Seagate's Firmware Update Bricking Functional 500 GB Drives (*Update*)

[randomizer]

Seagate recently released a preventative firmware update for Barracuda 7200.11 drives affected by a faulty firmware which caused the drive to lock up and fail to be detected by the BIOS. Unfortunately, the updating process has not gone smoothly...

Seagate's Firmware Update Bricking Functional 500 GB Drives : Read more

 

[Humans think]

I am running Mac OS X (not hacked) on a 750 GB (ST3750330AS) drive, how the heck do I update the firmware now.... lol. I am not experiencing any issues till now though

 

[gsteacy]

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951

When the update here becomes active again you'll be able to download it, assuming they don't stick it on another page.

 

[Guest]

my ST3500320AS is ticking like a time bomb, i hope the new firmware can defuse it

 

[malcmacq]

My first ST3500320AS "died" and went to RMA-Land on August 23. I guess it must have been a prototype of the bad batch fron December..
My second ST3500320AS "died" last week and a new/fixed one is on the way.
Unfortunately, I have 4 more of the same model..
Life's not exactly wonderful when your RAID-0 dies.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]fgdg[/nom]my ST3500320AS is ticking like a time bomb, i hope the new firmware can defuse it[/citation]
I received a computer with two seagate ticking drives (2x250gb) last summer. I sent them to repair, as I didn't like the ticking, and was told that the ticking was perfectly normal, and not to worry.
I bought two western digital drives instead of using those ticking ones though. I just don't trust my company data to be on stuff that sounds like that...

 

[curnel_D]

I've always trusted Western Digital more. Back when warranties used to be the same, Western Digital was considered the higher quality brand. But when seagate bumped up their warranty time, everyone jumped on their bandwagon. Good marketing tecnique because everyone bought one. Now everyone's realizing that they're falling back on that warranty so much that the extra 2 years is worthless. Irony.

 

[Pei-chen]

Ha ha, I have two 7200.11 1.5TB in Raid 0 that I paid $199 each. They are selling for $129 after four months. Seagate SUX. Maybe I should buy three more and Raid 5 those drives.

 

[Guest]

That "December" stuff is rubbish. Seagate drives have been failing with the boot-of-death for the last six months and more. When mine went it was manufactured in July/August. When they say "through December", that's an Americanisation that doesn't mean "throughout December", it means "through until December".

 

[Guest]

"Users of 1 TB (ST31000340AS) and 750 GB (ST3750330AS) drives are reporting successful updates." Not true. My ST3750330AS firmware update failed on two different hdd controllers.

 

[nekatreven]

I've purchased 9 of the 1.5tb seagate drives in the last month or two. I got very lucky. They are all the exact same, except for the serial number and none of them are affected by the recent issues. We've got a ~5.5tb raid50 and a 3tb logical volume just chugging away, and we have a spare. It was risky, but nothing could match the storage density.

Considering that WD has their 2tb drives out soon though (or maybe they are out by now)...I probably won't buy seagate again for a while.

 

[nekatreven]

[citation][nom]nekatreven[/nom]I've purchased 9 of the 1.5tb seagate drives in the last month or two. I got very lucky. They are all the exact same, except for the serial number and none of them are affected by the recent issues. We've got a ~5.5tb raid50 and a 3tb logical volume just chugging away, and we have a spare. It was risky, but nothing could match the storage density.Considering that WD has their 2tb drives out soon though (or maybe they are out by now)...I probably won't buy seagate again for a while.[/citation]

This was for work btw...I only wish I was throwing that kind of money at my personal storage!

 

[Guest]

They changed the language on the main article from "through December" to "in December" AFTER drives started getting bricked. They also revised and then removed the firmware after that.

"Note: This file has been updated as of Jan 19, 2008 4:15PM CST. Please re-download this if you have an earlier version."

"Note: This file has been temporarily taken offline as of Jan 19, 2008 8PM CST for validation."

Yes, Seagate thinks it's still 2008.


They also posted a serial number tool and then pulled it when things went bad; just like the firmware update.

It was located here: https://apps1.seagate.com/rms_af_srl_chk/

My drive's serial returned "IS affected" on that tool and it was PURCHASED in November. How can they then change the language to "manufactured in December" only when people start bricking their drives with the critical update.

This issue has been known for months and back in early January their customer support forum moderators started locking threads about it. Many users moved to another forum after that. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128092

The recent reports still use the "through December" language that was originally report BY Seagate.
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16246

 

[Guest]

I have two of those 500GB doorstops now... and of course, I could not afford having two other drives to backup all my data on. I work from home, so most of my work stuff is on those two drives. I hurried and patched them so as not to loose my data. I look like an idiot now!

And BTW, I also have two WD drives... top of the line Raptors too. And guess what? One of them died on me in spring of last year and the other in December. And Hitachi? Well my brother got two of their 500GB drives and put them in a RAID 0 array... and guess what? One of them crapped out and he lost his data.

And Samsung's are noisy and unreliable drives.

So I don't know, SSDs maybe?

Oh, no wait... there less reliable than HDD.

 

[Guest]

This is not about technical issue, any manufacturer can encounter it from time to time (remember IBM Deathstar?), the problem is about customers getting tired of being lied to again and again by this deceitful company. I have three 1TB Seagates, luckily they are in an array protected by parity, so unless they will go bust together as a group, I should have my data even after this type of failure, but I'm going to replace them with WDs anyway and not buying anything from Seagate in the future.

 

[that_aznpride101]

I see a class action lawsuit coming up this year...

 

[Guest]

I spoke with a Seagate tech support guy, he said the firmware update to fix the SD1A bricked 500GB drives is due within 24-48 hours.

 

[gm0n3y]

Well I'm running a 750GB 7200.10, 1TB 7200.11, and 1.5TB 7200.11. I really hope they don't all die on me. That would be a lot of lost data (I don't have any of it backed up).

 

[Jake_Barnes]

I spoke with a Seagate tech support guy, he said the firmware update to fix the SD1A bricked 500GB drives is due within 24-48 hours.

I've got a new (12-12-08 from Newegg) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS (500 GB) SATA drive with Firmware SD15 - seems to be one of the possibly defective drives. I just tried to call Seagate but they are reporting "phone problems" with internal hard drive tech support ... strange

I sent an email with details to them, but no way I'm installing that drive until I get some "firm" answers to my questions.

 

[gsteacy]

[citation][nom]anonymous333[/nom]Note: This file has been updated as of Jan 19, 2008 4:15PM CST. Please re-download this if you have an earlier version.""Note: This file has been temporarily taken offline as of Jan 19, 2008 8PM CST for validation."Yes, Seagate thinks it's still 2008.[/citation]
I didn't notice that, haha. Well, it's a quote, so I don't see any reason to change it :lol:

 

[Guest]

The firmware that they now claim was for drives manufactured "in December" is dated "Dec 2, 2008" and was originally made for another problem with their 1.5TB drives.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/11/2125227&tid=198

http://www.google.com/search?q=sd1a+firmware

The change in language on their KB article is an attempt to shift responsibility for the bricking of other drives on the end user. That is intentional fraud on Seagate's part.

 

[Guest]

Seagate has silently changed the langauage on their KB 207931 back to "through December". The lawyers must have noticed that we noticed.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

 

[Kyle Huff]

Seagate just released new updaters. My ST3500320AS now works again.
Whew.

 

[Jake_Barnes]

Seagate has released new firmware ISO's for effected HDD's. See this Seagate Knowledge Base article: Firmware Update for ... ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3640330AS, ST3640530AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS [207951]

Please note that these updates appear to be drive specific and are ISO files. You will need to create a bootable CD to update the appropriate firmware. Seagate has included instructions on How to burn an .iso image onto a CD [201431]

Note that Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder (Freeware) is the only free burning software they mention, but I believe you would be successful using the excellent (and free) ImgBurn version: 2.4.2.0. Just follow the instructions for creating a bootable disc from an ISO file.

Hope this helps.

 

[Jake_Barnes]

The title of this topic has been edited by Jake_Barnes