Seagate external hard drive cant be read in macos sierra 202224 Views 24 Replies. WindowsNTFS Seagate Backup Plus. 2.0 TB disk2s1 /dev/disk3 (internal, physical). I did this but all I get is a message telling me that the NTFSformac/dmg is damaged & I need to trash it. So no joy here. This helped me. Plug in the drive. Open the Seagate Backup Plus or FreeAgent GoFlex icon that appears on the desktop. Double-click the Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg (Backup Plus) or Mac Installer.dmg (GoFlex) file on the drive and follow the prompts. If the driver is not installed, then the drive will be read-only under MacOS. Jul 19, 2012 It’s not necessary to install the Dashboard to use the Seagate Backup Plus External Hard Drive as strictly a hard drive. Buy it for its hard drive capabilities, not the social media aspect. The two year warranty and small footprint make the Seagate Backup Plus External Hard Drive a good choice for a portable hard drive.
Seagate Wireless Plus
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Editor Rating: Excellent (4.0)
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$200.00
Pros
Caches media lists. Responds faster than previous iterations. USM connector. Large capaicty wireless storage for iOS devices, Kindle Fire, and Android. Passes Internet through. Works with some smart TVs and DLNA devices. Can use drag and drop or Media Sync app. Works with browsers in laptops and desktops.Cons
Easily misplaced USM port cover. Some videos play in browser, some in the Seagate Media app.Bottom Line
Think of the Seagate Wireless Plus wireless media hard drive as a streaming photo, video, and music library for your family's phones, tablets, and laptops.
Carrying your entire media library just became a bit easier with the Seagate Wireless Plus ($199.99) drive. It's a 1TB hard drive with a built-in battery, media server, and Wi-Fi router, so you can share videos, photos, and music on the road. Instead of having to rely on streaming over potentially expensive 3G/4G Internet, you can stream video and music files to your smartphones, tablets, and laptops anywhere, even if there isn't any Internet access at all. It's a controllable alternative to hotel in-room movies, as well as a way to keep the kids entertained on a multi-hour journey in the car. It irons out many drawbacks on previous wireless drives, and gains our first Editor's Choice award for wireless media drives.
Design and Features
The Wireless Plus follows the design ID of the Seagate Backup Plus, which means the drive itself is a grey slab of plastic measuring about 0.78 by 3.5 by 5 inches (HWD). It's a bit larger than the Backup Plus, in order to accommodate the radio for the built-in Wi-Fi, battery, and for an auxiliary charging port. The drive comes formatted for NTFS (Windows native), but you can download a NTFS read utility for Macs from Seagate's website or use the installer included on the drive. The drive comes with a USM adapter for USB 3.0, so you can connect the drive directly to your laptop or desktop for quick transfers. USM is Seagate's proprietary connector that uses a recessed SATA port. If you have older USM connectors from drives like the older Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage (500GB) ($199.99), you can connect the Wireless Plus to FireWire 800, eSATA, or Thunderbolt ports.
The Wireless Plus follows the design ID of the Seagate Backup Plus, which means the drive itself is a grey slab of plastic measuring about 0.78 by 3.5 by 5 inches (HWD). It's a bit larger than the Backup Plus, in order to accommodate the radio for the built-in Wi-Fi, battery, and for an auxiliary charging port. The drive comes formatted for NTFS (Windows native), but you can download a NTFS read utility for Macs from Seagate's website or use the installer included on the drive. The drive comes with a USM adapter for USB 3.0, so you can connect the drive directly to your laptop or desktop for quick transfers. USM is Seagate's proprietary connector that uses a recessed SATA port. If you have older USM connectors from drives like the older Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage (500GB) ($199.99), you can connect the Wireless Plus to FireWire 800, eSATA, or Thunderbolt ports.
Since the drive uses a 2.5-inch laptop-style mechanism, the Wireless Plus can be placed easily in a pocket or zippered pouch in your commute bag. The drive comes with a cover to protect the USM connector when it's not in use. The cover snaps into place after you remove the USB 3.0 adapter. It would have been nice to have the port cover built in, since it's easy to lose a small piece of flat plastic, but it's one of the only minor nits we can find with this drive.
SEE ALSO: The Best External Hard Drives for 2019
The Wireless Plus comes as a single 1TB model, which is double that of the older GoFlex Satellite. This will let you carry several hundred HD movies or thousands of MP3s, AAC, photos, and other files with you everywhere. This is useful if you have a 64GB device like an iPad, but it's even more useful if you have a family with basic devices like that 8GB iPhone 3GS that you gave to your son after your contract ran out. The Wireless Plus can serve up to three HD video streams smoothly, but can service even more users if some are streaming music or SD videos. It would be a great companion for your family on a train ride, plane ride, or multi-state road trip.
The Wireless Plus can route the Internet by connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Basically, the Wireless Plus is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, and your tablets, phones, and laptops are connected to the Wireless Plus, which is acting as a router. You'll manage the Internet connection through the Seagate media app on your phone or tablet. When your devices are connected via the Wireless Plus, all of your Internet apps (browser, Facebook, Spotify, etc.) should work fine. The one thing that won't work in this situation is your tablet or phone's internal cellular modem, unless the Wireless Plus is connected to the cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. If you have an iPhone or other phones on one of the older non-hotspot data plans, you'll have to disconnect from the Wireless Plus and its library to surf the Internet. Thus, the best-case scenario for travel is to have the Wireless Plus connected to a 3G/4G hotspot like a MiFi, and your family's laptops and devices connected to the Wireless Plus.
The Wireless Plus has its own built-in Wi-Fi router, which is set as an open connection by default. You can setup WPA security on the router, so you won't have to worry about strangers sharing your personal files. You can search for and find the Seagate Media app in the iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon Apps for Android stores, which gives Android tablets and phones, iOS devices, and Kindle Fire tablets simple access to the media on your Wireless Plus drive. Media files are presented in folder format (like on the first version of the GoFlex Satellite and Seagate Media app), but the Seagate Media app automatically catalogs and lists all the video, music, and readable documents in separate tabs as well. This makes it easy to find the movie you want to watch, instead of trying to dig through poorly marked folders. The current version of the Seagate Media app catalogs the media files on your drive and caches info like album art, so you don't constantly have to wait for the drive to show you its offerings. Populating the drive with media is as easy as dragging and dropping files on the drive, but if you want a little more automatic service, Seagate's Media Sync program on Mac or Windows will search for and copy media files to the Wireless Plus (or older GoFlex Satellite) drive. The Media Sync app can manage several drives, with different setting for each drive. You can set the sync to only copy iPad-compatible files, for example.
The Seagate Media app is the optimal tool for using the Wireless Plus, but you can view and manage the files on the drive using a web browser on your laptop or desktop. Just connect to the Wireless Plus' network and you can browse the files and enjoy the media on the drive as well. The clients aren't limited to computing devices: the Wireless Plus is compatible with DLNA devices like HDTVs, game consoles, and AV receivers. Seagate also claims future compatibility with Samsung smart TVs via an app, as long as they are on the same wireless network. Note that on the iPad and iPhone, iTunes videos will play in the Safari browser. This is due to the iTunes DRM, which requires an Apple app for playback. Non-DRM files play back in the Seagate Media app directly.
Speaking of networks, the Seagate Media app also allows you to use the Internet with the Wireless Plus. Though you are technically connected to the Wireless Plus, if you have a Wi-Fi network available (like at home or using a 3G/4G hotspot on the road) you can connect to that hotspot and continue to use the Internet for browsing in other apps. This is a marked contrast to other wireless drives like the Kingston Wi-Drive ($129.99), which has no Internet pass through abilities, or the G-Technology G-Connect (500GB) ($199.99 list), which is wireless but requires a wired Ethernet connection for the Internet.
Performance
The Wireless Plus is a battery saving drive, so it's not designed for performance. It took most of the day for us to transfer a 400GB iTunes library to the drive over USB 2.0. When we tested the Wireless Plus on USB 3.0 with PCMark, it returned respectable scores at PCMark 05 (6,640 points) and PCMark 7 (1531 points). We also got a quick 16 second time on our drag and drop test with our 1.22 GB test folder. Seagate claims a battery life of 10 hours serving a single user with SD video, but your battery life will vary depending on the files and number of users.
The Wireless Plus is a battery saving drive, so it's not designed for performance. It took most of the day for us to transfer a 400GB iTunes library to the drive over USB 2.0. When we tested the Wireless Plus on USB 3.0 with PCMark, it returned respectable scores at PCMark 05 (6,640 points) and PCMark 7 (1531 points). We also got a quick 16 second time on our drag and drop test with our 1.22 GB test folder. Seagate claims a battery life of 10 hours serving a single user with SD video, but your battery life will vary depending on the files and number of users.
The Seagate Wireless Plus is a good way to carry all of your media files with you without having to schlep a laptop with you. Its 1TB capacity could theoretically hold all your movies, music, PDFs, and photos with you at all times. It's a boon for the frequent commuter or road tripper, especially those with families that travel together with their electronic devices. It'll let you ignore the on demand menu at the hotel or save you if little Jimmy wants to watch the entire 5th season of Spongebob on a trans-continental flight, again. For all these reasons, the Seagate Wireless Plus is our first Editor's Choice for wireless media drives, and comes highly recommended.
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.
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Newsflash: video files can really bloat up a hard drive. In an increasingly mobile device-oriented world, this scenario only gets worse. It's especially aggravating when your 'hard drive' is only 32GB of flash storage on an iPad (or worse, the 8GB variant of the Nexus 7 Android tablet). But if you're stuck with a low-capacity mobile device, you can add a terabyte or more to it without having to replace it entirely. All this requires is an investment of $200 in a device like the Seagate Wireless Plus.
The Wireless Plus is a portable, battery-powered hard drive with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and 1TB of storage. It's an update to the GoFlex Satellite drive, which debuted in 2011 with a few hours of battery life and a max of 500GB of data. Devices like the iPad may have bumped up to a whopping 128GB of flash storage in recent years, but that doesn't make transferring video and music to them easier. You still have to sync them through iTunes, quite an arduous process. Android users may not have this particular problem thanks to the ease of drag-and-drop for most devices, but it’s a nuisance there too. Who wants to try keeping all of that media with only 64GB of storage? (We're factoring in 32GB of internal storage with an additional 32GB microSD card—if an expansion slot is even available). When you've got contacts, applications, downloaded documents, e-books, and photos to account for, media like music and movies can sometimes take a back seat.
So there are plenty of obvious use cases for a device like the Seagate Wireless Plus, and the company has given this line of drives a new reboot accordingly. Ars took a look at the new device's capabilities and whether or not it's something you should consider.
A hard drive and a hot spot go out on a date..
The 5 x 3.5 x 0.78-inch Wireless Plus is a tad bit bigger than its predecessor, but both weigh just a little more than half a pound. On the rear, the Wireless Plus has a SATA port that accepts different adapters for various connection types—what's referred to as the Universal Storage Module. By default, the Wireless Plus comes with a USB 3.0 adapter and detachable cable, but you can also separately purchase FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt connectors depending on your usage. As an aside, Seagate’s connection adapters are all universally usable with the company’s Backup Plus and GoFlex portable drives. So if you happen to already own those products or are thinking of investing in the Seagate portable drive family, one adapter will work for all.
The Wireless Plus also comes with a USB-connected wall adapter, though it will charge while it’s plugged into a computer. Unfortunately, there is no car adapter available for the device, which can be a bit of a drawback for parents who were looking to use this device to keep the kids distracted. Also, it can only perform one particular function at a time: it is either a portable hard drive or a streaming device—it cannot be both. You'll also need to turn the device off and on before you switch functions, otherwise it gets a little confused.
Inside the brushed steel chassis, there’s a 2.5-inch, 5,400 RPM hard drive. Windows users can simply connect the Seagate Wireless Plus to their computers and start dragging and dropping files over. Mac users will have to double-click the Mac Installer.dmg located in the Seagate folder on the drive to install NTFS driver software. Also, the drive can not be reformatted or it will not work as intended.
Stream it to me
To stream content from the Wireless Plus, users connect to the Wi-Fi network the device broadcasts, then launch the application and go through a quick set up process. The Wireless Plus will stream HD content to up to three iOS, Android, or Kindle Fire devices, though up to 8 devices can connect to it at once and retrieve less taxing content like photos and documents. The Wireless Plus can also connect to an existing Wi-Fi network and share it with the device that it’s streaming to. These options can be configured in the Seagate Media application (which we’ll discuss more thoroughly in the next section).
As long as your device is connected to the Wireless Plus, you can stream content anywhere in the house, in a car, or even on an airplane halfway around the world. Seagate says that the device can stream to DLNA-compliant devices like consoles and Samsung Smart TVs once it's connected to your home network. It can also stream to the Apple TV via Airplay, though we were unable to properly test this ourselves.
The Wireless Plus advertises that it can last up to 10 hours of continuous playback. We streamed a long playlist of music to a third-generation iPad and several back-to-back videos on a Nexus 7 simultaneously for four-and-a-half hours and the Wireless Plus burned through 66 percent of its battery life. We started it at 92 percent and when we returned it was down to 26 percent, according to the app's built-in battery indicator. While it certainly didn't peter out in the middle of testing, that means it used up about 15 percent of its power per hour, which would have only given it another hour and a half of streaming. That adds up to about six hours—four less than expected.
Playback was smooth on both iOS and Android devices; there was hardly any stuttering on video except at the beginning as it was buffering. Music also played as crisply as if it lived natively on a tablet or phone device. However, playback is limited to certain file types and it differs by platform. Windows Media Player, AVI, and MKV files were not available on either iOS or Android devices, while 3GP files were not playable on the iPad. The iOS version of the app at least encourages users to download the file to their device and find a third-party app that supports the video type, though this defeats the purpose of having an external drive to house all of that media. On Android, it will merely sprout an alert that a file is unplayable if there's no compatible app. Then it simply lets you skip to the next file.
The app
Seagate has given a major overhaul to its iOS and Android application since the initial release of the GoFlex Satellite. It looks sleeker, is much easier to use, and it features some useful settings and options. As we mentioned, the Seagate Media app also allows you to connect to an existing Wi-Fi network so that your devices aren't limited to the Wireless Plus. Annoyingly, both the iPad and Android tablet apps are limited to horizontal orientation while you're navigating through content.
All of the available files are laid out as thumbnails by default, though you can switch to list view and then categorize by data, size, type, or name. When selecting a video or music file, the app will begin playback while photos launch individually. If a song gets stuck in the background, you can hit the Now Playing button to pause, turn up the volume, or skip to the next track. For over-sharers, there is a slideshow option that works well with tablets. There’s even an option to add a background track that's stored on the Wireless Plus device and use different transitions to make the slideshow more dynamic.
On the iPad, selecting a document will ask you if you want to preview or open it in another application. On Android, you’ll simply be prompted to select an application to export it to.
Users can customize the Wireless Plus from the settings, like the name of its wireless access point. There are also options to help extend its battery life, clear its cache, and you can view how many users are connected to it at a time. There’s an option to check for firmware updates or restart the Wireless Plus unit, as well as reset it to factory defaults or view how much storage space is left on the device.
Should you buy it?
The Seagate Wireless Plus certainly offers plenty of space for your media, whether it's music, movies, photos, or other miscellaneous files you might need. It'd be great for family road trips a few hours away or solo plane rides across the Atlantic. It could even act as a portable NAS drive of sorts for traveling business folk. The Wireless Plus proves especially useful for a household with many different devices, and the drag-and-drop method is certainly easier than waiting for iTunes to sync.
You've also got a bit of choice here: the GoFlex Satellite is a few years older than the Wireless Plus and it has a shorter battery life and smaller capacity, but Amazon still offers the device at a lower price (around $160). If streaming for the kids is your main concern, you might consider this predecessor, which also feels more child-friendly because of its chassis.
Good
- Streams HD content to three devices simultaneously; eight for things like documents and photos
- 1TB capacity lets you use limited smartphone or tablet space for things other than media files
- Extremely portable, easy to stow away in your carry on
- Much easier to bring along kids' content without using your device's native storage capabilities
- Swappable adapters means the Wireless Plus can take any type of connection
Seagate Wireless Plus
Bad
Mac Installer.dmg Seagate Backup Plus
- App won't play MKV or AVI files on either Android or iOS devices
- Mac users have to install NTFS driver
- Battery life is a bit shorter than advertised
Ugly
Seagate Backup Plus For Mac
- The price tag—$200 is rather steep for a commodity product