Seagate firmware update bricks 99.9% 500 GB 7200.11 Barracudas

[safan80]

So which one of your said that there was no problem?

[AgentGOD]

So which one of your said that there was no problem?

I don't think anybody said there was no problem.

[randomizer]

Apparently Seagate is only recovering data for free on drives manufactured in December, regardless of whether your drive bricked from the original firmware problem or not.

[AgentGOD]

Apparently Seagate is only recovering data for free on drives manufactured in December, regardless of whether your drive bricked from the original firmware problem or not.

Well that's even worse -_-

[Diverge]

I just checked my seagate 500GB drive. Luckily it's older model, ST3500320NS Barracuda ES.2. But, this drives firmware had bugs too. When used in NAS's, there was some sort of spindown bug. But the guys at Infrant hooked me up with a beta bios for it. So far no problems. *knocks on wood*

[DragoonXX]

Ive got a seagate 7200.10 AAK firmware...even to this day (close to a year and a half later) it still doesnt think the drive has more then 200 days use on it, and the read/write speeds are continually getting lower and lower, its slower than the hitachi 500GB I have in a vantec external over eSATA, and the seagate is set to SATA2, I think that once I re-delegate this computer to upstairs, it'll get replaced with my spare 500GB hitachi

[JoeBar]

Can someone confirm about problems on 320gb 7200.11 drives?


I've got one but luckily (??) it has firmware SD22.

[deathman20]

Damn been using Seagate for years and just last year I nabbed a 640Gig WD and love it as well. Guess Seagate is out, and in with WD.

Lets see my list so far of where I went for drives....

Maxtor -> Seagate -> WD

Least I've been lucky so far and have purchased drives before the issues start happening.

[mrcape]

Does this effect 7200.12 at all? I have two of those that just went into a customer system. I tested them so as long as the user doesn't update firmware (he won't) all should be fine, but I'd still like to know.

[renzokuken]

Looks like they shouldn't have cut some of those jobs...

[tiro_uspsss]

Does this effect 7200.12 at all? I have two of those that just went into a customer system. I tested them so as long as the user doesn't update firmware (he won't) all should be fine, but I'd still like to know.

are they even out yet?

edit: just checked newegg, they are too

[aintz]

trusty drives are under 500gb

[onethreehill]

"the true story behind the scenes" by Seagate's employee

I work for Seagate. I was there when the fit hit the shan, and I saw everything going in internally, as well as externally.
I really love my job, so please excuse the sock-puppet nature that creating a brand new account and claiming to be an authority on the subject I must seem to be. But I am a geek, and I really think you all need to know the true story behind the scenes.

This whole thing started with the 1.5 Terabyte drives. It had a stuttering issue, which at first we all thought was a simple bad implementation of SATA on common chipsets. Seagate engineers promptly jumped in and worked to try to duplicate the issue and prove where the problem was. This wasn't a massive rush as 1.5tb drives are what? 5% of the drives on the market. When it became obvious that the issue was more widespread, they buckled down and put out a couple of firmware revisions to fix it.........

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=...3&cid=26542735

Seagate promises second fault fix in 24 hours

This will be firmware to fix the firmware (SD1A) that was issued to fix the firmware (SD15) that caused some 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 drives and others to stop working. The SD1A firmware caused 500GB Barracuda 7200.11s to stop working.............

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ond_fault_fix/

[tiro_uspsss]

"the true story behind the scenes" by Seagate's employee

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=...3&cid=26542735

Seagate promises second fault fix in 24 hours

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ond_fault_fix/

nice find, good read

[drizzt5]

God dammit, my drives better not fail.

[Dainas]

i have had issues with a few segate 500G last year but the 7200.10 models, i also had 3 320G 7200.10's go bad in the span of a month, i am with some others, i dont trust segate anymore, back to WD or hitachi for me!

been there and done that (with maxtor added)... save yourself the heartbreak and go samsung. Its ironic as old put-into-oem samsung drives are garbage.

[LiquidReactor]

So thats what happened to my ST31000340AS, I thought it just failed due to overclocking.

[xenolith]

ALL HARD DRIVES WILL FAIL. Most will kick the bucket within five years.

I have an old 4.6GB Samsung that's 11 years old and it's still kicking.

[ZeroOne]

[bhttp://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=...3&cid=26542735

That's a relief, in a way. Thanks for the link. According to the information in the link, it is a very slim chance of failure in the first place (assuming you aren't reflashing anything). My drive fell into Seagates "affected" list, but it runs 24/7, so I guess that greatly reduces the risk.


For anyone that is interested in exactly WHAT is happening;

The conditions have to be just right - you have to reboot just after the drive writes the 320th log file to the firmware space of the drive. this is a log file that's written only occasionally, usually when there are bad sectors, missed writes, etc... might happen every few days on a computer in a nin-RAID home use situation.. and if that log file is written even one time after the magic #320, it rolls over the oldest file kept on the drive and there's no issue. It'll only stop responding IF the drive is powered up with log file #320 being the latest one written... a perfect storm situation. IF this is the case, then seagate is trying to put in place a procedure where you can simply ship them the drive, they hook it up to a serial controller, and re-flashed with the fixed firmware. That's all it takes to restore the drive to operation! As for buying new drives, that's up to you. None of the CC firmware drives were affected - only the SD firmware drives.

[Avan]

- Seagate has now released new firmware for all models of hard drives affected by a software flaw, the company said Thursday.

Seagate has published detailed instructions for how administrators can identify the model of hard drive in service and whether it needs a firmware upgrade. Models affected are the Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA and DiamondMax 22.

The problem caused some drives to become completely inoperable, while other users found they could not access data on the drives. The new firmware will not fix drives that have become inoperable, the company said.

Seagate is offering customers whose drives are broken data recovery services from its i365 subsidiary. Data on drives that are not inoperable is still on the drives and can be recovered, the company said.

Seagate released new firmware last Friday for the Barracuda 7200.11 drives, but that upgrade was also faulty. Seagate withdrew it on Monday, said company spokesman Ian D. O'Leary.

It was originally thought that drives in the SV35 series, which are designed for surveillance applications, were also affected by the problems, but that now appears not to be the case, O'Leary said.

Seagate said it believes that vast majority of customers using the drives will not have problems. However, the company has not released figures on how many of the drives have been sold and what percentage may be affected.

"We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers," according to a statement released Thursday.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/2...okenharddrives