Seagate's Free Agent series of external had drives are making worldwide users pluck their hair out in anger. It seems that the 'Go small' slogan should be replaced with 'Go nuts' since Linux users are discriminated after they have paid a pretty salty price. While Linux would manage almost any type of cards, ranging from ancient Arcnet card to the studio-grade A/D/A converters, the open-source operating system is put in an impossible situation when it comes to Seagate's Free Agent.

First of all, the disk comes already NTFS-formatted, which makes it hard yet not impossible for Linux users to use. Many of them would enable NTFS writing and get it over with. What drives them insane is the nifty feature implemented by Seagate in the disk: the "power saving" timer. The feature would ensure that the disk is automatically shut down after several minutes of inactivity - a green initiative that would be extremely helpful for notebook users, if only it worked properly.

When the drive is shut off after a prolonged inactivity time, the USB connection is automatically dropped off. When the disk turns active again and the USB connection comes back, it returns as USB1 (and not as USB2, the previous state), which renders the drive useless. While Windows operating system can easily manage the situation, Linux and Mac OSes hang.

The Seagate Tech Support division is helpless when it comes to this. It is alleged that there is a workaround to fix the situation, but neither tech support nor the specialists can provide it. The official Seagate statement is that their state-of-the-art external storage line can't cope with Linux. Plain stupid. According to Rose Allen, Seagate Tech Support chief, there are specific workarounds to make the drive Linux and Mac compatible, but under no circumstances will the tech support team disclose them to the public.