I plugged my seagate into my mac OS and backed it up first, then went to my pc running windows xp and tried to locate the seagate drive and couldn't. Can I only use the Seagate on one machine or another?

I can only comment generically:

I would try to uninstall the drive on the OS. Then re-start the computer. After the re-start, connect the drive and see if the drive re-installs itself.

If the error persists, then the drive is indicating failure. To absolutely verify if it has failed, take the drive to a store where there are MAC computers and try the drive on one of their computers to see if it works.

A continuous flashing LED on most devices where the LED does not normally continuously flash is an indication of a failure of the device. Some devices will flash an error code when designed to do so, and if possible.

Jerry G.

Did you reformat the FreeAgent drive when you backed up the Mac? If you use Time Machine or other backup software for the Mac, you had to reformat the drive. If you want the PC to read the disc, it must be formatted in a FAT32 or NTFS file system. The Mac OS formats discs in the HFS+ (extended hard drive format) system.

Unfortunately, if you reformat the disc to a Windows compatible format, you will lose your current backup. The drive will be as a large media transfer disc but not for the backup images. This site, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~pcarbo/macnexstar.html , has information on splitting the hard drive into two partitions, one HFS+ and one FAT32. Then you could have your backup on one part of the GoFlex and still transfer files from the Mac to the PC and vice versa.

I hope this helps.

Cindy Wells

I would be tempted to format the drive using the disk utility whch can be found under applications and then utilities once opened choose your drive in the left hand window and on the right hand side click on erase. If you are using the Seagate drive for the Mac only, format it as a Mac OS Extended (journaled) Choose your volume format and name and then erase. Hope this helps.

in your bios can you tell it what drive to boot from first. sorry for the lame question but im thinking its going to the defualt drive each time.

Seagate and Maxtor-brand External Hard Drives
External drives contain a standard computer hard drive in an enclosure that makes it possible to connect it to in of your computers external data ports (USB, FireWire or eSATA). This makes it easy to add a drive for backup or data storage to any computer with a compatible external data port.', OFFSETY, -50, FONTCOLOR, '#C1C1C1', WIDTH, 225, BORDERWIDTH, 0, JUMPVERT, true, SHADOW, false, FADEIN, 100, FADEOUT, 100, STICKY, 1, DURATION, -300, CLOSEBTN, false, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#232323')" onmouseout="UnTip()" href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/knowledge_base/industry_terms_glossary/" target="_blank">external hard drives do not require additional drivers to function in Windows Vista
Microsoft Vista is the successor to Windows XP operating system. ', OFFSETY, -50, FONTCOLOR, '#C1C1C1', WIDTH, 225, BORDERWIDTH, 0, JUMPVERT, true, SHADOW, false, FADEIN, 100, FADEOUT, 100, STICKY, 1, DURATION, -300, CLOSEBTN, false, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#232323')" onmouseout="UnTip()" href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/knowledge_base/industry_terms_glossary/" target="_blank">Windows Vista, Windows XP
Microsoft Windows XP is the successor to Windows 2000. ', OFFSETY, -50, FONTCOLOR, '#C1C1C1', WIDTH, 225, BORDERWIDTH, 0, JUMPVERT, true, SHADOW, false, FADEIN, 100, FADEOUT, 100, STICKY, 1, DURATION, -300, CLOSEBTN, false, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#232323')" onmouseout="UnTip()" href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/knowledge_base/industry_terms_glossary/" target="_blank">Windows XP, Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows 2000 is the successor to Windows Me.', OFFSETY, -50, FONTCOLOR, '#C1C1C1', WIDTH, 225, BORDERWIDTH, 0, JUMPVERT, true, SHADOW, false, FADEIN, 100, FADEOUT, 100, STICKY, 1, DURATION, -300, CLOSEBTN, false, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#232323')" onmouseout="UnTip()" href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/knowledge_base/industry_terms_glossary/" target="_blank">Windows 2000, or Mac OS X
Mac OS X is the operating system that is produced by and comes standard on Apple computers.', OFFSETY, -50, FONTCOLOR, '#C1C1C1', WIDTH, 225, BORDERWIDTH, 0, JUMPVERT, true, SHADOW, false, FADEIN, 100, FADEOUT, 100, STICKY, 1, DURATION, -300, CLOSEBTN, false, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#232323')" onmouseout="UnTip()" href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/knowledge_base/industry_terms_glossary/" target="_blank">Mac OS X. These external drives are supported by the standard device drivers that are already included in these operating systems out of the box. Installing Serial ATA drives requires the installation of drivers from the Serial ATA motherboard. Click here for more information on this subject.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201413&NewLang=en

The hard drive volume format is only for MAC. Check the volume format if it is MAC OS Extended or MAC OS Extended (Journaled). If it is, then change it to MS DOS to make it readable and writable to a PC and MAC OS

Do you have the little jumper switchs set to master or auto-detect? Once that is done, you might try to find an older DOS 6.2 setup disk 1, and use FDisk, to low level format the drive to FAT32 format, then put Windows back on it.

Yes, you can format a windows OS drive on your MAC to one of the MAC filing system, which would work just as good.

You don' t say what OS or even type of computer (PC, Mac, Windows XP, 98, vista etc) you are running, or whether the drive has been used before. If it's a new drive then it probably needs formatting, so you can allow the OS to do that. If it contains data that you need then DO NOT allow the OS to format it.

If you know it is formatted & contains data, then it sounds like the OS is not recognising the format. Windows 98 typically won't recognise NTFS disks formatted on Windows XP for example or Linux Ext3/4 format disks won't be recognised by Windows. In the latter case, you can download a free driver which will do that for you - google Ext 4 and Windows.

Well, in your case your external may corrupt. The solution is format the drive and then try some so-called data recovery software. After finishing the format option. Do it as follows.

Connect your hard drive to your personal computer. And install this software Wondershare Data Recovery on the computer in order to perform data recovery. Get the program from its site.
data recovery (for Windows OS)
Mac data recovery (for Mac OS X)

Good luck. I hope that my reply has shed some light on the problem!