Sunday, January 18th 2009
Seagate Offers Firmware Fix for All Problematic Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drives
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.
Here's the full statement from the company's spokesman Mike Hall:
It is important however to use the online serial number validation tool to verify whether or not your specific drive is affected as not all drives of the same model necessarily share the same firmware revision.
Source:
The Tech Report
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*.The following are potentially affected models:
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 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 (discsupport@seagate.com). 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 www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/
*There is no safety issue with these products.
It is important however to use the online serial number validation tool to verify whether or not your specific drive is affected as not all drives of the same model necessarily share the same firmware revision.
74 Comments on Seagate Offers Firmware Fix for All Problematic Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drives
It's Important, I think, to point that out - that the drive is NOT broken - and is just suffering from a firmware programming error (In the Majority of cases) - it IS POSSIBLE to unlock the firmware, and REPLACE the firmware with a totally safe one - rendering the drive completely repaired.
Don't just throw yer drives away :)
Even tried replacing the pcbs since i had repeated drives from same generation but didnt solve anything either...
Finding the correct information was really difficult - but Once I had it, actually DOING it was reasonably easy.
In my case I had drives containing information that I was NOT willing to simply throw back to the store, and as it turned out they are completely recoverable with the right help.
I'm just saying to anyone else reading that if you have important data on a "failed" 7200.11 drive - you MUST know that it is probably NOT failed, and can almost always be recovered.
I had to build my own Rs232/TTL Shifter - as I cannot buy them in my country, but I just built this one on project board for less than $5 in component costs, and once you have a ttl shifter using very specific procedures you can log into the drives console interface in "Hyper Terminal", and prompt the drive to reset the corrupt data in its firmware which allows the drive to start up normally again (And does NOT damage your data on the drive)
Now the Mo-Bo bios can detect the drive again -you can boot it up, then you just upgrade the firmware and you're done - drive 100% fixed - faulty firmware is now replaced and it will live on a full happy healthy life.
Of course, this is the internet. Any type of problem with hardware gets easily overhyped by forum members thinking all of these drives will blow up. I can't say I don't find overdramatic internet folk not entertaining post above me included.
AND even when the software failed - the DRIVE DID NOT - your data is (or was if you decided to throw the drive away) still 100% in tact and can be fully restored in about 5 minutes with a TTL shifter / Rs232 interface.
I stopped using WD years ago because almost every WD drive I have ever sold develops bad sectors or other failure like.. 2 days after manufacturers warranty expires, but I have Seagate drives well over 9 / 10 years old now that still run all day every day, and just don't give up.
I don't have ONE WD drive over 3 years old in any machine I have ever sold still running in any of my customers anywhere - because they just crap out after 3 years +
I was REALLY pissed off when I started having 7200.11 failures - and Seagate's terrible response to the problem aggravated me even more - but it was just ONE programming mistake made by ONE human being - and ALL human beings make mistakes, every single one of us.
It didn't cost me any data - they where all recovered, and all restored to perfect working order, and I'm quite happy to accept that one wobble on what has otherwise been for me a virtually perfect run of Seagate drives over the last 15 years + (Almost ALL of which are still working and those that where thrown out where dumped because the Customer wanted bigger drives down the line , and for no other reason - I only ever suffered ONE GENUINE failure of seagate Hdd, a 7200.9 I think it was - suffered genuine head failure)
which repaired my drive in less than 30 minutes. I also repaired a couple of friends drives with it and even got a small profit out of it
Yes there are cheaper solutions like what is mentioned here but I found it safer for my data to spend 25Euro for this kit (which also include click by click repair software) than to buy random adapters and try to decode messages....
I bought mine from Amazon but it is also avaliable on ebay.
Also, directly, here: Firmware Update for ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3640330AS, ST3640530AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS
And, here: Firmware Update for ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS
And yes I apologise firstly for stirring up an old topic.
It was only through Google that I found this site and thought it would be useful to try and recover the drive. It stood idle for most of the time. Silly tossing out a 1Tb drive if it can be fixed.
Phil
Edit: The links are working for me.