Vista - Seagate external drive does not work on Vista 64-bit

Hi all: Brand new Freeagent USB 1TB drive for Windows Home Premium on an ACER desktop.

After installing the Seagate Manager software, it tells me that I need a 32-bit OS and will not install.

The result is that there is a letter assigned to the drive but no hard drive icon. And the drive just stops working after a while. Unplugging it and plugging it back in makes it work again. Then my files vanish and it dies again. And so forth.

In post after post on this forum and others I've seen about this issue, everyone seems to offer a lot of assurances that external drives will work automatically on 64-bit.

But they don't.

From the Seagate website in the downloads section:

FreeAgent Family Software
File Version: FreeAgentCN.EXE
File Size for Windows.EXE: 63 MB
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, Windows XP Home, XP Professional, XP Media Center Edition
32-bit Operating Systems ONLY

So should I get a new drive designed for this OS, and if so, which ones are they?

Uninstall these 32bit drivers and reboot. Plug in the usb or esata from the external device and let Vista first install all the necessary drivers for the device. It might take a couple minutes but later the C: will acknowledge the changes. You should use the safely remove hardware device for unplugging as continuous random unplugging might damage the interface of the hard drive. Reboot, plug in the drive and it should work.
Bottom line, you will need to find 64bit drivers for your drive but I've never heard of anyone doing that even for the newest 1TB's.

I agree with GNYS on this one. If that does not work, then you should take the drive back and exchange it for one with 64 bit support. However, I have never heard of an eHDD not working on 64bit...

~Lordbob

Thanks for the tips. I will try this.

My $.02 worth. Between myself, my backup clients, and family, I have bought literally dozens of secondary drives, ext drives, USB drives, eSATA drives, etc.

I have never installed the software that comes with the drive, and if it has any of their junk already on it, I format and begin with the drive clean.

Never had a problem with any OS finding the drive.

But that's me.

The 32bit requirement appears to only apply to the manufacturer's software, which is almost always unnecessary and/or insufficient for what you want it to do.

The drive itself should function fine without any special downloads. You might check Seagate for an updated firmware, but that is about it.

Try this to remove any drivers that may or may not have been correctly installed by the Seagate software package:

1. With the drive not connected, open an admin command prompt (start -> type cmd -> right click the cmd.exe and select 'run as admin')
2. In the command window type: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
3. then type: devmgmt.msc

This will open device manager. Go to View-> Show Hidden Devices. Now go down to the Disk drives section and you should see a grayed out entry for your USB drive (it may just say USB Device, or something generic.) Feel free to uninstall all these grayed out entries (and for good measure go down to the USB controllers section and do the same.)

If you have other USB devices connected, like a thumb drive, they will NOT be grayed out, so as long as you only uninstall the grayed out entries you should be good.

Then reboot and plug in your drive, let the OS install drivers, and maybe do a Windows Update. But don't bother with the Seagate software.

You may want to do a fresh format of the drive as well.

If you still have issues with your drive after that then it may be damaged or defective.

Agreed.

~Lordbob