GoFlex Satellite problems

[SpikeC]

Hi,

My wife wanted an iPad 2. We got her one. She wanted to show our photos to her friends. There were too many to fit on the 16 GB iPad 2, so I bought a Seagate GoFlex Satellite (500 GB, external, wi-fi hard drive). I was initially encouraged because I was able to put a lot of pix on the HD and use folders to keep them sorted. Plus I was able to use drag-and-drop to get files and folders from my desktop to the Satellite HD. That's the good news.

The bad news is that in the "Folder View" (in the GoFlex Media app on the iPad), the drive sometimes works but eventually will jump to the "Local Content" option loosing my place in the file tree. This is usually before I've been able to locate one viewable picture by "drilling down" thru the folders. The drive is proving worthless in that it doesn't navigate consistently. And, this is even disregarding the fact that the HD-iPad combo is slower than molasses in January.

I'm just a guy trying to help his wife show pix to her friends on her iPad. Nothing about the iPad is intuitive to me (I'm a PC guy). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, can someone define "syncing" files for me? Is this like what PC folks call copying files from one place to another? And, have I missed a step by only dragging and dropping files to the HD. Do I need to "Sync" them? I downloaded a bit of software from Segate, MediaSync. However, it isn't user friendly and I couldn't change things on the HD with it so I gave up and just moved/deleted/added/whatever the files & folders like I do on my PC. It seemed to work until I went to use them <groan>. Then I was able to get to the pix only about 1 out of 10 times.

My thanks in advance.

Spike

PS, I've updated the Segate software from their site.

 

[Lusid]

I'm not too impressed by their app. It's basically the web interface wrapped in an app with the option to download content and store it locally. If you don't need the offline content, just use the web interface.

You might have better luck with a dnla/upnp client like 8player. If you have a lot of content it can take several minutes to build the content database after you power on the drive.

I haven't loaded mine with tons of pictures, but it found every cover art .jpg in my music library and populated the picture section with it. So far I'm reallly happy with mine, but I have customized the software quite a bit and added WebDAV and smb, tweaked minidlna, etc.

I do not use their sync software. I just drag and drop.

 

[RAC]

You might like to try FileBrowser. I am yet to get my hands on this device but I expect it to work with FileBrowser.

 

[SpikeC]

I'm not too impressed by their app. It's basically the web interface wrapped in an app with the option to download content and store it locally. If you don't need the offline content, just use the web interface.

You might have better luck with a dnla/upnp client like 8player. If you have a lot of content it can take several minutes to build the content database after you power on the drive.

I haven't loaded mine with tons of pictures, but it found every cover art .jpg in my music library and populated the picture section with it. So far I'm reallly happy with mine, but I have customized the software quite a bit and added WebDAV and smb, tweaked minidlna, etc.

I do not use their sync software. I just drag and drop.

Lusid,

Thanks. I wish I were savvy enough to understand your answer. I think all I'm using it for is offline content, i.e., my own pix. Have I totally misunderstood what you wrote (I hate when that happens!).

Also, I went to the Segate forums and found virtually my exact problem was posted on YouTube. I'll try to put the link here: ooops... I just got a message saying I didn't have enough posts to put up a link. I'll do another post then try again.

Spike

 

[Lusid]

You might like to try FileBrowser. I am yet to get my hands on this device but I expect it to work with FileBrowser.

Out of the box is does not work with file browser. File browser is an smb client, and samba is not installed by default.

 

[SpikeC]

(snip)
You might have better luck with a dnla/upnp client like 8player. If you have a lot of content it can take several minutes to build the content database after you power on the drive.
(snip)

I searched 8player and found it. I'll download it and see if it works.

I don't mind shelling out the $200 for the Satellite if it works as advertised. The funny (well, kinda funny) part is that my wife wanted an Apple product because you don't have these problems. You just plug 'em in and they work. I suspect it's because the iPad doesn't have expansion capacity built in that Segate and others are scrambling to fill the need. Part of my frustration is that others seem to like the Satellite so I'm hoping with some persistence, I'll get it to do what we bought it to do.

BTW, this is my 3rd post here so I should be able to post that YouTube link in my next one.

Thanks,
Spike

 

[SpikeC]

Here's the YouTube link that shows the problem:

If you're a visual learner, this is it.

Spike

 

[SpikeC]

Problem solved:
I've given up trying to get the Satellite to work. Am sending it to my kids who are Apple types. Hopefully they can make it work.

I'm going back to my $300, 250 GB Acer netbook and $50 Western Digital 500 GB hard drive (for traveling and all work perfectly, BTW) and let my wife play Solitaire on the $500, 16 GB iPad 2 <LOL>.

Life is good again .

Spike

 

[pmendel]

Solution

Once you have the GoFlex Satellite wirelessly connected to your Ipad/Iphone, use the following player: Goodplayer - it is the best player out there, that not only can read Samba shares, but it will detect any upnp device on your network. So, once this apps is loaded, click on the world symbol bottom right of the screen and select upnp and you will be able to browse through any folder on your GoFlex Sat drive, and you will even see the files/folders listed aphabetical/numberical order.
I forgot to mention that it will play all your XVID/DVIX files and other formats(GoFlex media app doesn't)

Have fun.

 

[macka88]

I have found a few apps that work well with the goflex, such as 8player (costs but they have a lite version which u can only see a few movies) and mediaconnect (free). Both of these work quite well from what I have seen so far. They seem to play all the formats. The only problem I have faced is playing HD such as 720P mkv files. I have yet tried other hd files or 1080P (goes without saying that 1080p would have the same problem). From my understanding it takes more power for these larger formats to encode/decode what ever it does. I believe that some of these apps will in future updates fix these problems. Just remember leave feature requests for as many apps that support goflex which should speed up the process of them fixing this issue. If anyone else has found an app that already supports mkv HD without glitching or lipsync out then please inform us.

Hope this helps. And remember the more feedback developers get for these functions the more chance these bugs will be dealt with.

Cheers

 

[Cyberhawk999]

Enabling WebDAV and SMB support

I'm not too impressed by their app. It's basically the web interface wrapped in an app with the option to download content and store it locally. If you don't need the offline content, just use the web interface.

You might have better luck with a dnla/upnp client like 8player. If you have a lot of content it can take several minutes to build the content database after you power on the drive.

I haven't loaded mine with tons of pictures, but it found every cover art .jpg in my music library and populated the picture section with it. So far I'm reallly happy with mine, but I have customized the software quite a bit and added WebDAV and smb, tweaked minidlna, etc.

I do not use their sync software. I just drag and drop.

Hi.

How do I enable WebDAV and SMB support on GoFlex Satellite? Is it a custom firmware that I need to use or can I use SSH to install/enable these features myself? If it's the later, how do I find user name and password for SSH?

Thank you.

 

[dellhell]

In response to the original post about the Goflex App jumping to or staying at the Local Content option, here is what worked for me the couple of times I had it happen.

I am using the Goflex Satellite with the latest software/firmware wifi connected to an iPad 2 running IOS 5.

CLOSE THE ORIGINAL NATIVE DEFAULT PHOTOS APP.

To close an App:

1. Press down the home button at the bottom of your iPad twice in a row. A task bar at the bottom of the screen now shows the open Apps.

2. Scroll to the relevant App (Photos App icon in this case) and press and hold down on it until the icons start to shimmer or jiggle. A red spot with a minus sign will appear at the top of icon, release your finger.

Note: if a black spot with an X appears, stop. Step 1 has not been executed correctly and you are about to delete the App. Press the home button and execute Step 1 again. You will not get the black spot with X option to delete on the original native Apps such as the Photos App.

3. Tap on the red spot to close the App. The App icon will disappear from the screen but it will return on restart.

4. Press the home button to take the icons out of shimmer mode and press again to get the Home Screen.

5. Run the Goflex App and see if it moves off and stays off Local Content and goes to the other Options (Movies, Photos, Folder View, etc.) as it should.

My Goflex App was OK until I downloaded some photos to Local Content thinking I could run them using the default iPad Photos App but this App will not access them. So I used the Goflex App to delete them again from the Local Content but now the Goflex App just stayed on Local Content. As soon as I closed the Photos App, the Goflex App behaved normally. In my case there seemed to be some conflict if the Photos App deployed while the iPad was on the Goflex wifi network and closing the Photos App meant the Goflex App functioned fine again.

I have not had the time to research it further to see if other Apps trigger the issue but I have stayed clear of the stuck in Local Content trap since by only using the Goflex App to play the movies and photo slide shows directly from the folders I dragged and dropped from my Windows XP SP3 PC onto the satellite drive. I have not done anything with documents.

If the above does not work, try closing other media player and document reader Apps such as the Movies App or media/document related downloaded third party Apps while the iPad is on the Goflex wifi network.

 

[jeffreytan4896]

Hi.

How do I enable WebDAV and SMB support on GoFlex Satellite? Is it a custom firmware that I need to use or can I use SSH to install/enable these features myself? If it's the later, how do I find user name and password for SSH?


Thank you.

Hi Cyberhawk, You should be able to google Hack Seagate Satellite and find some answers there. I've seen some folks modify their firmware and gotten SSH, WebDAV and SMB to work. I have bought their custom firmware and is now able to use my Satellite to stream to my Media Player.

 

[UniqueDesignSystems]

Yes I have had a number of drive failures.
1. The usb connector on several fail to work when pushed in fully
2. Formatting the drive or changing the name of the drive can result in no content found
3. oPlayer lite will play other file formats like .avi the most common movie download type
4. Using a PC, Formatting and the using Seagate's free Drive Wizard I was able to clone a brand new one onto a 2 failed Satellites
5. There is software onboard this thing and a MySQL lite server so SH** can happen easily enough, Seagate do not have a restore image to ship with the drive.

 

[jeffreytan4896]

The firmware is not on the physical drive. As long as you format it under NTFS, the firmware should not have any problems accessing to it. But the original firmware is really sluggish which is why I bought the hacked firmware from hack seagate satellite dot com.