000 / Antec Mini P180 White
Mobile Workstation: Intel C2D T8300 @ 2.4Ghz / GM965 / 3GB DDR2-667 / DELL Inspiron 1525 / 6+6+9 Cell Battery
Display (Monitor): DELL Ultrasharp 2709W + DELL Ultrasharp 2001FP
Display (Projector): Epson TW-3500 1080p
Speakers: Creative Megaworks THX550 5.1
Headphones: Etymotic hf2 / Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro
Storage: 8x2TB Hitachi @ DELL PERC 6/i RAID6 / 13TB Non-RAID Across 12 HDDs
Consoles: PS3 Slim 120GB / Xbox 360 Arcade 20GB / PS2
Oh, was there a disk in the box? I'll ahve to dig that out! I bet the software only works in Windows though...
Edit: nope, no disk in the box. Where is the tool meant to be?
Last edited by lost eden; 17-10-2007 at 05:19 PM.
Was there anything on the drive when you got it? Or did you format or similar before you used it?
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Correct apart from the working partOriginally Posted by XTR
I formatted the drive when I got it (NTFS ain't much use under Linux) but I made a copy of what was on it - all there is is a PDF that lays out the warranty conditions & System Volume Information. Is this fabled software perhaps only present on the Freeagent Pro drives?
`hdparm -Z /dev/sdXX' <-- I thought that would have been the obvious first look for a Linux user.
I was avoiding hdparm just in case it would void the warranty to alter the hardware parameters of the drive through a third-party application (e.g. anything other than Seagate's own tools).
Anyway, I just tried hdparm -Z & it failed with 'Invalid argument'.
Edit: got it - the Freeagent Tools only come on the Pro drives & Seagate don't link to the software on any of their publically-accessible webpages - I happenned across a link via some searching though. Thanks for the tips guys/gals, I've now got it set to never spin down.
Last edited by lost eden; 17-10-2007 at 07:28 PM.
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