Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[jfourman]

Just a warning for anyone wanting to get the SD1A firmware image. The one posted on the Newegg site is

not correct. Thinking I would save time by not having to go through Seagate support,

I fumbled around for hours last night first trying to get a DOS boot disk running with USB Keyboard support

on a Dell PC (no PS2 or Legacy USB compatibility in the BIOS). It took me a couple of hours of effort to find

Ultimate Boot CD and learn how to create and burn an ISO file to include the firmware files. Once I did all

of that, the firmware update failed in middle with "Invalid Data". I assumed something was wrong with my

methods and messed around for another couple of hours until I finally threw in the towel and called Seagate.

I was on hold for 15 min. The support person was incredibly helpful and within minutes had me authorized

to a link on the Seagate website containing the SD1A download. This file contained a complete ISO with

FreeDOS. All I had to do was burn the ISO to a CD and volia! - updated firmware on 4 SD19 drives to SD1A.

Long story short: Don't use the SD1A firmare image from the Newegg site...call Seagate support. Have

your drive's Model, Part#, Firmware version and Serial Number ready. He only needed one of my SN's

to set me up with the Certificate # for the online download.

[Vlad]

It worked ok for me on 1.5Tb drive.

[ChicagoLawyer]

You are a lucky one jfourman.

I called tech support and waited on hold over one hour.

I gave them my 4 drives' serial numbers and firmware revisions, symptoms, and asked for the new firmware.  It took me 5 minutes to convice the tech to look up the known issue instead of running through the usual series of trial and error troubleshooting... when he finally cam eback, he promised me the upgrade certificate by end of day (6pm).

Of course it did not come so I will probably have to call again Monday - over a week since I bought these drives.  Others on this board used the electronic problem reports and were ignored.  So you cannot blame folks for trying very hard to get this necessary firmware upgrade, to repair a defective product, by any means necessary.

It is criminal that, after putting out defective drives, Seagate cannot handle the fix more expeditiously.  A download is really needed now, that is available to everyone.  Seagate can easily put in safety checks to ensure that the fix is not applied to a drive that doesn't need it. 

[Marius2k]

By doing that, they will somewhat aknowledge that they have a problem and they don't want that cause it will ruin thier reputation this not the first case where a big company doesnt oficially admit failure of a bad product line.

[Simon66]

Marius2k said: By doing that, they will somewhat aknowledge that they have a problem and they don't want that cause it will ruin thier reputation this not the first case where a big company doesnt oficially admit failure of a bad product line.

They did announce an issue with some of these drives? where have you been? Either post something helpful or get out of the forums. 

I swear I used to read this forum a lot more ,  but recently it is a bunch of "meeee toooo" people, whiners and TROLLS like Marius.

By the way thank you jfourman for your informative post. I  was one of the unfortunate people who bricked a drive with that firmware a month ago. When I called seagate (on hold for less than 7 min -  1 hour for someone else lol Maybe they knew you were a lawyer or you are trolling who knows) they confirmed that the reason they want people to call is because some drives have different firmware that will not work with that update.

[AySz88]

If you haven't flashed it yet, you probably should go to Seagate chat support.  I heard that they have a procedure now that uses SeaTools, which sounds like it'd be quite a bit easier than going into DOS.

But the Newegg archive file worked fine for me.  I used a regular MS-DOS boot floppy (the sort you can create via formatting a floppy from within Windows), then navigated to a USB drive with the firmware files.  This does need USB legacy support in the BIOS, though.  (I remember having to try a few different USB keys; it's possible the drive with the firmware has to be formatted FAT, or perhaps plugged directly into the motherboard's I/O array in the back.)

The firmware's too big to fit along with DOS on a single floppy, so don't bother to try that.

Message Edited by AySz88 on 01-08-2009 05:01 PM