Seagate FreeAgent on Mac

For my work Mac (I know, aren't I lucky?) I use an external USB hard drive to make backups using Time Machine.

There are several blog postings I can make about this:

1. Time Machine is incredible. It really is outstanding. I've gone nearly two years with Leopard without using it and now I regret not getting into it earlier.
1a. Time Machine can be made to work on Samba shares, and I will share how in a later posting.
2. Backing up to an external hard disk is cheap and very easy. To a large extent, small business can survive with this sort of backup and not need centralised servers and tape (but I actually can't recommend that - my current employer does not follow what I'd call 'best practise').
3. About using a Seagate FreeAgent on a Mac.

This is about number three.

The FreeAgent claims to be Mac compatible. Right there on the box. And generally, yes it is. Plug in, reformat, install software, and go. Not as quick as on a PC, for which it is pre-formatted, but it works.

Mostly.

Here's the problem: the Mac software lacks control over the sleep timer, and the installed driver has a bug which resets the sleep timer to between 60 seconds and three minutes, whether it's in use or not. Click, spinup, click, spinup, click, spinup, ... all day, every day.

There is a fix:

1. Remove the driver. You don't need it. Search your hard disk for System files named 'Maxtor' (yes, this device is a rebrand of something acquired in the Maxtor takeover). Delete the file. Prepare for the Mac to crash as you really shouldn't have just done that.
2. Boot WinXP in a VM, install the software for the drive on that and set the spindown to something sensible (1 hour or never).
3. That's it. Or at least, that's what I did. No warranties.