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GoFlex Home Firmware reflash without Seagateshare

The best thing about the GoFlex Home was that that if you forgot your password or acquired a unit with unknown user credentials or just messed things up too badly using ssh, then you could always reflash the firmware and start over with a GoFlex Home just like one straight from the factory. But reflashing wipes out all user accounts and you need to set up the first user over the internet. So now that Seagateshare server has shut down what if you need to reflash your firmware? 

I have made a copy of the stock firmware with the small difference that the first user has already been created and you don't need the Seagateshare server to initialize.

Check my disclaimer and while this works great on my own GoFlex Home and other people have also had success with it I can't 100% guarantee it will work the same for you. On the other hand, you're probably reading this because you're stuck on the registration page and if your GoFlex Home is already not useable what have you got to lose?

If you decide to go ahead, you might consider disabling port forwarding until you have reset the password for the default admin account, because anyone reading this knows the default password.

It is very important that the very first thing you do after reflashing the firmware is log in to the web interface and change the password for the admin account.

You can download the stock firmware with a default admin account here.

Update September 2020: Thanks to Thierry Lapointe for this advice - your GoFlex Home must be connected to the internet when you do the reflash or you will get a solid Amber light and the flash fails. 
An encoded Perl script register_cs.pm runs during the flash process and returns an error if it can't connect to the internet. 
Huge thanks to Theo for providing the algorithm to decode the script (and also providing decoded copies of scripts in the /var/www/admin/ folder). I haven't had the time (or frankly,  the enthusiasm) to decode the other scripts in /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/OEone to work out what register_cs.pm does or what server it is attempting to connect to and at some point it may stop working and I'll need to investigate but while it works, it works (as long as your device has an internet connection).

Reflashing Instructions


The reflashing instructions are the same as before from the now unreachable 
http://support.goflexhome.hipserv.com/en/reflash site.

  1. Format a USB key with FAT32
  2. Extract the Zipped files to the USB key at the root level. No other files should exist on the USB key.
  3. Gracefully remove the USB key from the PC and insert into the GoFlex Home's USB connector.  (this always makes me chuckle, but they mean Eject the USB key in the OS before yanking it out of the USB port so don't worry if you've never done ballet classes)
  4. Power off your GoFlex Home, ensure power cord and Ethernet are still connected.
  5. Remove the hard disk from the GoFlex Home.
  6. With your GoFlex Home powered off, press the Power button and hold the Reset pin. The green light will blink immediately, followed by the white light. Release the reset pin and wait for the device to complete booting and obtain a steady green light (approximately 3-4 minutes) 
  7. Once you get the steady green light the device has finished booting and after removing the USB key you can put the hard drive back in. It should mount automatically and be accessible just like when you plug in a USB stick, but if any problems then reboot the device
  8. To recover your data, simply re-create the previous user accounts.
The default user account name is admin and the default password is admin1

Note: if you go through the steps above and still get the registration page and admin / admin1 doesn't work for Windows file sharing (smb) or SSH then the flash didn't succeed and your device has booted up with the old firmware. Check that you followed the procedure exactly and try with a different USB. A few people have reported troubles with USBs and the best chance of success is with small capacity USB drives and by doing a full format rather than quick format. And if full format of the USB still doesn't work try the Rufus tool to make a bootable USB.
Don't forget to change the password for the admin account.
Make sure that remote access is disabled first otherwise the system will attempt to update your password on the remote server (seagateshare) and will fail with a "server could not be reached" message.


Disable remote access in PreferencesServer PreferencesRemote Access by unchecking the Enable remote access box and clicking the Submit button. You will get a warning but just click OK.


Disable Remote Access


To connect with SSH

If SSH isn't something that interests you can ignore the following and just use your GoFlex home like before, but for SSH read on.
Note: enter the username exactly as shown below. Do not replace with your actual Product Key as it won't work. The default username is admin_hipserv2_seagateplug_AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD You can edit the /etc/oe-release file if you want to change these values and that is probably worth doing. Having a unique 16 character Product Key in the SSH username adds extra security. Since Seagate doesn't need the Product Key after Seagateshare shuts down, you can change it to anything you want. If you have a pet called Tiddles then you could use that as the Serial instead of AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD if you like or change the DistName too if you want, say to myNAS. The advantage of using your actual Product Key though is that it is on the label in case you forget what it is. bash-3.2# vi /etc/oe-release 
Version 2.0.0.393 
DistName myNAS 
VersionName 2.7.2 
CentralServer seagateshare.com 
Serial Tiddles 
Subdomain gZykrqev2 (remember that in vi editor first type i to enter insert mode and Esc ZZ to save and exit or Esc :q! to exit without saving) After saving the changes above, your SSH username would be admin_myNAS_Tiddles
If you post a comment anonymously can you include a name in the comment text. It doesn't need to be your real name but it is getting confusing with comments from Anonymous knowing whether I am talking to the same person or different people.

Update: I had to delete a lot of the comments as they were going off the page and becoming unmanageable, so don't take it personally if your comment was deleted. I updated my post for some of the feedback I received in the comments so thanks to everyone who commented.