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

[Karel Jansens]

Short time lurker, first time poster:

The Register gave links to a Seagate knowledgebase article with an online serial # verification tool. I tried it out and it reported that my 1TB drive was NOT affected.

However, being a suspicious old git, I tried the serial thingie again with a serial # I leeched off this board from someone who claimed their drive kicked the bucket. And lo and behold, Seagate serial # checker reported that -- dead! -- drive as NOT affected as well!!!! Could we have some more  checking of that tool, please?

Message Edited by Karel Jansens on 01-18-2009 04:48 AM

[jamesy305]

Hey, I found a serial of someone who said their drive died and the checker does find it to be affected! Saying that I have 6 drives, all on the KB list of drive that may be affected, and the checker says none are affected.

Can the people who have had drives fail check their serial in the online checker and let us know what you find!?!?! At the moment i'm finding it VERY hard to trust seagate!

Thanks

Message Edited by jamesy305 on 01-18-2009 11:17 AM

Message Edited by jamesy305 on 01-18-2009 11:18 AM

[jcm]

I have a ST 3320620AS which fails similarly.

The serial number verification tool reports that my drive is not affected, but I can assure you it is.

I guess this will be my last Seagate ever.

 

---

Karel Jansens wrote:

The Register gave links to a Seagate knowledgebase article with an online serial # verification tool. I tried it out and it reported that my 1TB drive was NOT affected.

However, being a suspicious old git, I tried the serial thingie again with a serial # I leeched off this board from someone who claimed their drive kicked the bucket. And lo and behold, Seagate serial # checker reported that -- dead! -- drive as NOT affected as well!!!! Could we have some more  checking of that tool, please?

 

Message Edited by jcm on 01-18-2009 06:40 AM

Message Edited by jcm on 01-18-2009 08:20 AM

[jackSparrow]

Hay that's my drive..yeah it has failed..But plz remove the serial no.. I don't want it to get famous everywhere..

[Johnnyb]

"And lo and behold, Seagate serial # checker reported that -- dead! -- drive as NOT affected as well!!!!"

Apparently the serial # checker is not reliable but the the drive may have died for some other reason other than the BIOS problem. At this point it's getting hard to keep up with all the issues cropping up.

There seem to be at least 4 or 5 FW issues that need to be addressed for some of these drives (the 1.5 TB drives for example). 

The 340AS drives apparently have 2 FW issues and hopefully only 1 update will be needed, unless different drives with different serial numbers have different bugs? 

For example, some drives might have only FW bug 1, others only FW bug 2, and some with both bugs. But if we can't properly ID our drives then were are FUBARd

Message Edited by Johnnyb on 01-18-2009 08:14 AM

[jcm]

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jackSparrow wrote:
Hay that's my drive..yeah it has failed..But plz remove the serial no.. I don't want it to get famous everywhere..

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I removed it.

Strangely, I ran SeaTools from a CD, and a one-hour full scan did not return any problem.

So this seems that I'll be able to backup my drive with a DOS tool, after all !

However, I still cannot use this drive with Windows XP.

[MasterSync]

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MasterSync wrote:

Hello everyone,

I'am a french user so excuse me in advance for my poor english.

Since i learned this problem concerning 7200.11 drives (two weeks ago), i consider myself as a "lucky" guy. Indeed, i reboot my PC about twice a month, so for now my drives are safe. But i'm really scared about a possible fail of them, then i wait for this saturday to buy a backup hard drive (not Seagate).

Here the references i've got (and i really don't know if they are concerned by this firmware bug) :

Model ST3750330AS - Firmware SD15 - S/N9QK0C5HH - Made in Thailand

Model ST31000340AS - Firmware SD15 - S/N 5QJ10S8C - Made in China

For the little story, i bought my ST31000340AS drive because the third partition of my ST3750330AS has an epic failed two month ago (recognized drive but unable to access partition) and needed a backup drive (sic). After about three days searching on Web, i finally resolved my problem to access to my data with a brutal command under Ubuntu (it was an ext3 partition) and recover them with an immediate copy to the ST31000340AS drive that i just bought :

# cd /media
# mkdir RESCUE
# mount -o sb=393216 /dev/sdc3 /media/RESCUE

In the time, i thought that it was not about a material problem. I'm not so sure anymore... and i have the impression that the guillotine is back.

Hope that Seagate will solve this problem.

---

Since official article one of my drives is affected :

Model ST3750330AS - Firmware SD15 - S/N9QK0C5HH - Made in Thailand IS NOTaffected

Model ST31000340AS - Firmware SD15 - S/N 5QJ10S8C - Made in China IS affected

Hopefully, data are now safe on other drives.

[nikonf5]

Hi all,

I would not trust that drive checker at all.
I have four drives that I input in and all of them come back clean.
None of them currently has THE issue or any other issue but that doesnt mean it wont happen.

The problem with the drive checker is that it was hastily written by Seagate, probably to alleviate people calling them up en masse.

If you put in garbage input or a serial number with extra characters, it will still say the drive is not affected.
It does NOT check whether your serial number is even valid.
It is pretty obvious from a programmers viewpoint that all this utility is doing is checking whether your input exists in a serial number database of drives they KNOW are affected.
Now, that database can only be relied on if EVERY drive that has the issue has its serial number listed on it.
Its irrelevant if perfectly fine drive serial numbers creep in to that database as long as NO bad drives are absent from it.
If the database its checking is incomplete than the utility should not be up on the web as a lot of people whose drives dont show any issues yet will think they have a clean bill of health and when the drive dies, they will lose important data.
Also, if Seagate support personnel are using that database, its going to get people even more antsy when their drives are declared officially OK and then die later.

I have a speakerphone so I didnt care but I was on hold with them early yesterday for almost a half hour before I got someone.

He was very courteous and took down my information [name, e-mail, serial, F/W] and told me that only the supervisor had access to a utility that could confirm whether my hard drives were affected and they would be in touch with each person that called and reported it in.

He said that Seagate would NOT be listing their firmware update on their website as they didnt want the clueless masses [my words] bricking the wrong drives with the firmware.

[craigb]

Last month i brought 2 STM3100340AS Maxtor 1TB drives.  Initially configured as a raid 0 in an Apple Mac Pro.  Instantly my system slowed down. Very prominent head noise coming from both of the drives (one more than the other).  After ticketing seagate and having no reply, i decided to RMA one of the drives (the one with the more pronounced head noise).  I pulled it out of the raid, reformated the 2nd maxtor, and within 30 minutes got a SMART alert (seek error rate).   

Basically both drives got RMA'ed.

I've just used the serial checker, and it said both drives ARE affected SN: (9QJ2MLT3 9QJ27XYG). Seagate replaced them with ST31000340AS drives.  So far so good. SD15 firmware, have just checked the SN's and apparently these are NOT affected.  Time will tell. Overall though having 2 brand new Maxtors both fail, to be then replaced with the 7200.11's, and then finding this thread, not really too impressed. No wonder problems at Seagate with both CEO and COO leaving.  Come on Seagate sort it out, and get back to delivering good reliable product!

[tonytoronto]

     The more i read into Seagate failures, the least things make sense.. ON the Knowledge post they say "drives manufacturered in December 2008, may have...." what the heck are they talking about?

Drives that are 3-4-5 months old are dying, i just don't get it.. By the way, that serial garbage thing they put out, doesn't work-- period.. I have inputted serial nunbers from dead drives and it says they not affected..

I have checked the 5 seagate drives i own and only only comes up bad, and wasn't made in december either, as i bought it November..

(edited to comply with rules)

Message Edited by AlanM on 01-18-2009 12:30 PM