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

[Maxwell Newton]

Hi there,

I have spent a few hours reading around trying to understand this intricate world of hard disks, errors and firmware; I am still stuck.

My problem:

I have a ST3500620AS Firmware LC11 (Barracuda 7200.11 500GB) but ocasionally windows hangs (7 and vista when i had it) and the drive vanishes from my computer and device manager. My bios and SeaTools pick it up but windows only will after a hard reset (correct me if im wrong but i gather thats turning the power off and then back on again) and sometimes off a soft reset (please again correct me if im wrong but thats just when you hit restart from the start menu.

I have been reading into the event viewer and following up a ton of errors (i read somewhere that this maybe due to a power cycle reboot problem where the drive doesnt fire up, or something...) and have come to the conclusion that perhaps a firmware update is in orer, however i cant find one...

The model ST3500620AS has an update here:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951

However my firmware LC11 is not listed, and if i try the update it fails, but the error from DOS disappears before i can read it.

Can anyone shed any light on my problem, i would be very greatful if somebody could provide some answers!

Thank you,

Maxwell Newton

[fzabkar]

I don't think your problems are going to be fixed with a firmware upgrade. :-(

I'd backup your data and run SeaTools. If it fails, replace your drive.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

Otherwise, here are a few SMART diagnostic and benchmarking tools.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows/Linux):

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:

http://hddscan.com/

HD Tune:

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

You say that you have an "error from DOS" when attempting to upgrade the firmware. AFAICT, the DOS (CD ISO) version of the update should proceed without error:

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO

This is because the updater only needs to match the model number of your drive, as in the following command line:

fdl464.exe -m Moose -f SD1A2D.LOD -i ST3500620AS -s -x -b -v -a 20

The Windows version of the updater, however, matches the existing model number and firmware against allowable combinations in a configuration file, config.xml.

The command line is ...

"-s -x -b -v -a 20 -h MS-SD1A.CFS">FDL477A1.EXE

The option ...

-h MS-SD1A.CFS

... tells the updater to look in the MS-SD1A.CFS file for the model/firmware combinations. This file is encoded, but after deciphering, it looks like this:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/MS-SD1A.TXT

It contains no references to LC11.

To forcibly update your firmware in Windows, I believe you should modify the abovementioned command line as follows:

"-m Moose -f 2DSD1A.LOD -i ST3500620AS -s -x -b -v -a 20">FDL477A1.EXE

Note that I had to strip references to "executable parameters" because the HTML parser in this forum sees them as invalid HTML. You should only modify the text inside the quotes.

[rh7]

I also have a ST3500620AS with firmware LC11. Last week it was no longer recognized from the BIOS as with the firmwares AD14, SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19, SD81. I've been searching the internet but the firmware LC11 seems to be very rare. I have the hard drive then successfully revived by the method described in the MSFN boards. Then I was also facing the problem with the firmware update. Then i loaded from hddguru.com the 8h_SD1A.zip and the original ms-sd1a.exe update. Extract it and put the Firmware file 2DSD1A.LOD onto a bootable USB stick. From the 8h_SD1A.zip the sf.exe and 8HSD1A.bat. The 8HSD1A.BAT edited with the correct name for the firmware file 2DSD1A.LOD. Then boot the pc with the USB stick, start the 8HSD1A.bat and then my hard drive was successfully updated from LC11 to SD1A.