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

[IzzyDeadyet]

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AlanM wrote:

I doubt the engineers are finished looking into these issues, but my guess is it's on the downswing.  A very small % of these drives actually have the firmware problem, no matter what others may speculate about.  Untrue statements do not become true through mere repetition.

You asked for official statements, and those are the official statements.  I am unsure to what other things you refer.  Other drive failures reported on the board that are unrelated to the symptoms of the firmware problem are due to other normal issues.  Drives sometimes have mechanical or electrical failure, even brand-new ones, unfortunately, and that is true for every manufacturer in the world.  There are tens of millions of these drives in the marketplace at this very moment.  

As for your contention that the contents of the firmware updates are changing, I have no information.  I have no reason to doubt what other forum users are saying on that issue, but I seriously doubt that anyone will object if Seagate engineers are improving the updates as time goes on and they develop even better solutions. 

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I may actually have some respect for this company if they took ownership of their drive problems instead of denying them.

A very small percent of these drives have a firmware problem?

Let's see if I'm in a fantasy world.

Here are my 9 Seagate drives. I always post that I have 8 and that's because the first one on the list below is "DEAD". Check to see if my 9 drives have a small percentage of a problem.

9QJ1TGM2 - DEAD
9QJ17ZH5
9QJ17MTB
9QJ1THVD
9QJ1DKNJ
9QJ1XT8R
3QK02MMZ
9QM1Y6FV
9QM1XPTS

[mechad]

another customer "struck by lightning" 9 times. I filed a complaint with NewEgg via phone today, they were happy to register it, hopefully we can get these taken off the shelf...

[bpaffen]

After flashing the Tyan S5397 BIOS from v1.04b to v1.05, the system would no longer boot to anything except the floppy drive. It would post just fine, but would not boot an OS from any device except the floppy drive.  Before the BIOS flash to v1.05, I could boot from USB key, CDROM, floppy, and hard drive array. I removed all PCI cards and hard drives and still could not boot from any other device other than floppy drive. I flashed back to v1.04b BIOS and the system booted properly.  I contacted TYAN support, and they asked if I would enable the onboard VGA and retry the flash to v1.05.  This didn't help, so I'm staying at V1.04b until the problem is fixed.  I have six, 300GB raptors running off an adaptec raid card.  Again, after the flash to v1.05, to troubleshoot, all PCI devices were removed from the motherboard (including the hard drives, replaced video card) and I still could not boot from CDROM of USB device with V1.05.

[Karlston]

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AlanM wrote:

I doubt the engineers are finished looking into these issues, but my guess is it's on the downswing.  A very small % of these drives actually have the firmware problem, no matter what others may speculate about.  Untrue statements do not become true through mere repetition.

You asked for official statements, and those are the official statements.  I am unsure to what other things you refer.  Other drive failures reported on the board that are unrelated to the symptoms of the firmware problem are due to other normal issues.  Drives sometimes have mechanical or electrical failure, even brand-new ones, unfortunately, and that is true for every manufacturer in the world.  There are tens of millions of these drives in the marketplace at this very moment.  

As for your contention that the contents of the firmware updates are changing, I have no information.  I have no reason to doubt what other forum users are saying on that issue, but I seriously doubt that anyone will object if Seagate engineers are improving the updates as time goes on and they develop even better solutions. 

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Alan, with respect, "Untrue statements do not become true" is a tautology (always true).

You err by presuming the statements to be untrue, they may be or they may not be. Personal experience in this fiasco is that the statements of "unaffected" drives being "affected" are indeed true, in which case they remain true regardless of the amount of repetition.

Likewise it could be argued that statements like Seagate's "A very small % of these drives actually have the firmware problem" isn't true just because they and others are repeating it. :-)

The truth is somewhere in between... not all 7200.11 drive failures are due to the "BUSY" bug, but it's more than the "small number" that Seagate's drive checker identifies as affected.

[cabose369]

nope... cause mine bricked for good 2 weeks after the update....

[IzzyDeadyet]

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mechad wrote:
another customer "struck by lightning" 9 times. I filed a complaint with NewEgg via phone today, they were happy to register it, hopefully we can get these taken off the shelf...

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I'm going to email NewEgg and NCIX and I would suggest that eveyone starts to complain to their suppliers.

You have got to love Seagates statement about a small number of drives being affected and how they've supplied the customers with a "free" firmware upgrade. Sounds like they're doing us a favor.

You buy a new car, the wheels fall off, then the auto mfgr sends you some "free" lug nuts .... wow, how big hearted can they be.

[agrijeep]

Is there any way to get Seagate to respond to my case number?  I have 12 1.5Tb drives that supposedly are "OK" according to the information and tools they have posted on the website.  But I am experiencing the same symptoms as the earlier drives.  I can't even get these to format in a RAID-5 volume.  In the middle of the format, I will lose one of the drives.  A little bit later a second drive will lockup.  Cycling power brings them back to life, but without the ability to format them, they are pretty much useless to me.  While I have been waiting for Seagate to respond, I bought 12 of their competitor 1 Tb drives and they are working flawlessly.  I really would like to use the Seagate ones I purchased.

The drives are:

Drive Model Part Number Serial Number Firmware Date Code Site Code
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0J2GH CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0QGNX CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0MSME CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS093PZ CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0MRJ9 CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0605X CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS058P6 CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0N7GH CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0Q7QP CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0K3S1 CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0NQ4N CC1J 09226 TK
ST31500341AS 9JU138-302 9VS0QMFA CC1J 09226 TK

The server is running Windows 2008 Server Datacenter:

Asus DSBV-D
ModelID 8032A0
BIOS Version 1014 Date 04/08/2008

The RAID controller is:

Addonics ADS3GX4R5 4x SATA Multilane PCI-X Controller
Sil 3124 SATA BIOS Version 6.3.18

What can I do to keep the drives from freezing up? Thanks.

[napoparte]

I gave up on Seagate. Yesterday, I tried RS232 method, and my 500Gb HDD came back to life, all of my data were back, although a few number of files is corrupted or damaged, but it's no problem. I'm very happy, thanks alot Gradius2. You are my savior, perhaps all Seagate's customers savior.

I recommend you try RS232 method, you can find info in this link Solution for Seagate 7200.11. Don't be worry, it's hard to damage your HDD if you follow exactly as instructions. Don't rely on Seagate anymore, save it yourself.

BTW, farewell SEAGATE!!!

[Morbidsoul]

Still waiting for the official response for the sd35 firmware update.  None can be found anywhere on the forums.  Why are mods avoiding this question?

[Emmerson]

Napoparte, thanks, thanks and thanks. Finaly, some information.

Alan,

Can you check this information with support area? Thanks.

Description
An issue exists that may cause some Seagate hard drives to become inoperable immediately after a power-on operation. Once this condition has occurred, the drive cannot be restored to normal operation without intervention from Seagate. Data on the drive will be unaffected and can be accessed once normal drive operation has been restored. This is caused by a firmware issue coupled with a specific manufacturing test process.

Root Cause
This condition was introduced by a firmware issue that sets the drive event log to an invalid location causing the drive to become inaccessible.
The firmware issue is that the end boundary of the event log circular buffer (320) was set incorrectly. During Event Log initialization, the boundary condition that defines the end of the Event Log is off by one. During power up, if the Event Log counter is at entry 320, or a multiple of (320 + x*256), and if a particular data pattern (dependent on the type of tester used during the drive manufacturing test process) had been present in the reserved-area system tracks when the drive's reserved-area file system was created during manufacturing, firmware will increment the Event Log pointer past the end of the event log data structure. This error is detected and results in an "Assert Failure", which causes the drive to hang as a failsafe measure. When the drive enters failsafe further update s to the counter become impossible and the condition will remain through subsequent power cycles. The problem only arises if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or some multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, there is no path to resolve/recover existing failed drives without Seagate technical intervention. For a drive to be susceptible to this issue, it must have both the firmware that contains the issue and have been tested through the specific manufacturing process.