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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PCEngineer - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Darn, I am not going to remove my drive to send to them just to flash a firmware. I mean, most of us are tech knowledgeable and prefer doing that ourselves. Alas, in this case, it went wrong.samohtrelhe - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Would be nice, but in the real world I wouldn't like to wait 6 month for my disk to come back if I sent it somewhere...gundar - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
I've a ST3750640AS that seems to have the same issue. It's gone from working perfectly to giving me "SATA Reset Port Error" on boot.Ilmarin - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Seagate support is an utter sham at the moment. This article should NOT be advising consumers to follow Seagate's instructions, as those instructions have already resulted in bricked drives for many people; people who have correctly followed said instructions. Seagate has now removed the download link for the SD1A firmware that they previously posted, citing that it is under validation. Clearly their QA is non-existent, as is their crisis management.If you want to get even close to the real story, you should visit the official support forum and wait until the subset of users posting there can validate that a firmware release made by Seagate is actually a viable fix and that any risks which Seagate fails to document can be mitigated. Despite the fact that some people have reported successful firmware updates, there are many more who have reported bricked drives, a segfaulting updater, incorrect drive identification, and other issues besides. The best thing you can do right now is ensure your data is backed up and wait for the fog to clear.
Sivar - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Yes they screwed up, both with their drives and with the "fixed" firmware, but they are owning up to it. Hard drive firmware is very complex. I know a firmware engineer for Seagate (at least, they worked for Maxtor) and he's an insanely competent engineer.Even the best engineers make mistakes, and even the best tested software can have major bugs. Windows, for example, is one of the best tested pieces of software on earth. Of course, drive firmware is nowhere near as complex as an entire OS, and they really should make sure that their help isn't worse than their harm.
Seagate is certainly handling the problem better than IBM handled the 75GXP problem.
WillR - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
It doesn't seem to be the engineers' fault. At most it looks to be miscommunication gone very wrong. Compound that with removing some checks in the firmware that prevent it from going onto the wrong drive then tack on throwing it into the wild.All things that were pushed through by the corporate lawyers and middle management trying to avoid a class action lawsuit from the 1.5TB drives freezing. If people didn't act like jackals all the time, maybe management would have let engineering and testing do their jobs correctly.
Not rushing while throwing up a knowledgebase article would help too. There's a big difference between "in December" and "through December". If their site had been better written in clear, plain English, many users would have never flashed their drives with SD1A.
The0ne - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
Their own firmware should not be difficult for them, especially not for a released product. Sure the firmware won't be 100% perfect, no design/software ever is, but that doesn't mean this kind of failure should have escaped Testing and QA. Yes, there are different departments for testing these.The 75GXP was a nightmare for me. This was because at the time I was deploying Intel-base PCs using these models to customers. In short we had so many complaints that we were forced to use the older models. And at the same time, HD/CD/DVD/CPU were being phased out in 3month cycles making procurement of the older versions harder and harder. Getting back in topic, the 75GXP suffered from a multitude of problems, design and manufacturing. The QA was so bad they could have not have one at all.
phusg - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
> Clearly their QA is non-existent, as is their crisis management.Spot on. My next hard drives won't be Seagates.
Jynx980 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - link
This will cost them big time. They will lose part of their user base and recovering data, even though the drives are not damaged, will put them further in the hole. Their stocks will take another beating. They are trying to make good on it but it should not have gotten this far in the marketplace.mrphones - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
I have one of the affected drives, but it's working fine. If it's not broke, don't fix it.