Seagate FreeAgent Pro Ext HD Problem

XGUNTHERC · 27 Jun 2009

Basically i have them plugged in. yet you have to hold the touch power button to get the drive to power up and light to go on, then the system see's it and i can open it and add files. Also the same applies to turn these drives off, push and hold, the light will turn off, and it will disconnect from the computer and I thought they were off. Here's my problem. both have been on this entire time. (over a year). today i felt one and it was decently warm and spinning. it spun all day even tho the power light was off. and the second drive is doing it as well.. so why do they always run?? i had to unplug the drives to get them to stop spinning and to turn off and cool down.

So what is the deal here.. is this just how they work. i dont want my ext always running.

Any help would be great.. Thanks!

YupYup · 27 Jun 2009

Does not sound right to me, i have a terabyte FreeAgent Desk and it is recognized the second i plug it in and spins down within 10 minutes i would guess.

XGUNTHERC · 27 Jun 2009

Well both of the 500GB ones I have are doing it, and they are 2 different models.

Yea if I don't touch it, they will spin down and the light will go off, but they are still running even tho the light goes off and you THINK they are off.

it will spin down on it's own, or you can hit the power button and shut the drive down. and when you do, The computer no longer see's it. and the light on the Ext drive turns off.. but yesterday I felt it 5 hours later, and it's still a little warm, and still spinning. So I went into the other room, and the other one is doing the same thing. So basically I think as long as it's plugged in. it will keep spinning. that's what mine are doing at least.

not sure what to think. the one plugged into MY computer has not been powered up in over 2 weeks, yet it's still spinning and wont stop unless I unplug power.. weird huh.

aquest4innocens · 24 Mar 2010

I got the 2 TB seagate Freeagent about 2 months ago...

First thing i hated about this specific HDD seagate released was that it does not even have a power button. So everytime after i "safely remove" the drive in windows I have to just unplug the USB cable from it for the light to turn off.

Just like you guys I notice about a week ago that the drive was warm and I hadnt used it for like 4 days.

I also noticed that its spinning all the time. Just doesn't make sense, especially since the company bloats about how they have this "power saving" software that saves you money on your electricity. hah! Really Seagate?!

I really try to take good card of my externals and only have them turned on when I need something off the, so that they last a long time. But with this hard drives behaviors it almost leads me to think that perhaps seagate themselves are trying to make their product spin itself to death so that we're forced to buy a new one and give them more business.

The other part of me thinks that, that would be the worst business strategy ever and that maybe they just suck at programming externals to do what they say they do. I mean this drive at $170 (at best buy) was a little too cheap to be true I guess.

Anyways, since I noticed the damn thing just never stops spinning, I just started unplugging the power cable a few min after I unplug the usb. I know I've read somewhere that its not a good idea to disconnect the power cable when a HDD is still spinning but I've been okay so far and I really don't know what else to do since seagate has no information for me about this.

But it is irritating.

Seagate FreeAgent Pro Ext HD Problem

Seagate FreeAgent Pro Ext HD Problem

Same Problem over here