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

[Morbidsoul]

Figures... no email from support.  And the phone lines are down again.  Yay!  

[alyson]

I have a 7200.11 500gb that stopped working a couple of days ago - no longer able to be seen by the bios, spins up but does nothing else, and so on - and the online checker claims that my drive is one of those affected by the firmware problems.  From the first reply I received from tech support it seemed that Seagate would just reflash the drive when I sent it to them, and I'd get it back more-or-less identical to how it was before it died, data and all, but the second email says that because the drive cannot be detected by my bios, Seagate themselves can't flash it, and it must be replaced; bye bye data.

Is this the case?  I would have thought that the drive is mechanically intact and just needs its brain forcibly rebooted, but now they're telling me it's a dead loss?

[helsby]

That's what they told me, just going to replace my drive, but I need the data as it is my clients images, so I have had to tell i365 to retrieve my data at a cost of £850.00, I have no choice!.

[Morbidsoul]

Another hour on hold, only to find out that when Seagate support says "Ill have that emailed right out to you" really means "We arent sure when our lead will email it, but maybe by tuesday".  Really?  It takes a week to send 1 email?  

[IzzyDeadyet]

Geez ... I'm so tired of reading the crying and complaining here about poor Seagate.

Boo Hoo ...  my drive doesn't work anymore, Boo Hoo .... I lost all of my data .... Boo Hoo ... Support just "closed" my case with no solution ...enough already.

As a Mod has pointed out, ALL drives will eventually die ... so live with that. I'm quite happy that one of my ST31000340AS drives lasted over 2 months before it died. Works out to only about $2.25/per day ... can't even buy smokes for that cheap.

Listen, Seagate has better things to do than waste it's resources fixing drives it's already made profit on. They still have a world of people that are in the dark about all of this that will be willing to pay for the new 2TB model ... you saw the ads right? Lose double the data twice as fast.

[skolsen78]

So I had the luxury of coming home from dinner to hear a alarm going off. Tracked it down to my server and found my Highpoint Raid card alarming for drive failure. Does it suprise me? Not really! It's 4 of the 1TB Seagate hard drives in the array that have been flashed. Am I upset, you could say that. I'm backing up data to a WD external now and I will be sending a nasty note to support. If I don't get a fix ASAP, all my logs and screen captures will be sent to the media (technews, inquirer)......

I did a reboot and the array is rebuilding itself, but another channel encountered a error. I wouldn't be suprised if I lost 2 drives and the Raid completely failed. I'm done writing anymore data to it, I know it's a lost cause. 

Seagate needs to fix this ASAP, and for future use I will no longer be supporting there company with my weak American dollars! 

Yes I have logs and screen captures if anyone needs to see them. 

[Antman]

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IzzyDeadyet wrote:

Geez ... I'm so tired of reading the crying and complaining here about poor Seagate.

Boo Hoo ...  my drive doesn't work anymore, Boo Hoo .... I lost all of my data .... Boo Hoo ... Support just "closed" my case with no solution ...enough already.

As a Mod has pointed out, ALL drives will eventually die ... so live with that. I'm quite happy that one of my ST31000340AS drives lasted over 2 months before it died. Works out to only about $2.25/per day ... can't even buy smokes for that cheap.

Listen, Seagate has better things to do than waste it's resources fixing drives it's already made profit on. They still have a world of people that are in the dark about all of this that will be willing to pay for the new 2TB model ... you saw the ads right? Lose double the data twice as fast.

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As a person who has 3 affected drives, I have better things to do than spend my money on any more Seagate disks. You are right about the whining though, the best thing to do is move on and spend your dollars with the competition instead of Seagate.

Message Edited by Antman on 02-27-2009 09:47 PM

[PcGuy]

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alyson wrote:

I have a 7200.11 500gb that stopped working a couple of days ago - no longer able to be seen by the bios, spins up but does nothing else, and so on - and the online checker claims that my drive is one of those affected by the firmware problems.  From the first reply I received from tech support it seemed that Seagate would just reflash the drive when I sent it to them, and I'd get it back more-or-less identical to how it was before it died, data and all, but the second email says that because the drive cannot be detected by my bios, Seagate themselves can't flash it, and it must be replaced; bye bye data.

Is this the case?  I would have thought that the drive is mechanically intact and just needs its brain forcibly rebooted, but now they're telling me it's a dead loss?

---

Just had one of the affected drives go south on me in another machine here. Is the above information correct and that I have lost all the data on this volume or can it indeed be flashed to bring the data back?

[oc613613]

I posted earlier that I flashed my 2 drives with SD1A (st1000340as) on 2009-02-26.  Before this, they were running flawlessly on SD15.

The drives dropped out and had to be rebuilt on 2009-02-26 @ 19:37:23, and then again at 19:38:54, and I mentioned this in my first post.

Since then, they have dropped out again today TWICE; 15:37:25, AND, 23:38:11.

Both times they had to be rebuilt again.

Seagate, give us some answers and a new firmware that actually fixes this!  My drives were flawless for 3 months before I flashed! What the heck is going on! ANSWERS PLEASE!

[Photodom]

Unsurprisingly I also had the no BIOS detect on a 1tb drive. It was working perfectly on Sat 28/02 - and dead on Sun 1/03. It was only bought on 8th February 09 and had a new OS installed on the 10th - so I had 18 days of operation - not bad eh!!

There isn't anything too critical on the drive, but I do have some personal e-mails and I did buy a couple of things online before it died.

I know the data can be recovered using specialist equipment, and what I want to is what exactly does Seagate do with returned drives?

Do they;

1. Scrap them completely (recycle?)

2. Reinstall the BIOS (somehow) and return the drive to you?

3. Sell them on to a re-selling company.

4. Something else.

I've already had the dubious privilege of having my Debit Card details somehow stolen and used to raid my account, so I don't feel comfortable sending a hard drive back to a bunch of people I've never met before with the possibility of someone digging around in it?

I've already had to RMA a motherboard over Xmas (Asus P6T Deluxe OC) and I am really beginning to question the QC coming out of some of these factories?

Any comments welcome.

Thanks