News Seagate admits firmware foul-up

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/01/20/seagate-admits-firmware-foul-up/1

Seagate has admitted that a problem in the firmware of certain Barracuda and DiamondMax drives causes premature death - and has issued a fix.

 

They're still fibbing - I bought my harddrive in July, only for it to become a doorstop in November. It's among the doorstops (I mean drives) listed so this must have been going on for a lot longer than 2 months.

I followed that link, and found firmware download page for my drive - Do you think I should I take the following statement as encouraging or discouraging? "Note: This file has been temporarily taken offline as of Jan 19, 2008 8PM CST for validation."

epic fail indeed

 

From reports on XtremeSystems, the reason that firmware was pulled was because it auto-kills pretty much every 500GB 7200.11 that anyone puts it on.

Seagate... did you not even test the update before releasing it?

 

Hi

Have 2 of these affected 500GB drives running in my main system found the same as you did.
After reading some of the posts in seagates own forum even their tech surport don't even have a clue whats going on just hope mine don't die

 

This is turning from bad to worse! Luckily i didn't try to flash my 500GB model yet, will wait for a fully fixed and sorted firmware to be put out there. In the mean time the machine's staying on.

 

This issue is really frustrating.
I had 1 of these drives fail in my RAID 5. I replaced it with a spare (All drives purchased at the same time-I thought it'd be best to have a spare in case of failure). The RAID started to rebuild automatically, but overnight another disk failed during the rebuild. My raid is now marked as damaged & after a reboot the array reports that the no RAID exists.

I don't know if the firmware (the fix for the fix) is going to allow me to see the data on the RAID or not. I've raised support tickets with seagate & posted in the forum, but no answers yet.

I'm really annoyed, as I knew the risks with RAID5 & decided that the chance of 2 disk failures within a 24hours was too remote to consider the expense of an additional backup solution. I puposely chose the seagate drives as they also had a 5 year warranty. It's only been 4 months!

 

I downloaded the new firmware yesterday. Good thing I didn't flash my two drives yet.

 

There were actually 2 firware updates. The first didn't work on the drives that part no's ended in 303. It was silently updated with the one that bricks 500Gb drives.

 

come on seagate, hdd are soo important, they have tp be the most reliable part of the pc as it can hold personal data....makes me want to look at wd for my next tb+ upgrade and i currently use 4 seagates in my machine. just chcked, thank the lord none of my 500gig seagates are affected! phew

peace

fatman

 

Ouch... Ive always liked Seagate drives, but this is somewhat disturbing. But my experiences over the years with harddrive failures is that if you really don't want to lose something, back it up to some physical media; whether a CD, DVD, media storage cards, or USB flash. All have their faults, scratches (CDs/DVDs) - have also had USB flash media become corrupted, but if you are truly paranoid, make multiple copies.

Works good unless a disaster such as fire, flood, tornado, etc happens, but the odds of my physical media being destroyed in such an event is low enough for me to take that chance.

 

**** My 500gb is one of those listed.

When the firmware is sorted out, and I can flash mine, will all the data be lost?

I assume no, but it might address the data differently or something silly like that.

Oh and I have had my drive since May, but the model number and firmware affected matches up, so I don't know if mine is going to die on me or not.

 

Anyone here had succes flashing a 500GB? I haven't tried yet, I'd rather wait until it's a doorstop than make it one myself, because a good firmware will come... some day... I hope...

 

Updating drive firmwares won't wipe your data. Even if the update goes wrong, your platters shouldn't be touched by the upgrade software. The firmware is a completely different part of the disk. That said, I don't write upgrade software (or disk firmwares) so don't take my advice as golden.

 

I'm pretty sure my hard drive has stopped working because of this. It's the only hard drive in my computer, and I can't start up the computer anymore (BIOS doesn't detect the hard drive). I've never installed new firmware before, is it possible to install the new firmwares onto my 'dead' drive? If so, how?
Thanks in advance

 

you'll need to take the drive out & check the part no. When you find it just search on seagates website & download the iso for the firmware.
Burn the iso to cd, unplug all other drives & boot from the cd.
press f10 to exit the eula
then press the apropriate letter that corresponds to your drive part no.

It take about 2 mins to update the firmware. It doesn't overwrte any data on the actual drive & has apparently restored 'bricked' frives to full working order.

 

I have a 7200.11 500gb drive that I started having reading problems. Now XP will not boot of it.

Had it since the 7200.11 drives first came out.

Has the bricking of 500gb drives been sorted? Could save me the pain of having to reinstall everything on a new drive.

 

Yes, supposedly flashing with the new firmware will restore the drive and no data will be lost.

 

Yes but mine from Feb 08.

They say Dec 08 drives affected.

Give it a try but looks like I am sending the drive back.

 

Seagate have changed their minds several times about the dates that the drives were manufactured. I purchased mine in september & they were effected by the firmware bug. I'd suggest trying the firmware first, before RMA'ing the drive.