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

[oliv]

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Cantbecanit wrote:
Try to reflash it again mate, it might work or it might say it's already up to date, if this is the case I suggest you format the drive.

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That's what I've done !

The re-flashing process said : drived already flashed.

I format with various OS, the drive is detected, everything works fine. but when I boot on : nothing happens after mbr load.

I've tried XP, debian, ubuntu, citrix xenserver...

One thing to say : I won't be seagate customer anymore...

I work too in IT for years I had never seen such incompetence.

Message Edited by oliv on 05-27-2009 04:11 AM

[Cantbecanit]

@ shawnc, if you look through the pages there is a thread by me called Fixed It, follow the instructions carefully and this will restore your drives, mine I did about 2 mths ago and it's been fine ever since.

@ oliv, I don't know what to say tbh, it may not be the HDD doing it, all sorts of hardware failures or immenent ones will also cause the same symtoms, I can't read back through all the pages but have you tried zero writting the drive yet to get rid of all data on the drive, and have you tried a flash of your motherboard bios, without knowing how old your components are there can also be conflicts when you say use a new HDD on a 5 year old motherboard, memory going bad and a dodgy PSU will also cause it, one simple thing that might help is to set your bios back to default settings, at least this way you can rule out that something is set wrong, hth.

[shawnc]

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Cantbecanit wrote:

@ shawnc, if you look through the pages there is a thread by me called Fixed It, follow the instructions carefully and this will restore your drives, mine I did about 2 mths ago and it's been fine ever since.

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Cantbecanit: Thanks for repeating that post.Link: http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=10810&view=by_date_ascendi...

I am actually familiar with the method you refer to and used it on one (of 3) of my Seagate drives. Unfortunately, this particular drive is not 'bricked' actually. Upon further 'investigation' it does show up in Disk Management as an uninitialized drive (now?). 

I am considering my next steps in terms of my own recovery or um... ah... trusting Seagate to recover the lost data (apparently for free??).

You know, manufacturers can make mistakes, I accept that... but how this was and still is being handled by Seagate is disgusting! Their firmware update page should explain that your hard drive may be bricked or fail later, even after a successful firmware upgrade. I think enough people have been through this to warrent an all out recall on these drives!

[terry175]

i updated ST3500320AS 3.AAK a few months ago to SD1A, and i had no problem with the update..

but well, it might also because my hdd have no problem and i was just worried and updated the firmware purposely..

a side note, i had my computer on for 24/7 for 9000+hrs already, and my powercycle count is around 120 only.. however i would not try to speculate here since i dont have an concrete evidence on why there is so many faulty hdd issue on seagate..

and lastly, my  ST31500341AS CC1H is still alive, and have been up for 3000+ hrs

[Cantbecanit]

@ shawnc

I understand your frustration mate, and they don't seem to willing to do anything unless prodded hard.

As for the drive state, what I think has happened isn't a HDD fault, obviously you have unreadable data on the drive at this time? what you have to do is this

1 - Use a recovery program to recover files, I use PowerDataRecovery myself, you can download a trial, but I assure you it's the biz.

2 - Once you've recovered your files select the option to format the drive

You should now have an empty readable drive, I think the main cause of it is hotswapping and not using safely remove hardware, anyway if Computer/Disk Management can see the drive it's simply that Windows cannot read it rather than a hardware fault, you might also want to try a new Sata lead as well, these can cause problems if they get bend/damaged.hth.

[shawnc]

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Cantbecanit wrote:

@ shawnc

I understand your frustration mate, and they don't seem to willing to do anything unless prodded hard.

As for the drive state, what I think has happened isn't a HDD fault, obviously you have unreadable data on the drive at this time? what you have to do is this

1 - Use a recovery program to recover files, I use PowerDataRecovery myself, you can download a trial, but I assure you it's the biz.

2 - Once you've recovered your files select the option to format the drive

You should now have an empty readable drive, I think the main cause of it is hotswapping and not using safely remove hardware, anyway if Computer/Disk Management can see the drive it's simply that Windows cannot read it rather than a hardware fault, you might also want to try a new Sata lead as well, these can cause problems if they get bend/damaged.hth.

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Thanks for your reply.

Actually, I strongly believe this is the HDD. The symptoms are nearly exactly the same as before the firmware  update. Data xfers slow down, read errors, then the HDD disappears after a certain amount of data is xfered, and it progressively gets worse, to the point where no data can be xfered. Then I do the firmware upgrade and the HDD 'miraculously' works again! The only problem this time, is that I can no longer update the firmware, since it was already done! But like I said... nearly the same symptoms.... except this time the drive suddenly appeared as uninitialized in disk management.

I agree that the final outcome with the drive showing up as 'uninitialized' my have occurred b/c of hot swapping, the issues that made me pull the drive so many times were b/c of the HDD and its firmware (or something related to Seagate problems). FYI, my second (of three) 1TB Seagate (with firmware SD1A) is beginning to behave in the same manner. Fortunately, I no longer have critical data on any of my Seagate (except for the one that went completely bad).

In regards to recovery, here is the problem.... I have already attempted with Stellar Phoenix, unfortunately,  the HDD xfer speed is very slow. After a few hours, Phoenix had analyzed less than 100 mb. At that rate, it would take over a thousand days to analyze the whole drive. :-(

I will likely have to push Seagate to give me free recovery!

Message Edited by shawnc on 05-28-2009 07:48 AM

[Cantbecanit]

 @ shawnc.

Have you done a virus scan on it yet?

This is one thing you should try, do it overnight.

And download the PDR trial I mentioned, normally takes about 6 hours to do a 500 gig drive, it's always a slow process because it's done file by file.

If you send it back to Seagate and they find a trojan2.7hehe file somewhere on it they will want to charge you, if you can afford to lose the contents I'd just go for a reformat and if it's not right then send it back, it is a slave drive with no O/S on it isn't it? if it is you could find the drive you are reading it through has a corruption, and I'd strongly recommend using another sata lead if speed is the problem or disconnecting any eSata connection if you are using one as this can also play up big time.

[ptmartien]

Hello all

I have two faulty firmware drives, not bricked, one ST3500320AS (with SD15, the other two I have are fine hopefully) and one ST31000333AS (9FZ136-336 with SD35).

After finding a friend with a praticable PC (I'm on mac and I don't have a desktop Intel, so the G3, G5 and Macbook don't help puch), I've had a go to it and tried updating both drives.

The ST3500320AS updated like a champ and seems up and running.

The ST31000333AS wasn't updated as the utility answered with the "Error opening firmware file" message.

I've tried double check the firmware, a fresh firmware download, different media for the boot CD, burning on the PC (unable to make a bootable ISO…) and the mac (to the results above).

So I've opened a ticket this morning and received two answers, one asking to check if I had downloaded the right firmware with the link (it was the right one thanks , the second sending me a SD3B to try.

I'll try the firmware ASAP, but it'll take a few days to arrange for. I'll get back on this.

[SCHUMI4EVER]

I have been reading about these issues and am now quite terrified of losing data...I have two potentialy affected ST3500320AS (SD15 firmware) drives and according to my firmware I am effected but according the serial checker it just tells me there's an update available and I should proceed to step 4...so does that mean that I am not affected but can update if I want to? Or does that mean that I gotta update ASAP?

I really am quite terrified of touching my drives.....reading through this thread there's just so large a possibility of bricked if you do, bricked if you dont...and seeing as bricked if your don't will take place at an uncertain future time whereas bricked if you do will take place instantly I choose bricked if you don't for now unless responses here suggest otherwise strongly....they were bought in November 2008 but knowing my country they were a couple of months older than that...and have been working flawlessly since then through hundreds of shutdowns and restarts.

[ptmartien]

Schumi4ever, don't panic, it's not worth it.

I've had one 320AS to update (got THREE of this model). I backed it up, did the trick, and the drive is just fine. But especially if there's sensible data on, you have to back up.

The fact seagate or users warns you that something bad can occur doesn't mean it will.

Else, I should be able to update my ST31000333AS on wednesday, stay tuned.