Seagate 3 TB/4 TB GoFlex hard disks unable to work with Mac OS-X Lion

[BBC123]

I got a Seagate GoFlex hard disk of size 3 TB for my Macintosh which has Mac OS-X Lion. When I connected it in my Mac, it gave me an error ‘the partition map needs to be repaired because there's a problem with the efi system partition's file system’. Can someone tell me what this error is?

[Lisa Boney]

It was long back in the news that the Seagate GoFlex hard disk when released were not meant to work with Mac OS-X Lion. To make it compatible with Mac OS-X Lion, Apple was to release 10.7.3 update for compatibility issues with modern hardware. Any driver for Mac Os-X Lion which were below 10.7.2 was not compatible for Seagate GoFlex hard disks. You can try upgrading the drivers if you want to make your hard disk work.

[Chahel]

Another issue that was noticed in Mac OS-X Lion was that the hard disks with large hard disk space, like 3 TB couldn’t be mounted or read in Mac OS-X Lion. Also many modern hard disks which were pre partitioned won’t be detected by Mac OS-X Lion.

[ErikaGeek]

If ever you put a pre-partitioned hard disk and Mac OS-X Lion detects it without driver update, then chances of losing your data that you might write will increase. If ever you start losing your data or you notice any inconsistency in data read and write, it is preferable to format the whole hard disk and then partition and install it. Many times the drive will also mount and unmount many times.

[JErastus]

Apple has launched 10.7.3 driver update for Mac OS-X Lion. This will fix the problem with Seagate GoFlex hard disks. But even after upgrading this driver, many hard disks with large amount of space will not work in this OS. Also keep taking backup of your data as I still don’t trust the stability of the driver.