Wednesday, January 21st 2009
New Seagate Firmware Turns Sour, Dangerous
You might want to think again before flashing your Seagate hard drive with whatever firmware the company provides as a 'fix' to pending firmware issues with some of its Barracuda 7200.11 series hard drives. The latest firmware by the company, version SD1A turned many hard drives to paperweights. After flashing the drives with the new firmware, users reported receiving disk failure messages, and systems not being able to access - let alone boot from - the drives. Users claimed to have lost data and backups stored on the hard drive, since the drive is rendered inaccessible from any machine.
Following these reports, the company removed the firmware update pending validation. It is not known at this point as to how the company plans to address its disgruntled customers, whether it creates a window for hard drives failed as a result of upgrading to this firmware to be replaced under the company warranty or free of charge. The SD1A firmware update was released by the company to address stability issues certain models of the Barracuda 7200.11 series were diagnosed with.
Sources:
Slashdot, Gizmodo
Following these reports, the company removed the firmware update pending validation. It is not known at this point as to how the company plans to address its disgruntled customers, whether it creates a window for hard drives failed as a result of upgrading to this firmware to be replaced under the company warranty or free of charge. The SD1A firmware update was released by the company to address stability issues certain models of the Barracuda 7200.11 series were diagnosed with.
45 Comments on New Seagate Firmware Turns Sour, Dangerous
I would like to note here... Seagate is not a bad company, and they will build a good product again without any doubt.
A few years back WD had big issues with their SE16 line, WD and Seagate have fought back and forth for the best drives
for many years, both companies enterprise line has generally always stayed in high respect, especially the SCSI drives.
"The guy who calls Seagate telling them how much p0rn he lost" now that's funny! :laugh:
Glad I went with Western Digital as usual. Haven't been let down yet.
Makes me feel luckey, as i've just recently picked up the WD6400AAKS instead of the Seagate ST3500320AS.. i had a hunch of sorts, dunno:o
Every now and then a company has a flowed product line. its a bummer when it comes to HDs filled with all your nice pr0n idol's work, but thats life.
BACKUP YOUR DATA GUYS.
It is already risky enough to apply firmware fixes to HDDs, it is something that is never supposed to be done by the end user. However, in this case, I think it was the best solution. However, I think there are a lot of people that are updating that don't need to.
I also have a WD hdd in my computer which also works great.
I think its just a once off thing seagate will address this issue.
Seems to work for the guys who did v1 and v2 to get the bricks.At least Seagate is trying....unlike IBM a few years back.......
I just did my hard drive ,No problems during flash or after works like it should.
The name of the file that I just download now is "MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO"
Thanks for your help an sorry for my English.
P.S: ST3500320AS
Anyhow, you updated your firmware, and all is well, correct? And that is still the SD1A firmware? I thought that was the bad firmware? But I see that your saying it is v.3.
seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951
Also took your advice H82, and downloaded the NEW update, and flashed the drive with the new firmware, and all is good man!!! Thanks for reassuring me on that one:)