The issue is caused by outdated drivers found with other Maxtor/Seagate software packages. Seagate Diagnostics must be installed (or re-installed) after installing older FreeAgent or Maxtor Manager for the Macintosh software to ensure that the device driver environment used by each application is as desired.
Seagate Diagnostics is the first application utilizing both the Seagate and Maxtor device drivers to address compatibility issues. The existing FreeAgent and Maxtor Manager for the Mac software available in the marketplace today are not capable of providing forward compatibility, which is why installation order is important for now. However, going forward, all Maxtor or Seagate software for the Mac will include this new installation/driver intelligence.
The details of this installation/driver intelligence is provided below.
The Seagate Diagnostics installer implements the driver protocol that will mitigate the disruption that may occur when Seagate Diagnostics is installed on a system with existing Maxtor or Seagate installations.
It has these effects:
- Drivers are never downgraded (replaced with versions with lower version numbers than themselves). This was not true of the installers for older Seagate and Maxtor software for the Mac.
- If both Seagate and Maxtor drivers are found, they are upgraded in accordance with (1).
- If only a Seagate or Maxtor driver is detected, only that driver is upgraded, and the other driver is not installed.
- If neither driver is present, a Seagate driver is installed.
This implements what should be an optimal upgrade protocol given two forward assumptions:
- All current and future applications will support the devices they are interested in whether the devices are presented by Maxtor or Seagate branded drivers.
- All current and future drivers support devices of either brand.
This scheme was implemented by incorporating both drivers into the installer, but have the installer place them in a temporary folder instead of the final location. The postupgrade or postinstall script then evaluates the current installations and the new drivers in the temp location to determine what the final install will be.
Additional Information:
This issue can be seen with any Maxtor/Seagate software released on or before June 05, 2008. This includes:
- Maxtor Manager
- Drive Manager
- FreeAgent Tools for Macintosh
- EasyManage
- OneTouch Manager
- OneTouch Settings
