Critical Issue in Some of Seagate/Maxtor Drives

**Regeneration** · January 21st, 2009, 03:59 AM

Watch out! Some of Seagate/Maxtor drives have critical firmware issue that may kill your drive.

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/cr...p?DocId=207931. Here is a list of the affected drives:

Barracuda 7200.11
ST31000340AS
ST3750330AS
ST3640330AS
ST3500320AS
ST31500341AS
ST31000333AS
ST3640323AS
ST3640623AS
ST3320613AS
ST3320813AS
ST3160813AS

Barracuda ES.2 SATA
ST31000340NS
ST3750330NS
ST3500320NS
ST3250310NS

DiamondMax 22
STM31000340AS
STM3750330AS
STM3500320AS
STM31000334AS
STM3320614AS
STM3160813AS

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 http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/

SpectatorX · January 21st, 2009, 10:17 AM

Seagate... bleh,,, Bunch of crap. I had their two hdds and both crashed in few months. My old good samsung is working hard about over 6 years and i have no issues with it, works beautiful :-) and still and for sure will work like this next few years.

Unixlord · January 21st, 2009, 05:42 PM

Thanks for this.

IModIntel · January 21st, 2009, 08:04 PM

I've always prefered Western Digital for their reliability. I used to have a Samsung drive in my computer and it failed on me after 3 months.

I have never had any problems whatsoever and I have my 120gb SATA WD Caviar thats now 5 years old of intensive use and still going strong.

screenager · January 21st, 2009, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IModIntel

I've always prefered Western Digital for their reliability. I used to have a Samsung drive in my computer and it failed on me after 3 months.

I have never had any problems whatsoever and I have my 120gb SATA WD Caviar thats now 5 years old of intensive use and still going strong.

same i have 2 WD caviars and 1 WD raptor and 1 Hitachi
they never failed on me.
i owned a maxtor and it died 5 times in 3 year.

PrEzi · January 21st, 2009, 08:41 PM

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 hard drives were diagnosed with.

source : techpowerup.com

Unixlord · January 21st, 2009, 08:46 PM

I guess I'm lucky. One of my HDs is an STM3500320AS but it's from way before december 2008, zero issues. Others are not so fortunate.

**Regeneration** · January 21st, 2009, 09:12 PM

I am very disappointed to hear this; especially, when I use a ST3500320AS HDD (500GB) from May 2008 in my primary workstation. Until now, I considered Seagate as the best HDD manufacturer. In the last ten years, I used many drives from: WD, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi and other unknown brands. And so far, the Seagate ones worked perfectly while others caused problems (compatibility, bad sectors, noise, performance and more).

Luckily, I am using this drive since May and so far, no issues – I hope it stays that way, not in mood for issues. I hope Seagate will address these issues as soon as possible in the most professional way, or elsewhere I will not buy their drives again. This is their opportunity to show if they supporting their users or not... and so far, I'm disappointed they messed up with the "broken fix".

Last night I sent an email to their support department and asked if this issue affects my drive via its build date and serial number to make sure everything is fine, and still I have not heard anything from them. Their original announcement was very confusing and I still don’t understand what’s going on. I'm going to try their live chat support, maybe they can provide more details about this issue.

Edit:
Spoke with them.. they told me a new update should come in the next 24-48 hours.

IModIntel · January 22nd, 2009, 03:32 PM

Best hard drives ever though were Quantums. I remember back when I had my Pentium 3 machine, it was equipped with a Quantum Fireball P 15gb, had it for 5 years, then sold the computer to a guy I worked with, and he still has the thing (it's now 10 years old, and was very heavily used). Still works perfectly.

**Regeneration** · January 22nd, 2009, 08:27 PM

They released the new firmware now. Working perfectly.