Launched back in 2010 the Seagate GoFlex Home was a designed to be simple home network share solution. At launch the product worked and had mixed reviews but in 2018 Seagate shutdown the servers effectively bricking every unit if they were factory reset.
Quote taken from their own support page:
Note: Effective December 31st, 2018, remote access, including the Premium Service, will no longer be available. Please see our GoFlex Home - Remote Access Shutdown article for more details.
After December 31st, 2018: You should not reset your GoFlex Home.
For additional information about using the GoFlex Home after 12/31/18, please see our support article here .
With that info known be warned that buying these units now without flashing modified firmware will leave you with a drive that needs a USB 2/3 base or removed from it's case due to the lack of ability to setup device as the servers are long gone.
Still want to buy one to experiment with? You need to know that the firmware will need to be flashed with a version available from this helpful article at GoFlex Home Tips and Tricks website .
Beware there are many people trying to sell GoFlex Home units at prices far above what they are worth. You should not be paying much more than the hard drives are worth as that might well be all you end up with that is of any use.
The only reason I am experiment with the GoFlex Home units is because my dad had several that were bought new but had not been using for several years.
Now to pick through what remains of a not so great from the start product. The first problem you will encounter is that the entire interface, beyond the login screen is fully Adobe flash based. This makes it useless now that flash has been killed (even with the modified firmware).
I was only able to get my units work with patched flash running on a XP machine. This allowed me to use the GoFlex Home interface pages. I would not recommend this for the average user. In the end what I have is two drives accessible on the network that can be used for file storage.
The interface was well rather sparse with really only three options to choose from when you log in.
Some of the core features are now dead due to the server tied functionality.
Sharing files was rather neutered from the beginning with some features tied behind paid subscription so as result of that all that works now is sharing via the default hard coded shares. Adding new shares don't show up to other computers when added.
In the end there is zero value for the average user to buy these units now days as they are more or less slightly functional paperweights.
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