GoFlex Home Battery Replacement

I have a GoFlex Home with a dead battery and have the problem where the real-time clock doesn't keep time following a power cycle. Seagate has been no help at all. For as long as I decide to keep the unit, it would be nice to have a clock that can survive a power cycle. Does anyone have instructions on how to get to the battery? It doesn't seem to be intuitively obvious. There are instructions on replacing the hard drive and unfortunately I have had to do that twice.

Thanks!!

fishga Wrote:
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> I have a GoFlex Home with a dead battery and have
>
On both my Seagate GoFLEX Home units, I don't see they have any battery at all. So, what kind of a Seagate GoFLEX Home do you have that comes with a battery?

The Goflex Home has a battery.

Open the case is quite simple. Remove the small rubber feet (I am descrbing from memory, cant recall if there are screws hidden behind the rubber feet). The base stays fixed to the board. The walls and top form the plastic case. Use a thin plastic tool such as guitar pick or old credit card to pry the case from the base.

-bodhi
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Here are some photos

Free Agent GoFlex Home Internal PCB Photos / Teardown

I thing the blue cylindric block at the lower right of the pcb is the battery ... perhaps a small lithium accu ...

[img]https://wiki.beyondlogic.org/images/1/10/Goflexhome_pcb_top.png[/img]

It seems, as if it is one or two stacked AG13 Cells with SMD soldering tags... strange: Variants with soldering tag are not common...

Thanks so much! I did peel off one of the feet but the adhesive stayed down and I was afraid to scrape it off to expose the screw head without being absolutely sure there was a screw underneath. I'll try harder this time. Seagate tech support was basically useless but they did tell me the battery was a CR2032. Here's hoping I don't have to order a special one with a solder tab.

Martin from Dortmund Wrote:
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> Here are some photos
>
> Free Agent GoFlex Home Internal PCB Photos / Teardown
>
Thank you for the above snapshot. These days, CR2032 Li-ION batteries are pretty inexpensive.You can get them from eBay and/or AliExpress under US $1 / (5pcs).

bodhi Wrote:
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> The Goflex Home has a battery.
>
Yes and OP posted the snapshot of the board that clearly shows the battery.

> Open the case is quite simple. Remove the small rubber feet (I am descrbing from memory, cant recall if there are screws hidden behind the rubber feet). The base stays fixed to the board. The walls and top form the plastic case. Use a thin plastic tool such as guitar pick or old credit card to pry the case from the base.
>
Last time when I tried to open up one of my Seagate GoFLEX Home units, the ON/OFF plastic cap just popped up.

Quote

seagate tech support was basically useless but they did tell me the battery was a CR2032

Either there are different variants (hardware revisions) of GoFlex Home out there, or seagate tech support gives you a wrong information.
The battery on the photo is no CR2032 ...

The battery is located in the base housing and not in the housing carrying the hard disk...

The battery is AG13. It is easy to read from internet pictures. We do not know if there is one or two AG13s. AG13 is 1.5v. GUESS we need 2 . If it is 2, then it can be replaced by one CR2032. We just need some space and wires for the huge CR2032.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2019 10:17PM by daviddyer.

I will open mine later if I have time.

daviddyer Wrote:
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,,,
> it is 2, then it can be replaced by one CR2032. We
> just need some space and wires for the huge
> CR2032.

FWIW the CR2032 is frequently Dollar Tree items; two for a dollar. I only say that because of two tower computers I needed those almost exactly two years ago and one computer was unplugged the last year and still held the BIOS charge. At the time they were out at Wal Mart and all I could find were Sunbeam at the dollar store. Lithium is Lithium though, is the moral of the story.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-

Yes and Dollar Tree is not bad, especially if you need the item right the way at a much affordable price (US $1).

If you can waste for some shipping time (2+ weeks), AliExpress and/or Chinese sellers on eBay may have the same item at a much lower price than Dollar Tree. For instance, I recently bought a strip of 5x CR2032 from AliExpress US 68¢.

To be frank, some of the batteries from overseas are just trash.... Waste time / money / effort...

I ordered 5 cr1616 for my car key, none of them worked. Later got a good one from frys at about $2.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2019 07:19AM by daviddyer.

daviddyer Wrote:
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> To be frank, some of the batteries from overseas
> are just trash.... Waste time / money / effort...
>
> I ordered 5 cr1616 for my car key, none of them
> worked. Later got a good one from frys at about
> $2.

+1

I would just buy a ~$2 battery like David did. Buy good brand like Duracell, Energizer,... and not to have to worry again.

-bodhi
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2019 03:53PM by bodhi.

fishga Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a GoFlex Home with a dead battery and have
> the problem where the real-time clock doesn't keep
> time following a power cycle. Seagate has been no
> help at all. For as long as I decide to keep the
> unit, it would be nice to have a clock that can
> survive a power cycle. Does anyone have
> instructions on how to get to the battery? It
> doesn't seem to be intuitively obvious. There are
> instructions on replacing the hard drive and
> unfortunately I have had to do that twice.
>
> Thanks!!

By the way, how about the copy speed of your goflex home? mine dropped to around 15mb/s recently, don't know why. Usually around 30mb/s in the pass.

asterix Wrote:
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> By the way, how about the copy speed of your goflex home? mine dropped to around 15mb/s recently, don't know why. Usually around 30mb/s in the pass.
>
15 mbps less than 2MBps. R U sure it is not 15 MBps?

So I finally got the bottom off. It really didn't want to come loose and a little plastic got cracked. I found an AG13 battery with solder tabs. I will tackle getting it out and getting a replacement soon. It is really an academic exercise at this point because I decided I can no longer trust my backups to this unit. Besides losing the date and time when I power cycled, it required a power cycle once a week to remember passwords. I spent a bit more money and got a Synology DS418 NAS with dual 4TB drives (in their form of RAID-1).

fishga

> it
> required a power cycle once a week to remember
> passwords.

Sounds like you are running stock OS?

-bodhi
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fishga Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So I finally got the bottom off. It really didn't
> want to come loose and a little plastic got
> cracked. I found an AG13 battery with solder
> tabs. I will tackle getting it out and getting a
> replacement soon. It is really an academic
> exercise at this point because I decided I can no
> longer trust my backups to this unit. Besides
> losing the date and time when I power cycled, it
> required a power cycle once a week to remember
> passwords. I spent a bit more money and got a
> Synology DS418 NAS with dual 4TB drives (in their
> form of RAID-1).

fishga thanks a lot for documenting what your eyes see in this - I had no idea it's so hard to find.
Just wondering how long the old battery worked for?

* and yes, my own skin crawled ever mentioning my own non-US batteries, but again it was only when Wal Mart was out of Energizer that I stopped at Dollar Tree.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-

Duracell AA / AAA batteries are guaranteed to leak these years...

Yes I am running the stock OS. And this was a refurb unit that never really kept proper time. I suspect the battery was bad when I received it. I had no luck in finding any sort of replacement on eBay, either battery or holder with tabs in the right places. Another reason why I am done with Seagate. Selling a unit like this that is impossible to repair is beyond belief! To say nothing of my less than satisfactory experience with Seagate support.

Bodhi's kirkwood uboot has snpt, so no worries... software solved the battery problem...


https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,16003

daviddyer Wrote:
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> Bodhi's kirkwood uboot has snpt, so no worries...
> software solved the battery problem...
>
>
> https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,16003

Thanks David! I've forgot all about this instruction! it is indeed a good way to get around the battery problem. A little bit better than Debian ntp because the RTC is set earlier.

I've just modified it to make clear that the RTC is set automatically by u-boot using this approach.

-bodhi
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2019 09:11PM by bodhi.

Maybe we should put this in the uboot env img... Dockstar / pogoe02 /etc --- no RTC,
goflex home / net --- battery problem... this will help.