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Goflex Home Software Mac

Warning

The Seagate GoFlex system is intended to be flexible so that drives can be swapped between GoFlex Home and GoFlex Desk and that works fine for drives up to 2TB. Seagate's little secret, is that for drives larger than 2TB the GoFlex Desk adapter changes the sector size to 4096 bytes, but when connected directly with SATA, like in the GoFlex Home. Unfortunately Mac software does not currently seem as robust as the Windows version but it is still relatively easy to use the GoFlex Home with an OS X based machine. In terms of speed, the transfer rate was around 10-12 MB/sec on a Cat 5 wired network. Connect the GoFlex for Mac drive. Download the file Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to your MacOS computer. Extract the contents of Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to root of the GoFlex drive. Double-click Seagate GoFlex Software.mpkg.zip to start the installation. GoFlex Desk Drive, Mac OS X operating system 10.6.8 or higher, Available Thunderbolt port & Thunderbolt. The GoFlex ships with a driver CD supporting both Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Mac OS. Seagate uses an Axentra based OS with a front end provided by Memeo for software control of the GoFlex. Double-click the GoFlex icon on the desktop (it may take a minute for the icon to appear). Double-click the Mac Install.dmg file. Double click MacInstall. Follow the Wizard and choose Mac and PC. Complete the installation wizard. Activate the software if prompted. Reboot the Mac one more time.

These directions worked well for a family with Macs running10.6 ('Snow Leopard'). Then we 'upgraded' to 10.9 ('Mavericks')and since then Time Machine has been EXTREMELYslow backing up tonetatalk.Apple's official position is that they support backing up only toApple devices, which is all very well, but if a disk blows up in aTime Capsule I can't fix it myself, so the current situation isannoying. So maybe these directions are of merely historicalinterest.

Background

I was doing off-site backups for my family's MacBooksusing a Seagate 'GoFlex Desk' USB/FireWire disk. I wouldoccasionally bring it home, plug it into each machinefor a Time Machine backup, and then store the disk off-siteagain.Because it was tough to stick to a regular schedule,I wanted to complement the occasional off-site snapshotswith a more vulnerable but more automaticnetwork-attached solution.I was interested in Seagate's 'GoFlex Home' NASD docking base forthe GoFlex Desk drives,but unfortunately the software Seagate ships it with isthe opposite of what I want:its Time Machine support is lukewarm,and meanwhile it thoroughly supportsaccess from outside my firewall via some Seagatecentralized cloud service--no thanks!

Luckily it is fairly easy to replace Seagate's software(written by PogoPlug) with a standard Linux distribution,in particular Arch Linux. Here's what I did.

NOTE! THESE INSTRUCTIONSWERE WRITTEN BY SOMEBODY WHO HAS BEEN INSTALLINGOPERATING SYSTEMS SINCE BEFORE LINUS TORVALDS WENT UP INTO HISATTIC TO START WRITING LINUX.THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE TARGETED ATSOMEBODY WHO HAS EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE WITH INSTALLINGUNIX-LIKE OPERATING SYSTEMS. THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARENOT SUITABLE FOR NOVICES.Seriously, it is unwise for you to try this unlessyou have installed some version of Unix at leastonce on an 'easy' machine, i.e., one with a keyboard anda display.

Installing Arch Linux

I followed the ArchLinux installation instructions for the Seagate GoFlex Home.Well, mostly.

  • I was unable to follow the directions for setting the EthernetMAC address to the value on the sticker on the bottom of the device.The 'UBIT environment' mumbled some warning about needing toreboot before something could happen, and I spent many hourstrying to figure out how to make it work, but eventually gave up.Luckily the machine booted anyway, albeit with a bogus MACaddress. I found it because when it DHCP'd it identified itselfas being named 'alarm'.

  • When you reboot into Arch Linux, your /etc/fw_env.configfile will probably be wrong, with the result thatfw_printenv and fw_setenv won't work.'Luckily' all you need to do is run hexdump -C /dev/mtd0 | lessand search for plausible environment blocks.Note that you will see several, and all but one are decoys.The one you are looking for will probably contain thestring 'ubi_boot=', and you will probably see one thatcontains the string 'explrpk=' which is notwhat you want (that belongs to Seagate's firmware).In my case, the right one started at 0x60000 and theright thing to put in /etc/fw_env.configwas

  • In theory once /etc/fw_env.config is correctyou can set the machine back to its factory-issued MACaddress by runningfw_setenv ethaddr 00:10:75:xx:yy:zz.However, when I did this in June 2013, fw_setenvcontained a 'helpful' 'safety check' which disallowssetting ethaddr if it's already been set once.If you read around online people will advise you to solvethis by setting up a serial console or a network console,booting the machine intoU-Boot,and fixing the MAC address using U-Boot's built-in commands.Because I wanted to avoid fussing to set up and learn yetanother environment, instead I solved the problem usingthe following unsafe hack which isnot suitable for everybody.
    If you are careful and did this right, now /tmp/fw_setenv isa version of fw_setenv with the safety check disabled.If you did it wrong you have a dangerous version offw_setenv that could brick your device.So unless you understand exactly how that hack is supposedto work, you shouldprobably slog through booting into U-Boot and fixing the MAC addressthat way.Or maybe by the time you try this UBIT will be in a better mood.

Goflex Home Software Download

Configuring Arch Linux as an AFP server for Time Machine

  • Make sure you've set a root password.

  • timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

  • set up /root/.ssh/authorized_keys.

  • 'Host name' configuration:

    1. hostnamectl set-hostname SomeHostName
    2. hostnamectl set-icon-name computer
    3. hostnamectl set-chassis server

  • If you followed the Arch Linux directions for creating the second primarypartition, you may have ended up with your large storage partitionnot being 4K-aligned (fdisk will complain when printing out thepartition table). So I deleted the partition and re-created itwith better alignment (I didn't worry about the root partition).

  • pacman -Sy netatalk avahi dbus

  • I decided to use LVM to make it possible to grow/shrink partitionsand to some day make it easier to migrate the data onto a larger disk.So here's what I did. These directions create two Time Machine volumes,one large and one medium, each destined to support one MacBook.

    1. pvcreate /dev/sda2
    2. vgcreate SomeVGName /dev/sda2
    3. lvcreate -L 1536G SomeVGName -n large
    4. lvcreate -L 250G SomeVGName -n medium
    5. lvcreate -L 10G SomeVGName -n swap

  • Then I initialized the file systems.

    1. mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/SomeVGName-large
    2. mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/SomeVGName-medium
    3. mkswap /dev/mapper/SomeVGName-swap

  • Then I rebooted, because I had never set up LVMbefore and was worried by something I'd read about maybeneeding to jump through hoops to get LVM running earlyin the boot process. I didn't think I needed to do thatbecause I am using a non-LVM root partition, but I figuredit would be better to fail early rather than after doinglots of work setting up AFP. The reboot tookFOREVER (hours and hours!). I suspect that whathappened is that on the way up the system saw a giantfile system which had never been fsck'dand went to town. I also suspect/hope that this might not havehappened if I had mounted and un-mounted each file systembefore the reboot, so you might want to try that. YMMV!

  • Time to permanently configure the file systems.

    1. mkdir -m 755 /NASdata
    2. Edit /etc/fstab:

  • Un-comment-out 'enable-dbus=yes' in /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf,and start Avahi up. Acer aspire 5100 dvd drivers for mac.

    1. systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
    2. systemctl start avahi-daemon.service

  • Now is probably a good time for a reboot. If thesystem doesn't seem to come up right away (~30 seconds),put your hand on the disk and see if you feel it seekingevery minute or so. This might indicate you're in amulti-hour fsck run, in which case you shouldabsolutely be patient and NOT power-cyclethe device.I don't know how long it took for my system to do this,because once I figured out what was happening I went tosleep; that's the kind of patience you should be preparedto deploy.

  • Once you're back, in theory you have blank file systems all ready to be configuredfor Time Machine, so let's do that. We will create one accountand one AFP volume for each client.

    1. useradd -M -N -g nobody -s /sbin/nologin -u 1000 macbook1
    2. useradd -M -N -g nobody -s /sbin/nologin -u 1001 macbook2
    3. passwd macbook1
    4. passwd macbook2
    5. chown macbook1:nobody /NASdata/large
    6. chown macbook2:nobody /NASdata/medium

  • Now we need the AFP-server configuration file, /etc/afp.conf.I deliberately used somewhat conservative settings since as I writethis we are early in the netatalk-3 life cycle.
    Now we can start the AFP server up.

    1. systemctl enable netatalk
    2. systemctl start netatalk

    Time Machine should 'see' the volumes you created,and if you provide the correct username and passwordyou should be able to start a backup right away.

  • Canon selphy pvc card. You might want to install smartmontoolsto enable SMART monitoring of your disk hardware.

  • Finally, based onpost-installation tweaking advice from Philipp Klaus,I wrote a systemd 'unit' which turns the device'sLED orange when it completes a halt or shutdown (so you knowwhen it's safe to hit the power button).I put this in /etc/systemd/system/halt_orange.service.
    To 'install' this, run systemctl enable halt_orange.service

Future Work

Since the device's power button is 'hard' rather than 'soft',you really shouldn't use the power button toshut the device down, which means you should do something elseto shut it down so it's safe to remove power, which is troublesomesince the power button is the only button.Thusit would be really nice to have a sleek way to ask the device to haltitself. The best thing I've thought of so far would be tolaunch shutdown if the status of the wired Ethernetgoes from 'carrier' to 'no carrier' and stays that way for60 seconds--that way you could walk up to the device andunplug the Ethernet cable to get it to shut down.

It would be nice if the green LED could blink in timewith disk I/O. Oh, well.

Goflex Home Software Mac Os

It would also be nice if the device would warn AFP clientswhen it was planning to shut down.

Goflex Home Software Mac

GoFlex Home is a consumer network attached storage (NAS) hard drive for the home. Easy to set up and use, it allows the access, sharing, streaming, and backup of files and media for computers, network TVs, media players and game consoles connected to the home wireless network.

The Seagate GoFlex Home comprises a drive dock and a hard drive.

Secure access can also be opened to computers and iOS/Android tablets and smartphones over the Internet.

Over the weekend, I helped my friend set up an NAS drive for his desktop, netbook, two laptops, iPhone and Android tablet. He had bought the Seagate GoFlex Home 3 TB storage drive during the recent COMEX 2011 but hadn’t had the time to set it up yet.

I helped by using eye-power because he decided to give it a go himself and actually got the thing working in less than 15 minutes. That was the reason why I recommended the drive in the first place, it works with most consumer home Wi-Fi routers with little set-up or configuration needed.

The GoFlex Home comes with two cables and an software installation CD. The following steps were all that was needed to get the personal storage cloud going:

1. Connect the GoFlex Home drive dock to the Wi-Fi router by using the provided Ethernet cable.

2. Pop the GoFlex hard drive into the GoFlex drive dock and plug the power supply into the drive dock and the wall outlet. Switch on the GoFlex Home by pressing the Power button on the drive dock.

3. Pop the CD (or download from Seagate’s website) into the computer (can be a Mac or Windows PC) to install the software needed to access the hard drive. Simply select a language, key in the product information found on the drive, give the drive a name and register it. The name has to be unique globally since it will be used to identify the drive should you access it from the Internet.

Goflex Home Software Mac Download

4. Install the software on other computers that require access to the shared drive. Up to 5 people/computers on the home network can access the GoFlex Home. By paying to subscribe to the Seagate Share Pro, you get access for an unlimited number of people/computers to the GoFlex Home.

There are three ways to access the drive. One is to use the installed Seagate Dashboard software (on Windows PCs), which allows all features of the drive to be configured and managed. You can add computers and user accounts, backup, access and share files as well.

Use Seagate Dashboard software to configure and manage GoFelx Home

The other way is to use a browser-based Seagate Share either for a computer in the home network or out in the Internet.

Both are easy to use with a simple interface, using drag-and-drop or standard dialog boxes we’re familar with.

Goflex Home Software Download

The third method is via the appropriate free app on a iOS/Android smartphone or tablet, also over the Internet.

The GoFlex Home comes with a USB port which is very useful. You can connect an additional external hard drive to expand the capacity of the original GoFlex hard drive. You can also connect a USB hub for connecting more than one USB device.

In my friend’s case, he connected his printer to the USB port and all his computers on the Wi-Fi network got to share that printer. No more plugging/unplugging the old printer from one computer to another.

Goflex Home Software Mac

The included backup software allows up to three connected computers to be automatically backed up to the GoFlex Home. Upgrade to Premium Backup ($49.95) to back up an unlimited number of computers on the GoFlex Home network. You can upgrade at the Application Store that can be accessed through the Seagate Dashboard software.

For each user account set up on the GoFlex Home, three folders are created – a Public, Personal, and Backup folder. The Public folder holds files that can be stored and accessed by everyone on your home network. The Personal and Backup folders can only be accessed by the the user.

What I like about the sharing is the granular control available for the files shared. You can specify who you want to share files with, choose to share just certain files or entire folders, set passwords, and set expiry dates for the shares. Administration is intuitive and easy to pick up. You can send a URL of a shared file via email.

Stream media to other computers and media players on the home wireless network.

Goflex Dashboard Windows 10


Music, photos and video can also be shared and streamed to media players, game consoles or network TVs that support UPnP-AV, DLNA or Windows Media Connect. A wide range of file types are supported.

The GoFlex Home is available in 1TB (S$179), 2TB (S$239) and 3TB (S$339) capacities.

Goflex Home Software Download Mac

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