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

[apraxisz]

Seeing random drive hangs here as well with LED ON, no response from drive.

Drive is a ST3500320AS upgraded to SD1A.

This is great because, the firmware upgrade gives a great excuse for the shop to refuse any request I might have.

Also because I've essentially bought something that is unreliable and useless.

And, because now I've got to buy another HDD, which comes great after my main drive (coincidentally a Seagate) failed and I had to buy a new HDD, TWO WEEKS AGO.  Now quite sadly I can't conjure money from thin air, so this is highly frustrating for me. The drive was OEM so I suspect I have no chance of even a replacement from Seagate (not that, that would make it all great, as I probably won't be using any Seagate products ever again.)

Meh..

Message Edited by apraxisz on 02-07-2009 05:44 AM

[ModProbe]

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apraxisz wrote:

Seeing random drive hangs here as well with LED ON, no response from drive.

Drive is a ST3500320AS upgraded to SD1A.

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It's the same problem like us with RAID controllers... LED ON, no response...

So there is really a problem with that new SD1A firmware on ST3500320AS drives...

Hopefully Seagate will react...

[itchit05]

Is there any experience on whether the latest MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO (MD5 ends with 1DB7E0)

update works with ST3500320AS with the SLOWDOWN Jumper removed - esp. paired in a nForce4 SLI

RAID1 array (the motherboard supports SATAII speeds).

I bought two of these drives at the same time, and one shows as affected (both had SD15 FW).  Seagate Support

said I should flash BOTH since they would be paired in a RAID1 array and also said that I could remove the

slowdown-jumper on the drives, as shipped, if the motherboard supported 300 Mb/S speeds.

I'm trying to decide whether to try using these drives or to try to return them for a refund .  The retail-kit,

ST3500641AS-RK, suggested a 7200.9 drive (ST3500641AS), not the problematic 7200.11 drives), which

was one reason I bought them.  I haven't removed the drives from their sealed bags yet but the ID#s

and jumper are visible through the bags.  

I'm concerned that the transfer rate (determined by the jumper) has a bearing on the issues being reported.

I have seen only minimal discussion of the slowdown jumper (reduces speed from 300 Mb/S to 150 Mb/S),

and possible interaction with FW bugs, lastest FW update, supported speeds on the motherboard, etc.

If there are timing sensitivities contributing to the reported failures, there could easily be a dependency on

the jumper setting.  If I keep the drives, I want them to work at the advertised 300 Mb/S (SATAII) rates, and

with the full cache too (32MB).

Thanks for your help.

[PcGuy]

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IzzyDeadyet wrote:

Is it just me or has the Serial Number checker been down for almost 24 hours?

I enter the serial numbers and 2 passwords and it comes up with the headers like it did in the past but with no infomation below.

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Thats the way Serial Number checker always worked on one computer here no matter whether I used FFox 3.0.5, IE 7 or Opera. 

[DJRumpy]

Am I missing something here? I used the Model and Serial checker and it says my drive is affected, I follow the process for step 4 which lets me download a bootable ISO file. When I look in the file, it has only a single DriveDetect.exe file and a README.txt file?

This is not a bootable ISO.

Am I missing something?

[HughR]

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HD Slider wrote:

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HD Slider wrote:

(note I didn't add this to the big firmware thread since my issues don't seem to be related to what everyone else is seeing)

...

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I don't understand why the moderators are taking every single post that might be related to firmware and throwing them all into a single thread.  Issues such as the one that I am having (that are totally different to what everyone else is experiencing) are not going to get any assistance from the community when thrown into this huge thread discussing a different issue.

 ...

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I don't understand.  Both your messages showed up in this big firmware thread.  I agree that they probably should be in another thread.  Are you saying that the moderators moved your message from some other thread to this one??

The "Message Edited by" bits at the end of your first message don't show any changes by moderators.  I would have expected some mark like that on messages that were moved.

BTW, your problem truly is odd and you do seem to be doing the right things to debug it.

Grasping at straws: have you looked in detail at the PCI bus resourses used by each device?  Do they have overlapping address assignments?  Do they hold the bus for too long?  Sharing IRQs should work.  Are any of these different between the different BIOSes?

Added Later:

I do see that moderator KaLin did move your message.  It seems odd that the forum software doesn't add any note to the moved message.  Another bad thing about this crappy forum software.

Message Edited by HughR on 02-07-2009 08:58 AM

[Firm and Steady]

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Yahyavi wrote:

I was having problems with my hard drive for a week. Faulty video playback. applications /system hangs, ....

Early this morning my system simply crashed,  and afterwards it did not detect the hard drive.

The interesting thing was that I was able to boot from hard disk after a shut down. the windows would boot, work for a couple of 

minutes and then just crash again. After this the same thing would happen. the hard disk was not detected and I was not able to boot.

reboots didn't do anything and another shut down was in order.

Anyway, I searched about the problem and found that the ST3500ST320AS series would need firmware upgrades. I did use the serial

checker and it told me that the firmware upgrade was not necessary but the DriveDetect said that device was affected.

My SeaTools test said the drive was fine, but of course it was not since it crashed a couple of seconds later!

Since I already had a messed up drive I flashed the firmware.

Immediately after firmware upgrade I get "SMART Status Bad, Backup and replace".

Have to press F1 to continue. The same thing happens after a shut down the drive is detected works for a couple of minutes and

then just crashes. after this crash the drive is not detected until another shut down. reboots have no effect.

ST3500320AS Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 

S/N: 9QM3EY1R

Original FW: SD15

New FW: SDA1

Date Code: 08517
Made in Thailand.

 Going to buy a WD Black Caviar 1TB tommorrow! Hopefully I can get as much data as possible out of this brick before returning it.

Message Edited by Yahyavi on 02-06-2009 02:49 PM

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If I understand correctly, you've been having problems with your hard drive before you updated the firmware?

The firmware update was made to prevent a specific problem that causes the hard drive to turn completely inaccessible (the BIOS can't recognize it, you can't access its data, or even update firmware once this happens).

So if you had problems with the drive prior to the update, the update wouldn't fix it. Whether it could have made it worse, well, that's for tech support to answer.

I do wonder about the fact that your hard drive didn't show any SMART errors before you updated the firmware, only after. Weird...

[Yahyavi]

Yup, i was having problems. According to what I read the faulty firmware would have problems with low data rates such as video playbacks.and would

cause program/system hangs which is what I was experiencing. My HDD was not detcted in BIOS untill shut down...

everytime it crashes it is the same story. HDD not detected -> shut down -> SMART Error -> F1 -> boot -> Crash -> HDD not detected.

And yup it is weird that only after the firmware upgrade I got the SMART error.

Just read the newegg review's and you'll see how many people are having problems. HERE

Found someone like me just by reading to page 5:

Pros: Makes a great doorstop

Cons: First drive lasted about 5 hours and then the controller failed. RMA'ed it back to Newegg(great service) and recieved replacement. New drive after less than a week "disappears" from the OS and the Bios. The Only way it will show up again is to completely power the PC down and power back up and reboot.

Other Thoughts: This drive was being used as a data drive in a Windows Home server. I removed it from the Server and put it into a USB sata hard drive docking station and ran Seatools diagnostic tests on it and it passes. However if you try writing a large file to it (3 Gb or larger) you get write delay failures consistantly while it is in the USB dock. I have a 500 GB seagate SATA drive in the Windows Home Server and have not had any errors or issues with it.

Just consider how many are still on shelves and not sold!

I couldn't find a WD caviar Black 1TB in the market today. Any suggestions? what should I get?

[HughR]

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Firm and Steady wrote:

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Yahyavi wrote:

ST3500320AS Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 

S/N: 9QM3EY1R

Original FW: SD15

New FW: SDA1

Date Code: 08517
Made in Thailand.

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If I understand correctly, you've been having problems with your hard drive before you updated the firmware?

The firmware update was made to prevent a specific problem that causes the hard drive to turn completely inaccessible (the BIOS can't recognize it, you can't access its data, or even update firmware once this happens).

So if you had problems with the drive prior to the update, the update wouldn't fix it. Whether it could have made it worse, well, that's for tech support to answer.

I do wonder about the fact that your hard drive didn't show any SMART errors before you updated the firmware, only after. Weird...

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I assume that the new FW was SD1A, not SDA1.

I too understand that the SD1A was released to fix that one single bug.  But the firmware that it was based on was probably not SD15.  So there would be other fixes between SD15 and SD1A.

For my drive (st31500341as), the fix is delivered in  SD1B.  The firmware immediately before the fix was SD1A.  The firmware that my drive came with is SD17.  So there were a number of fixes between SD17 and SD1A.  I admit that we don't know the relationship between  st31500341as firmware and ST3500320AS firmware.

[Yahyavi]

Yes, my mistake:

It was SD1A .

I cheked out here:

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

It is supposed to work on SD15. 

Oh, and something I constantly forget to mention. In case you can access your hard drive after a shut down.

you may want to change the contrlooer from "AHCI" to "IDE Enhanced". it is more stable. I mean of course for minutes!

 I don't know if I should try the SD1B?! Any Ideas?