I am also having a problem with a GoFlex Drive - I have a 3 TB drive, and have done just as you previously mentioned, by reformatting the drive right out of the box (saving the data on the drive on a separate drive for safe keeping). There is still 177 MB of used space, when I looked at the properties of the drive, after a *long* 2 days reformatting the drive (the computer I had available to let sit and use the CPU exclusively for reformatting is a Centrino Duo laptop, and probably wasn't the best choice in hindsight.)
I am trying to be able to use this drive on a Netgear WNDR3700 Router, with a "readyshare" USB option, to network a drive. There is something in that 177 MB of hidden data that is keeping the drive from being able to be recognized as a drive useable by the router, even though Seagate and Netgear both list the 2 TB counterpart drive as being available and useable in this fashion.
Is it possible that the new base units for these drives, which change the drives over 2 TB to "look like" they are using a 4 GB kernel as opposed to a 512 MB kernel for operating system recognition, is the actual problem, and not the stealth 177 mb of data, that I cannot even find when looking at hidden files or in "disk management"? If so, I need to actually just take the drive back to the store, and cut my losses, getting a 2 TB drive and reformatting it to NTFS to go on the router (or maybe even two 2 TB drives with a splitter or small USB hub, to get more than 2 TB networkable?) The software for the GoFlex offers a way to make the drives accessible (through a USB connected computer) through the internet, generating a URL for the drive accessible with password access, in addition to the use on the internal network. The router will do the same. I just cannot get the router to recognize that there is a drive attached to it with the 3 TB GoFlex Desk external drive at all, but I *can* get my two 320 GB portable drives to be recognized, as well as my older, huge 250 GB and 750 GB Seagate external drives (none of which have any capacity for "making the drive a network" or "generating a URL for internet access outside the home".)
Any help is appreciated. I get *nothing* when I talk to Netgear, nor to Seagate - they both just say that it should *work*, although neither one says the pairing of these two particular devices is supported - they don't have the two as incompatible, but by exclusion, do not support it either, because it isn't on their "supported drive to router" list.
Thanks in advance!
WyomingKnott :
Simple answer: format and partition it as NTFS. It will work fine.
More complex answer: What OS are you going to use to partition it. When you should be able to connect it to any PC, what OSes are going to be involved? Only Windows versions? Linux? Apples?
1. Nothing will prevent you from writing to it. Just because it comes with automatic backup doesn't mean that you have to use said software. That's how I use mine.
2. Any PC running Windows NT and above will be able to read an NTFS volume. So will Linux distros. I don't know about Apples - someone else tell me, would that require FAT32?
3. That I don't know. Download Seatools?
4. Easy-peasy. WARNING: This will erase any data already on the drive. If you have data on the drive, a different procedure is needed.
Go into your favorite partition manager (in windows, try Control Panel - Adminitstrative Tools - Computer Management - the Disk Managemement tab).
If it's already formatted as one big partition, select the partition and delete it. Then right-click on the free space and create a partition in any size you want. Format it in NTFS. Click in the freespace and do that again.
You can create up to four Primary partitions. If you will need more than that, you have to put all the space into an Extended partition and create Logical partitions within it.
A math note: If you have four partitions of 750 to 500G each, they all have to be exactly 500G. From a compulsive mathematician.
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