Seagate Responds to Barracuda Problems...Updated, New Firmware revives our Bricked Drives
by Gary Key on January 19, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
After what seemed like a few weeks of deafening silence, Seagate has finally acknowledged (officially) problems with their Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive series. We say series, as the potential list of affected drives is much larger than we first imagined when reports of drive failures escalated sharply in December. At that time, it seemed as though the problem was relegated to the 1TB ST31000340AS model. However, based on this knowledge base article, there are 21 hard drives that could potentially have a problem. We were also informed that certain Seagate FreeAgent Desk and Maxtor OneTouch 4 storage solutions in the retail channel might be affected.
The good news is that Seagate is going to take care of their customers by offering immediate firmware fixes and if you have a bricked drive, they will offer free data recovery services. If you have an affected drive, you should immediately install the firmware update. The bad news is that this type of problem should have been caught in qualification testing before the drives were released. The following is the official statement we received from the public relations group at Seagate:
"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/crm/self service/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 http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/ - Just to reiterate, there is no safety issue with these products."
We have not experienced the bricking problem with our 320GB and 1TB drives after several weeks of abuse, but we did update our firmware today as instructed. In the meantime, we highly suggest if you have one of the affected drives to do the same. If you are nervous about this process, Seagate technical support can assist you.
Update 1/20-
If it were not for bad luck, we would have no luck at all. We decided to follow Seagate's instructions and updated several of our other Barracuda 7200.11 drives today that were identified to have suspect firmware with the revised SD1A firmware. Our ST3500320AS (500GB) and ST3640330AS (640GB) drives are bricked now. It appears this is a widespread problem, once again, and Seagate has pulled this firmware. We do not have a response from Seagate yet, but how in world they let this one get by qualification testing is beyond us. At this time, do not flash your drives if you have the SD1A firmware.
Update 1/21-
Seagate figured out the SD1A firmware problem and has posted a new set of instructions for owners of their drives. Our ST3500320AS (500GB) and ST3640330AS
(640GB) drives were bricked by the previous firmware update. We have good news to report as the latest firmware brought our drives back to life. Granted, our OS drive on the ST3640330AS will need a new OS load as a core DLL file was apparently damaged when the drive bricked, but all other data on the drive was recoverable. We suggest trying this new firmware now.
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Iketh - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
All of you bashing Seagate now... this blunder will only make a great harddrive company even better. i look forward to purchasing more seagate drives in the futureStraightPipe - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
I've got 6 of these drives in our storage server, so I'm praying for no whammies (and making nightly backups of course).Please keep us updated as yesterday the Seagate site did not have firmware available, just said "Validating".
Sivar - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Every company screws up now and then. I remember various times throughout computer history where almost every major brand was at one time "the brand to avoid." What matters is how the company handles the problem, which reflects how much they respect their own customers.Offering free data recovery service is going to be very expensive for Seagate, but it demonstrates that they are willing to stand by their product even when they make a big mistake.
I currently have 4 WD drives in my system, but I'd say Seagate is once again crossed off of my "avoid" list (once their update firmware works, that is).
WillR - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
"Offering free data recovery service is going to be very expensive for Seagate"Not really. It will be some man hours but not that bad since it won't require opening the drive or replacing the board. From what I've read about this issue the data is still perfectly intact. The drive will just have to be flashed with a working firmware via a serial cable through 2 jumper pins. Even one at a time a single person could do well over a thousand in a week.
It's something I've done before on VOIP hardware. I routinely re-flashed RMA'd and new products and could easily do over 100 an hour. The time consuming part was applying serial numbers to all the devices and (re)assembling them. With the pins already exposed and hopefully no need for new SNs it should go very quickly.
What they really need to do is make the lawyers and middle management that caused all this crap do the flashing. They'll never jump the gun on QA again.
tpi2009 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
I fully agree with you, it is very important to see how companies deal with the problems they will statistically and inevitably face over the years.I was aware of this problem when I needed to upgrade my systems' capacity that only had a trustworthy Seagate 120 GB Sata drive (the first real SATA with NCQ on the market from what I recall). It was well liked back then, got good reviews, and from my experience it is very reliable.
Although I was really pleased with it, and I still am, because it is now working in my secondary (Linux) system, I decided to go for WD for my upgrade.
I bought what is possibly the highest rated in customer satisfaction 640 GB drive. For the price and capacity this is as good as it gets for a normal user.
I've had my Seagate for more than two and a half years, and zero reallocated sectors.
I've had my new WD for a little over two months, and I'm really satisfied with it. Of course only time will tell how it behaves.
And when I again need another drive, I will always consider every brand available, including Seagate.
Spivonious - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
The past five years I have heard nothing but bad things about Seagate drives from a reliability standpoint.I'll stick with my Western Digitals, thankyouverymuch. 5 drives, 10 years, zero failures.
Zak - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
I guess we have different experiences. All WD drives I owned except for Raptors X but including other Raptors and MyBook external series failed prematurely and needed to be RMAd. I bought one Velociraptor, crossed my fingers and I'm not buying WD again. On the other hand I own a bunch of 7200.11 drives: 4x500GB, 2x1TB and 2X1.5 TB and I have no issues at all. Well, except that the 500s don't seem to be happy in a RAID setup using on-board Intel controller.Zak
The0ne - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Experiences are different for each one of us. My experience with horrible drives have been the 75GXP in the past and currently the WD passbook/worldbook and now the Seagate 1.5TB drives (although only 2).I had and used many WD drives before but there were the external versions. I had three 160GB passports died on me from them having their SATA connectors literally burned to ashes. I had 2 320's that died when they started to make the "clicking" sound. The third 320, which I still have currently, had started clicking but doesn't anymore but now will randomly be recognize via USB. WD tech support is a joke and a laugh. They take was it was my fault, my hardware, and so forth. Umm, yea.
My latest nightmare are the two 1.5TB seagate. Tech support was even worse than WD. I finally had to resort to calling a CA sales office, had them transferred me to a service manager and then he transferred me to a tech to get my returns submitted. The tech was knowledgeable however and was well aware of the issues with the drives. He promptly sent me two replacements that I've been using 24/7 for a week now.
schwinn8 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Ditto here - every WD I owned has failed within 2 years, while my Seagates are STILL running with no issues. Heck the WD in my tivo died after 2 years, while it's replacement Seagate continues to run (3 years now) and it's quieter (back then, there was a difference).What's more, of all my customers (small computer services company for end users) that have had hard drive failures, I can point to the stack of dead WD drives I have from their machines. I will admit, one was a Seagate, and another 2 were Samsung or Hitachi, I think... but the majority were WD (over 5 drives that I still have in hand, not counting the 5+ others that I have already tossed).
The drop in warranty and these issues certainly concern me for my favorite HD company.
iwodo - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Instead of letting its user do the firmware upgrade. They should handle it themselves and exchange the drive with original data on it as necessary.