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

[NeXEA]

This drive was in one of our servers, and one day about a week ago just died.I have been searching around, and it seems that this is very common, happening within 3-4 months after purchase.

The drive was purchased back in Late April, and worked perfectly until it died.

I have tried the firmware update, but to no avail as the disc doesn't even recognize the hard drive.

I am wondering how I can get the firmware updated and fix this drive.

other info:

ST3500320AS

Firmware: SD81

P/N: 9BX154-568

[Grim0x]

Hello there, Sry to hear about your HDD woes.

You ask about firmware, but, please understand that HDD's dont just die .. because they dont like their firmwares anymore, or because their firmwares magically got erased ^_^

You say your HDD has died - and unless someone currupted the firmware on the drive/applied an incorrect one - it is not a case of bad firmware.

A few questions:

Does your drive still spin up?

Can the bios ID the drive?

Can it by viewed by windoze's Partition Manager?

Depending on the severity of this drives malfunction, the best thing to do would be to send this drive back to seagate, for a new one.

Had the data on this drive been backed up prior to its failure?

Is it critical?

If it HAS been - then the most suitable course of action would be to send in the drive to seagate for an exchange.

Please take a look at this thread:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=9756 

It should proove handy 

[NeXEA]

Well this drive WAS my backup XD. It probably is just a coincidence that right after I cleared my computer and got everything working, I was just about to use this drive, and it died. D=. Horrid.

I will see what I can do, I used the firmware as a scapegoat, after searching and finding that there is a major firmware bug with these drives, which in the case of the post's I found, died after 3-4 months(right in my time frame).

I will contact Seagate and see where it goes from there.

It doesn't spin up, and isn't recognized by windows when I use it through a SATA -> USB thing I have.

[Cowboybob]

If you can boot it as a 2nd drive and the bios/computer sees it, try updating the firmware in Safe Mode. That worked for me in Win 7 Ult. x64 RTM.