Seagate snubs Linux

[Shadowmeph]

I was going to buy a Seagate HD but now I am wondering.

Latest drives show no visible means of support

By Nick Farrell: Friday, 07 December 2007, 7:30 AM

SEAGATE'S latest batch of drives, the ironically titled Free Agent series are not compatible with the Open Sauce operating system Linux.

As an INQ reader, who owns two 320s and 500s (USB2) pointed out to us, Seagate designers must have been working overtime to manage that feat. Linux runs his ancient Arcnet card, the latest DVB-c/s/t cards and even the more obscure studio-grade A/D/A converters. It cannot manage the latest from Seagate.

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 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.

As our reader points out this is a, "fairly shit idea perfectly implemented, " unfortunately while Windows can handle it, Linux and Mac's can't cope.

There are a few work-arounds but Seagate Tech Support says they do not know what they are. Instead they are telling man plus dog that their latest drives do not support Linux.

Rose Allen from Seagate Tech support said that work-rounds may succeed, but there is no way that she, or her band will support that sort of thing. µ

Seagate snubs Linux - The INQUIRER
apparently the below quote will fix the problem on Linux

Re: Seagate snubs Linux

by Sjaakie on 09 Dec 2007 10:50 am
Omfg, what a nuubs - those who dont know how to fix this themselfs (kidding)

add the following to a 'keepalive.sh' (in your homedir or /etc) and it wont disconnect anymore:
Code: Select all#!/bin/bash
sleep 599 | touch /mnt/mountpoint/emptyfile

where mountpoint represents the mountpoint as specified in /etc/fstab
and the number behind sleep should be made smaller then the time in which it 'spins down'/turn's off normally

..

then add a line to your bash login script, /etc/profile (For all users) or ~/.bash_profile to make it automatically get started on login/ system startup

you can also copy the script to ~/.kde/Autostart and make it 'chmod + keepalive.sh' to make it executable
i forgot how to do that with gnome ;D

I read some interesting things at other forums saying that they were also having problems running windows. hmm I wish that those non moving parts hard drives were available and sold for a decent cheap price but now I am stuck trying to figure out what kind of HD to buy again because Seagate's were /are my Favs

[Digitaldemon]

Sounds suspicious and odd that they would try and strangle hold the user market. To define what the user can do with the end product is [swearing here]

[enaberif]

First WD with their DRM crap and now seagate and this.

Makes you realize just why things like Vantec Enclosures with a hard drive are more popular!

[MpG]

I heard about the WD fiasco, but I've also seen several reports indicating that it was false. The file-sharing problem stemmed from other software, not the drive itself.

[Mysteryous]

I fail to see how a hard drive itself cannot support linux or its filesystems. Luckily, Ubuntu has recently integrated full read/write support for windows NTFS filesystems, so it won't be as big a deal as that WD thing that was mentioned in the post before me.