New Seagate hard drive offers 4TB of storage

#15 whitedog

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 12:37 PM

Boscher, on 28 November 2011 - 10:46 AM, said:

Seagate is coming out with their Thunderbolt cable "sometime before the end of the year" so any GoFlex external drive will have Thunderbolt capability. Just purchase the cable, pop out the USB3 cable and plug in the Thunderbolt cable. Done!

These Goflex drives don't use adaptor cables, they use adaptor bases, with a variety of connectivity options, depending on the base. Given that a FireWire 800/USB 2 base is $50, I expect the Thunderbolt version to be even more expensive.

The whole idea of the GoFlex line of drives is that you can move the drive from one base to another - or move the base from one drive to another. How useful this is depends on your workflow. Surprisingly, the FireWire 800 base does not include the two FireWire 800 ports that make it possible to daisy-chain FW 800 drives - a common feature on most full size FW 800 drives. This means that if you do have a chain of drives, the GoFlex would have to be the last drive on the chain. Which makes me wonder if the Thunderbolt version, when it arrives, will have the same limitation.

While I find the concept interesting, given the added expense of these GoFlex bases, I'm hard pressed to see what advantage they offer over the usual multi-interface drives.

#16 Remiss63

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 12:40 PM

So where's the Thunderbolt connection? And why does the Firewire connection cost extra??

#17 Boscher

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 12:41 PM

RPriest, on 28 November 2011 - 11:08 AM, said:

Boscher, on 28 November 2011 - 10:46 AM, said:

Well, they had better hurry up, they only have one month left! My bet is they don't have the Thunderbolt adapter by the end of the year, or they will rush it to market and it will be a POS.

I am not holding my breath for the end of this year either.

I am just hopeful that it is a solid product.

#18 Remiss63

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 12:44 PM

Also, I can't find the price of this thing anywhere? Shouldn't a drive that has complete flexibility with regard to connectors include FW800 and Thunderbolt?

#19 chris ozman

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 02:39 PM

What a ridiculous new product in 2011. It has a large storage capacity lending itself to photo/video storage but
doesn't have ESATA, let alone thunderbolt. Just stupid.

#20 tewha31c2

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 04:15 PM

Boscher, on 28 November 2011 - 10:46 AM, said:

I think you always need to buy based on what you actually get, not on future promises.

#21 R

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Posted 28 November 2011 - 05:48 PM

And I just bought their 3TB drive. 3 weeks ago bought the WIFI HD. Bad mistake. WIFI never would finally initialize, as you have to go to Seagate's site. Money wasted.
Always loved their drives until this one.
3TB was the cheaper Windows version. Reformated for OSX Didn't get the Mac version with Firewire, but my new Air doesn't have Firewire. 3TB is great, but would have gotten the 4TB. Seems you never have enough storage.

#22 mjbauer

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Posted 29 November 2011 - 04:33 AM

I bought an earlier version of this unit a few months back at Costco. I use it to backup my Synology NAS.

Works well so far, While I can't claim it is directly attached to one of our Mac's it does back up the files they create.

Pro's - price, capacity
Con's = none yet

#23 talmy

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Posted 29 November 2011 - 09:55 AM

Considering that there are currently drive shortages (and high prices) because of the flooding in Thailand, I think it would be prudent to wait to buy any drive unless you absolutely need one. And for Mac owners, its especially foolish to spend large amounts of money for a drive without Thunderbolt or at least Firewire.

#24 tooldk

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Posted 29 November 2011 - 10:53 AM

I have had this for a while and it makes my mac unstable. I have seen other reports to the same effect in reviews on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.co...h_res_rtr_alt_5 and http://www.amazon.co...h_res_rtr_alt_4) .

Supposedly using the firewire adapter will solve the issue, but I have not verified this. Instead I took the drive out of the enclosure (voidin the warranty) and mounted it internally in my Mac Pro. Works perfectly now.

#25 tunesmith82

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Posted 04 December 2011 - 03:49 PM

whitedog, on 28 November 2011 - 12:37 PM, said:

Boscher, on 28 November 2011 - 10:46 AM, said:

Actually there ARE 2 firewire ports and 1 usb2 port on the base. I got one for $20 at Best Buy. 1 Firewire port is on the back and the other 2 ports are on the left side.

#26 tunesmith82

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Posted 04 December 2011 - 03:51 PM

tooldk, on 29 November 2011 - 10:53 AM, said:

I had problems with the USB3 on my iMac Intel Core2 Duo with Snow Leopard. The Firewire base solved my problem and it now seems to work great.

This post has been edited by tunesmith82: 04 December 2011 - 03:51 PM

#27 spinoza2

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Posted 05 December 2011 - 04:20 AM

Seagate announced last February they would be introducing Thunderbolt drives, and we haven't heard a word since then. I wouldn't bet money on their bringing anything out this year, I certainly wouldn't buy one of these drives anticipating the release of such a cable any time soon.

For something so obvious, I'm again surprised that the Macworld review doesn't mention Thunderbolt in this article. The way these articles frequently skirt by such issues, I sometimes wonder if Macworld is working for these companies...

#28 mkanet

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Posted 24 January 2012 - 05:13 PM

First thing I'm going to do is take it out of it's stupid enclosure to get direct access to get access to what's inside... a 7200RPM SATA disk; then format it and pop it into my Windows PC. Sure it'll void the warranty; but, well worth it.