Seagate Offers Firmware Fix for All Problematic Barracuda 7200.11 HDD's

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Elev8r

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From techpowerup.com:

Seagate has issued an official statement today, acknowledging all recent problems with some Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Based on the information posted in the company's forums here, select Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 3.5-inch hard drives made in Thailand, suffer from a firmware issue that bricks the HDDs after a short period of time. After three to five months of normal operation these defective hard drives will suddenly lock-up as a protective measure and prevent the system from recognizing the drive from then onwards. In most cases the information won't be lost, but the drive will be completely useless, changing the drive's electronics won't help much either. This problem occurs not only to the 1TB Barracuda models, but to Seagate 1.5TB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB Barracuda 7200.11 drives, along with some Maxtor and ES.2 models. That's pretty disturbing, but now Seagate will provide its customers with an updated firmware if their drive is problematic.
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Here's the full statement from the company's spokesman Mike Hall:

Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on*.
As part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, we are offering a free firmware upgrade to those with affected products. To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931.

Support is also available through Seagate's call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283)

Customers can expedite assistance by sending an email to Seagate ([email protected]). Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial number and current firmware revision. We will respond, promptly, to your email request with appropriate instructions. There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive. But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.

For a list of international telephone numbers to Seagate Support and alternative methods of contact, please access http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/

*There is no safety issue with these products.
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The following are potentially affected models:

seagate.png


It is important however to use the online serial number validation tool (http://support.seagate.com/sncheck.html) to verify whether or not your specific drive is affected as not all drives of the same model necessarily share the same firmware revision.
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Yay!:D

UPDATE: "If you have a 500GB drive that matches the problem, don't flash with the latest SD1A firmward. It will brick your drive."

Thanks Abe, looks like Seagate are not too pro at fixing stuff :p
 
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I am elated with joy that my drive isn't affected :)

I am extremely happy that Seagate is offering updated firmware, it's about time!
 
Read this the other day (someone might've posted it in another thread), great news indeed.

Free data recovery... Nice.
 
Better than just continuing to ignore the problem for even longer, pitty they make the upgrading the firmware such a mission. I still don't quite know how to do it :confused:
 
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At &@*#%^& last! :D

Let me check my serial number...
http://support.seagate.com/sncheck.html : "This application is temporarily unavailable" :mad:

@Elev8r I would recommend that you always link news stories to the source: http://www.techpowerup.com/82331/Se...roblematic_Barracuda_7200.11_Hard_Drives.html

Edit: I'm trying to get the firmware for one of my drives now... "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later." Wooot!
 
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Hey Guys,

I suffered one of these drives failing on me, specifically the ST31000340AS Firmware SD15. Drive was 2 months old, and I figured I lost 933gb's worth of data, 200gb of which was CRITICAL.

I took the drive for data recovery and the company couldn't as they said there was a 10% chance of data recovery, and losing my warranty on the drive should they open it.

I then took the drive back to the supplier and got a new drive. This was about a week back, only to find out much to my own dismay that Seagate have now adressed the issue.

I'm so livid right now, as I could have recovered my data if the bunch of pricks only decided to address the issue earlier, instead of releaseing new model drives "ST31000333AS" that have the firmware issue fixed already. Why only after a lawsuit!?!?!?

About !@#*ing time!!!!

I've phoned the supplier in hope that they still have my old drive, and that I can use it for a few hours to recover my data.

Now only time will tell, and hopefully I'll start having some good luck again, as I'm sick of stuff going wrong!
 
FFS, I have just switched to one of these drives. Had a problem a couple of weeks back where the system stopped seeing the drive. After much pain and anguish, it started working again after a restart. I put it down to Ubuntu WUBI.
 
A/holes. The Firmware patch does not work. Have to get a new drive tomorrow and hope it does not croak in the mean time. From the sounds of it, it looks like the failure rate is 100%, it's just a matter of time. What a f.king pain in the neck.
 
Has anyone actually done the update yet?

I created the boot CD, booted from it, scanned for the disks, found the disk, chose the disk and it kicked out something like device not found:(
 
JUGGY said:
Has anyone actually done the update yet?

I created the boot CD, booted from it, scanned for the disks, found the disk, chose the disk and it kicked out something like device not found:(
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Got a similar error. The Seagate forums seem to be covered with people having the same problem.
 
PostmanPot, I owe you one bud. The Samsung Spinpoint drives are the next best thing after the Seagates, quiet too, for anyone looking for a replacement drive.
 
Does anyone know if WD are owned by Seagate? Going to pick up a 500GB WD tomorrow so I can switch off. Will use Seagate as a backup drive after it's fixed.
 
So did anyone actually manage to update their drives? I read that the update is broken.
 
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