Warning: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I gave it a go and the flash program wouldn't run. I got the drive not found message, I think because my Serial number did not match the one expected. Booted and scanned fine, just wouldn't apply firmware update. My drive is still working fine for now.

That's Seagate's screwup. Look at the top where it says updates for -303 drives, but in the list of firmware, it says for -300 drives. It's basically just an update for the -300 drives, but there are a lot of people like myself that have had -303 drives fail, and still have other -303 drives that need updating. We can't update because the updater is only for -300 drives.

Seagate once again manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They just seem to be incompetent from beginning to end, even at a time like now when they should be pulling out all the stops to rescue the situation.

Thinking about it, I'm not even convinced that the firmware is the correct one, as SD1A was put out weeks ago for a problem with the 1.5 TB drives stalling out, and it seemed to degrade performance for a lot of people. It might just be a stopgap to keep people quiet, but Seagate couldn't even implement that properly.

 

[hoom]

<- going from quietly confident to a bit peeved because I followed the instructions but got the same error

The disk boots & there is a test scan to see what HDD is attached.
It says the right model number there.
So I continue to try to flash for that model but it says that it couldn't find the right model...

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

<- going from quietly confident to a bit peeved because I followed the instructions but got the same error

The disk boots & there is a test scan to see what HDD is attached.
It says the right model number there.
So I continue to try to flash for that model but it says that it couldn't find the right model...

Someone's been looking at the batch file and says it's broken. There's not one single confirmation on the Seagate forums that the upgrade can be performed, let alone that it prevents bricking.

 

[RudeCurve]

Strange, I mounted the ISO with MagicDisc to extract the files and there's no flash.bat utility. There's only a Readme.txt and DriveDetect.exe.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I was prepared to give Seagate another chance once they'd owned up to the issue and decided to deal with it, but the longer it drags on with more and more screwups, the more I'm inclined to decide I don't want to ever deal with such a bunch of incompetent, clueless, useless, cowboys.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Strange, I mounted the ISO with MagicDisc to extract the files and there's no flash.bat utility. There's only a Readme.txt and DriveDetect.exe.

Try hitting F8 at boot time to step through the script.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I've just had an email from Seagate Support telling me the new firmware is not out yet, so I guess people should not be installing SD1A (not that it will install). Why it's linked as an upgrade to fix the bricking problem I have no idea - just another Seagate screw-up.

When I tried to inform them via chat (Seagate support don't frequent their own forums) that their webpages were wrong and misleading, I got a curt "we don't support firmware via chat" and was redirected to their trouble ticket system, then cut off. Not only is their system not available (it's being slash-dotted), it's no use anyway as I've not had any reply from any of the four cases I've opened there in the last month.

It's like every step Seagate take is designed to make sure customers curse their name and never buy another thing from Seagate.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yeah, drag, I bought one of these a few days before I saw the story.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, well. Seagate has updated the download so it works on -303 hardware. It seems to work on the 1 TB drive.

Unfortunately, people are saying drives are no longer recognised in RAID mode, and people with the 500 GB drive are getting bricked.

I'm not convinced the firmware is supposed to fix the boot-of-death, and I wonder if there will be another one this week.

 

[Babel-17]

Well, well. Seagate has updated the download so it works on -303 hardware. It seems to work on the 1 TB drive.

Unfortunately, people are saying drives are no longer recognised in RAID mode, and people with the 500 GB drive are getting bricked.

I'm not convinced the firmware is supposed to fix the boot-of-death, and I wonder if there will be another one this week.

Yikes, thanks for the heads-up!

/. just reported that. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/21/0052236

Reading down I see people saying that the drives can possibly be saved with another flash.

What a mess. But I guess only a very small number of people have tried these "solutions". Though if I had one of these Seagate's I'd probably have been a victim too.

Voidsinger writes "The latest firmware updates to correct Seagate woes have created a new debacle. It seems from Seagate forums that there has yet to be a successful update of the 3500320AS models from SD15 to the new SD1A firmware. Add to that the updater updates the firmware of all drives of the same type at once, and you get a meltdown of RAID arrays, and people's backups if they were on the same type of drive. Drives are still flashable though, and Seagate has pulled the update for validation. While it would have been nice of them to validate the firmware beforehand, there is still a little hope that not everyone will lose all of their data."

 

[hoom]

Add to that the updater updates the firmware of all drives of the same type at once, and you get a meltdown of RAID arrays, and people's backups if they were on the same type of drive.

Well anyone that particular issue happens to has only themselves to blame

The instructions on the firmware updater specifically states that all HDDs other than the one to be upgraded should be unplugged before you boot the CD.

Have to actually boot the CD to read them but they are there & you at least have to hit a button saying you read them before you can do anything else.
Handily when you then quit after realising that you need to disconnect the other drives, it actually shuts down the PC rather than rebooting

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well anyone that particular issue happens to has only themselves to blame

The instructions on the firmware updater specifically states that all HDDs other than the one to be upgraded should be unplugged before you boot the CD.

Have to actually boot the CD to read them but they are there & you at least have to hit a button saying you read them before you can do anything else.
Handily when you then quit after realising that you need to disconnect the other drives, it actually shuts down the PC rather than rebooting

True, but human nature being what it is, it should be expected people would run it without reading all the instructions, and then find that instead of offering a choice of what drive to update, the Seagate tool goes off and updates all drives.

The question should also be asked that if you are supposed to update drives one by one, why does the Seagate tool flash every drive it can find? It could easily be coded detect that there is more than one drive connected and refuse to run.

Of course this wouldn't be a problem if the flasher wasn't bricking drives instead of updating them.

 

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Story behind Seagate's firmware issues

As told by one Seagate employee on Slashdot comment: Seagate Firmware Update Bricks 500GB Barracudas

The good news is, the chance of your drive simply not spinning up one day is very low. And for those of you who flashed the wrong firmware - be patient. It's not bricked, just unable to write data to the platters properly. When they have a *GOOD* firmware out, a new flash should un-brick the drives. If not, flashing it back to SD15 should make it work again.

PS: keep scrolling down the page to read more comments from the same guy.

​

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

As told by one Seagate employee on Slashdot comment: Seagate Firmware Update Bricks 500GB Barracudas

The good news is, the chance of your drive simply not spinning up one day is very low. And for those of you who flashed the wrong firmware - be patient. It's not bricked, just unable to write data to the platters properly. When they have a *GOOD* firmware out, a new flash should un-brick the drives. If not, flashing it back to SD15 should make it work again.

PS: keep scrolling down the page to read more comments from the same guy.

​

Yeah, I read that, and basically he displays the same lack of care and is downplaying the issue as Seagate has been doing for the last year. He makes out it's only a small number of people with the problem, and confirms that Seagate just couldn't care less until the press got involved and what was a "customer problem" finally became a "Seagate problem".

There are a lot of people who had drives disappear within a few weeks/months, and they've known about this issue for ages. It seems Seagate couldn't care less if fifty thousand drives die, because they sold a few million of them so it's only a drop in the ocean.

Fact is every forum post on hundreds of sites is accompanied by "me too" statements, and for every person that posts, there are probably hundreds who just sent drives back silently.

If you look further down that Slashdot thread, you'll see a great response from someone who pretty much says the same thing: Seagate screwed their customers, and is now getting a taste of their own medicine.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Well, the reports on the new firmware posted today have all been extremely positive, with bricked drives coming back to life, data being safe and performance actually being a little better. Sounds good for now. I'll probably wait a couple more days before flashing my drive since it has never had any issues so far, but I'm pretty positive right now.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well as an update, new firmware was finally released. Those that had semi-bricked drives from the last firmware that was pulled on Tuesday got their drives and data back. Those that had properly bricked drives (ie BUSY/not seen by BIOS), this didn't restore them. Unsurprisingly, if your drive is locked into busy, it's not talking to anything that might be trying to flash it. You either have to use the DIY unbrick, send your drive to a data recovery company at high cost, or wait for the much rumoured (to the press), but nothing official (to the customer), free restore for the Seagate customers. More rumours are that Seagate will just be resetting the drives via their serial port, loading new firmware and sending them back, but that you'll have to be willing to "wait for it".

Of course, we still don't know if this new firmware will actually stop the drives failing to be seen at boot time. That's going to take a little time to see if anyone with the upgraded firmware sees the issue again.

 

[hoom]

So not having heard any further brickbats about this, I downloaded the updated firmware & flashed my drives successfully.
Much relieved that I didn't lose anything.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Lucky for me all 3 of my 1.5 TB Seagate drives didn't have the affected firmware even though I bought them as soon as they were available. Odd... Although I'm wiping my brow in thanks as I didn't have much opportunity to back up those drives while in Japan.

Now that I'm back in the states though, everything important backed up on the file server. Whew. Just in case.

Regards,
SB

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Lucky for me all 3 of my 1.5 TB Seagate drives didn't have the affected firmware even though I bought them as soon as they were available. Odd... Although I'm wiping my brow in thanks as I didn't have much opportunity to back up those drives while in Japan.

Now that I'm back in the states though, everything important backed up on the file server. Whew. Just in case.

Don't trust the online checker it's been shown to be pretty inaccurate, you'd be better off upgrading to the newer firmware to be on the safe side.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There is no upgraded firmware for mine. And no reports by any other using this firmware or model of drive that their drive has failed. So I'm not terribly worried.

Likewise the model of 1.5 TB drive I have uses a different series of Firmware...

What this whole episode has made me do though is...make sure I always have backups of important information. AND that all my backups are on redundant arrays. Duplicated drives, not going to risk it on raid 5. Luckily WHS is easy to do this without creating raid arrays. Just set a folder to be duplicated and windows automatically duplicates the file on 2 different drives.

Regards,
SB