Seagate’s latest batch of drives, the ironically titled Free Agent series are not compatible with the Open Source operating system Linux. The problem is to do with the power-saving systems of drives and the fact that it is shipped already formatted to NTFS. The NTFS is only a small problem to Linux users who have a kernel with NTFS writing enabled or can work mkfs. But the “power saving” timer is a real problem. There are a few work-arounds but Seagate Tech Support says they do not know what they are (how about consulting Maxtor guys LOL). All in all it’s confirmed that their latest drives do not support Linux.