Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Home 3 TB External Hard Drive STAM3000100, Black

I purchased the 1 TB Seagate GoFlex Home at an excellent price from Amazon as an alternative to Apple's Time Capsule. The many reports of 18 month life before power supply failure with the Time Capsule scared me off. It would be covered under my MacBook Air's AppleCare but that doesn't do much good if the backup data is lost. My only planned use for the GoFlex Home is to backup the MacBook Air using Time Machine.When you look at the reviews for home network drives, the ratings aren't very good and there is a lot of frustration. Most of it seems to be over getting the software to function correctly. It almost seems like the devises aren't perfected yet and that may be true. There are a lot of things that can go wrong when working over a wireless network and the operation is more touchy. You need to go into it knowing it may have problems and take some time.The GoFlex Home (GFH) hardware appears well made and good quality. It runs very quietly and is only warm to the touch during the long initial backup. Hardware setup is very simple and quick. Setup to get it operating is not. The MacBook Air has no optical drive and the GFH manual directs you to a web page in Seagate's web site to download the software. There you are told how to proceed to replace a lost or damaged software CD. Nothing about downloading software or where to find it. I did a file share with my iMac and used it's optical drive to download the software on my MacBook Air. I set up Time Machine as per the instructions in the Manual but couldn't get the MacBook Air to recognize the GFH. I spent a few hours trying to solve the problem using Seagate's Trouble Shooting and Knowledge Base. While doing this, I accidentally ran across the fact that the software isn't needed to use the GFH with Time Machine. It is compatible right out of the box. The manual says nothing about this. I followed the instructions to set this up and the GFH showed up in Finder. I connected to it and it showed up as a choice of drives for Time Machine backup. It did an initial backup and followup scheduled backup. The initial backup was about half the time it took to do a backup to a hard drive shared through my iMac. My next problem was that the MacBook Air lost the GFH as the selected backup when the Air was put to sleep or turned off. At this point I did what I should have done right after connecting the GFH hardware. I called Seagate Tech Service. The Techs are knowledgable and patient. They are easy to follow and will clarify anything you don't understand. They have solved problems like yours before and have a procedure they go through. In my case, the problem began to like like Time Machine was not finding the GFH. The Tech did some trouble shooting on Time Machine and then asked me to call AppleCare and have them trouble shoot Time Machine. He gave me a case number and told me they would be happy to work with Apple if necessary.AppleCare is always good . They had me do some tests on Time Machine and determined that Time Machine wasn't automatically picking up the password from Keychain. That was fixed and everything worked well until I upgraded to Lion 10.7.2. Then I completely lost the GFH on the network.This time I called Seagate Tech Service and had them walk me through it. Again a good experience. The GFH has a pinhole reset on the left side when looking at the front with the two lights. If you push a paperclip wire in the hole until you feel the click and hold it for at least ten seconds, it will reset the GFH without losing the stored backups. After releasing the button you must wait a while until the green top light starts flashing amber. When the reset is done it goes back to solid green. After that the GFH showed up in Finder and I was able to connect to it and select it as the backup disk for Time Machine.Some comments about Seagate's support. The telephone tech support is good. The website help is not. Every department can add things to the Knowledge Base and Trouble Shooting. Consequently, there is no logical path to find anything and things are where you don't expect them to be. I have found out that it is being completely rebuilt with completion slated for the end of November. It will have it's own department and responsible manager. Hopefully, this will be a big improvement because it just doesn't work now. Skip it and just call Tech Support.I have not found the GFH to be the perfect solution to backup with Time Machine. There have been times when I have had to reselect the drive in Time Machine. It will sometimes miss the initial backup but catch the next one after being woke up or turned back on. It doesn't have a really strong signal and won't connect everywhere in the house. At this point in time, I don't think there is a good solution to laptop backups. The most reliable is a hard drive plugged into the laptop USB port but you have to manually do that. Time Capsule works flawlessly but it is expensive and may have a short life. With Apple you can share a hard drive USB connected to another computer but it won't work if the other computer is asleep or turned off. Other home network drives seem to mirror my experience with the GFH. Part of the problem is that Apple doesn't support other manufacturer's equipment for use with Time Machine. I am hoping that future firmware updates with the GFH will bring more reliable operation. Until then, this is probably as good as it gets.

I have had the drive up and running for the past month and I have to say, it works exactly as I needed. I was a bit worried at first as it required me to sign into Seagate. I was worried I was logging into a cloud that allowed them access to my files. I do not want that. However, it was only activating the OS. Once that was done, I was able to connect through windows, create the drives I needed, and map them. I did not install any of the software that came with it as it is not necessary for this to function as a network drive. My backup software sees the mapped drive and backs up with no issues. You do not need to use Seagate's software if you already have software to do this. One thing I did not expect was Windows immediately recognized the UPNP-AV capabilities and installed the software for it. Now my TV and Blu-ray player sees the device and I can play movies, pictures, and music directly from the drive. I am sure all NAS drives will work the same way, but for the price, I really recommend it. I bought the 3 TB Drive, which I am sure will be enough space for me for years.Update: I have had the drive now for several months and the drive is still doing the job for which it was bought: backups and network drives. I read a lot of the negative reviews and I do not see what they are talking about. I implement enterprise wide technology solutions, so I am one of the pickiest people when it comes to my home network. I am also one of the most adamant about security since I see the damage every day from poor systems security. This does EXACTLY as intended. It is not meant to be a high end drive for redundancy or professional backups. It's purpose is to provide you with a network drive you can attach to and store files. If you are looking for a full network server, you won't get it here. That is NOT it's purpose. It works beautifully with my Windows-based network and it took only minutes to set up. My Windows 2003 server uses it for network storage for extra space as my server only has an 80Gig hard drive. (Caveat: I don't use Apple products so my review cannot be applied to those users. I do not know how this works in that environment.)What's even better is I can control what my kids store without going to their computers for an audit. I have set up the public drive, mapped their computers to that for their storage, and hidden the C drive on their computers. We also use it for our movies and music there and the kids can access this any time from their computers.For the price, Seagate has provided a very good product.