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

[Drakehash]

New hard disk from amazon are comming with CC1H firmwares, today i receive a 1 TB harddisk ST31000333as, so far i dont see any problem.

[HughR]

---

jair911 wrote:

I've read thru a load of posts on these forums and its clear this isnt as small a problem as Seagate are playing out.

I have a Barracuda 7200.11 750Gb drive with firmware: SD15 which is listed as one of those affected by the dodgy firmware.

The drive 'died' last night after a routine powerdown and is unseen by the BIOS now, but appears to be powering up correctly and is spinning fine.

I have a lot of work and personal docs on there which I would like back.  The message on the Seagate site suggested they would help get the info back (altho the page that was suggesting this is no longer available it seems)

My questions are these:

  Is there no way of fixing this without sending it back somewhere.

  Will Seagate repair this Free of charge since its clearly a fault their end or am I expected to pick up the costs?  I note Schroed had a positive thread on here on the matter, but he hasnt said whether or not he was charged for the whole experience.  If thats the case I will not be buying Seagate for any further builds or recommending them to friends/family/businesses.

 Any info on whats next would be fab.

Jair

EDIT: Yay I've been moved onto a 63 page thread where no one will be able to read this...cheers Mr Mod.

Message Edited by jair911 on 03-23-2009 11:50 AM

---

You haven't done enough reading.  All your questions have been answered before you asked them.  Probably some you should have asked too.  Asking previously answered questions is one reason why the thread is so long.  But not the only one.

Hint: with some funky gear, you can fix your drive yourself.  If the problem is the exact one that prompted this particular firmware release.  I expect that this would void your warranty.  And yes, Seagate has said that they will do free recovery if your problem is this specific one.  The many other possible problems are not covered.

[jair911]

Apologies for not reading thru all 60 odd pages of a not entirely ontopic thread here.  I got to about page 15 and checked out some of the other threads since this one clearly had several people writing who had misread the symptoms.  Maybe if they did less 'reorganising' here relevant things wouldnt be impossible to locate.  And did it occur to you I didnt ask any further questions because I already had those answers?  Course not.

I will not be using 'funky' gear to try a repair and invalidate a warranty.  If it was out of warranty that would be entirely different.

Do you have a link to somewhere where its categorically stated they will provide free recovery?  I'm still waiting for my 'case' to be looked at online, and I guess if their CS cant be bothered to have looked at it by tomorrow I'll join the queue of folks waiting for phone support.  If that yields nothing I wont be buying Seagate or Maxtor for builds for friends or work again. 

[HughR]

---

jair911 wrote:

Apologies for not reading thru all 60 odd pages of a not entirely ontopic thread here.  I got to about page 15 and checked out some of the other threads since this one clearly had several people writing who had misread the symptoms.  Maybe if they did less 'reorganizing' here relevant things wouldn't be impossible to locate.  And did it occur to you I didn't ask any further questions because I already had those answers?  Course not.

I will not be using 'funky' gear to try a repair and invalidate a warranty.  If it was out of warranty that would be entirely different.

Do you have a link to somewhere where its categorically stated they will provide free recovery?  I'm still waiting for my 'case' to be looked at online, and I guess if their CS can't be bothered to have looked at it by tomorrow I'll join the queue of folks waiting for phone support.  If that yields nothing I wont be buying Seagate or Maxtor for builds for friends or work again. 

---

[Sorry for changing some of your spelling.  I was playing with the spell-checker and I couldn't tell whose words it was adjusting.]

Try reading this official post carefully.  Pretty visible since it is sticky.

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=9258

And do give up on "email" support.  I've gotten very little attention in the two months that I've tried to use it. Even with the help of a forum moderator (thanks for trying, AlanM).

Online "chat" support was fairly responsive but limited.

Phone support would seem to be the way for you to go.  See the example case referenced in the FAQ.  The official reference to this case suggests that you should expect equivalent service: free data recovery.

[jair911]

Greets HughR

The official sticky you linked has a very generic title and is not something I'd even look at generally.  (I had read the linked page of the person who solved their case with the Support folks)

Many items of hardware get firmware updates but very rarely are they required - and come particularly unexpected when a systems been working fine for 3 months with no changes in hardware.  I'd already established that the firmware update would have saved me from this - but since the drive had already 'bricked up' reading up on that page ultimately seemed a lil futile.

I'm actually pleased to write that e-mail support did contact me today (10 mins ago), with a few more questions on the status of the drive and left a positive feel to the whole thing despite the fact they clearly hadnt read a few points I'd already made (which answered a couple of their questions).  They arent suggesting 'free data recovery' but are offering to repair the firmware which will effectively give me access to my much needed data.  How long this process will take and who takes care of the shipping is the next thing but hey ho!

I appreciate your PoV and would like to apologise if I've come across as tetchy.  The situation here of losing this much work and personal documents isnt pleasant and I suspect these boards are full of people in similar situations who are equally stressed.  At these times reading thru several hundred (often unrelated) posts possibly isnt the best idea and certainly doesnt improve moods.  The whole concept of banging all similar threads into this monster thread is pretty awful IMHO.  If there are this many threads on one topic, maybe it deserves its own forum.

Thank you for your time and I hope all our issues are resolved soon and fairly painlessly

Jair

[rjuno65]

Just to let everyone know, I also have been reading this without posting... I am affected as well...

4 x ST3500320AS

ICH9R controller

RAID 5

The last drive in the array (according to Intel Matrix Storage Manager ) drops out of O/S / BIOS randomly. Cold boot restores visibility and ICH9R proceeds with array rebuild which renders the PC very slow for the 18 hours or so it takes to rebuild. Drives are at SD1A (2nd Edition) as I had had similar problems while they were at SD15. Flashed all 4 directly to SD1A SE from SD15...

Filed a ticket with Seagate today, will update here when I get news from them...

Drives are about a month old...

Question while I am at it: Intel Storage Manager says the SATA mode of the drives is generation 1. Read something about a slowdown jumper here somewhere... Are the drives set to SATA 1 mode when shipped? Would this relate to my problem?

Thanks!

[superlgn]

Both of my (bare) 1TB ST31000340AS drives had the SATA1/SATA-150 jumper installed, but I don't think it would cause the drive to drop off the array. Can you run some short and long SMART self-tests on that drive? I use an ICH9R at home, but I do software raid on Linux and can access each drive directly. I'm not sure if you'll be able to check the drives without going back to IDE or AHCI mode. Performance could be a different story though.. The raid as a whole should only be as fast as the slowest drive. It's a tiny thing, you'll need to look close.

[astrouga]

I have one of these drives. It failed after I powered off the computer one night and now it no longer be seen by any system. BIOS can't see it either. What are my options for data recovery? The drive has a datecode of 09132 (28 Sep 2008).

Is it worthwhile to post serial and model number here?

Model:  ST3500320AS

Firmware: SD15

By the way, how is anyone supposed to read this thread to see what is going on? How about posting a clear faq for this issue...

I called support...as of 40 minutes, no one has even answered yet. Just elevator music.

Thanks.

Message Edited by astrouga on 03-24-2009 11:13 AM

Message Edited by astrouga on 03-24-2009 11:37 AM

[HughR]

Everyone with a RAID problem: please consider adding to this more-specific thread that I've started.  http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=11184

[lipidicman]

Been doing some reading and watching but I still have some questions for those with more knowledge and experience 

So I have an affected model and an affected firmware, but the serial checker says I am in the clear.  My understanding is this means that my drive was not filled with the problem pattern on the test machine (is this the story now?)

 Model: ST31000340AS, Firmware: SD15

I'm not happy and at from the day I heard about the problems the drive has been in storage.

I'm considering wiping the drive (it is a backup for me) flashing the firmware.  If it causes problems at least it will be empty

Is this link right? http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951

SD1A is the choice now? 

Am I being paranoid, will seagate honour the warranty if the firmware kills it.