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

[HughR]

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fausto412 wrote:

for the record, the serial number checker told me last year that my drive wasn't affect, it failed this year and i come back to this site and i find my drive is listed as affected. so much for that list.

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Wow.  That's horrible.

It does not surprise me that Seagate might have to revise the checker.

I don't remember ever seeing an announcement from Seagate that the checker had changed.  Has anyone else seen an announcement?

If I'm right, this behaviour is very very bad.  Silence, with negative consequences to your customers, negative consequences that could easily have been avoided.  Sadly, this seems too consistent with Seagate behaviour.

Fausto412's experience is a perfect and horrible example of the consequences.

I will post a new thread about this in the hope that more victims will be warned.  Please see http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Desktop-ATA-and-Serial-ATA/7200-11-serial-number-checker-has-changed-ch.... Please add anything that you think might be useful.

[fausto412]

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HughR wrote:

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fausto412 wrote:

for the record, the serial number checker told me last year that my drive wasn't affect, it failed this year and i come back to this site and i find my drive is listed as affected. so much for that list.

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Wow.  That's horrible.

It does not surprise me that Seagate might have to revise the checker.

I don't remember ever seeing an announcement from Seagate that the checker had changed.  Has anyone else seen an announcement?

If I'm right, this behaviour is very very bad.  Silence, with negative consequences to your customers, negative consequences that could easily have been avoided.  Sadly, this seems too consistent with Seagate behaviour.

Fausto412's experience is a perfect and horrible example of the consequences.

I will post a new thread about this in the hope that more victims will be warned.  Please see http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Desktop-ATA-and-Serial-ATA/7200-11-serial-number-checker-has-changed-ch.... Please add anything that you think might be useful.

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i think they didn't say anything because it was early in the process but if you are a pc geek you checked right away if your drive was affected.

it's not even the serial...it's based on model number (mine being stm31000334as) and firmware (mine being mx15). if those 2 check out...you are affected in my situation. another confusing thing is that they refer to the drives at 7200.11, they should have said flat out diamondmax 22 everywhere. and remember they had to redo the firmware fix last year because it was bricking drives. that made news and i saw it...then adding more drives or changing the serial number checker was not updated. bet you there are millions of people out there who have not updated firmware.

[HughR]

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fausto412 wrote:

i think they didn't say anything because it was early in the process but if you are a pc geek you checked right away if your drive was affected.

it's not even the serial...it's based on model number (mine being stm31000334as) and firmware (mine being mx15). if those 2 check out...you are affected in my situation. another confusing thing is that they refer to the drives at 7200.11, they should have said flat out diamondmax 22 everywhere. and remember they had to redo the firmware fix last year because it was bricking drives. that made news and i saw it...then adding more drives or changing the serial number checker was not updated. bet you there are millions of people out there who have not updated firmware.

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Since they didn't announce the change, we don't know when it was last changed.  That is unfortunate since it means we have to recommend that everyone recheck.

The serial number checker is not just based on model and firmware.  Apparently the problem only shows up if the drive was tested on certain machines in the factory.  That's why a simple table of models and firmware won't work.

My son's disk drive locked up, even though its firmware was not listed as affected.  Seagate was very bad in dealing with drives sold through large PC makers (Dell, Acer, ...) -- they have custom firmware version and hence appear unaffected.

BTW, Seagate has sometimes given different versions of firmware the same name.  Horrible.

[fausto412]

i'm learning all this now. when i went to the store friday to buy a new drive i bought a WD...if they are unable to fix my drive i sent them i don't think i'll buy seagate for my personal machine anytime soon.

[HughR]

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fausto412 wrote:

i'm learning all this now. when i went to the store friday to buy a new drive i bought a WD...if they are unable to fix my drive i sent them i don't think i'll buy seagate for my personal machine anytime soon.

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Drive manufacturers never do free data recovery.  Except Seagate, for the honest-to-God BSY bug, and then only if you pre-arrange this.  Don't count this as a mark against Seagate in particular.

I'm in the middle of an RMA of a WD drive.  They certainly have not offered to recover my data.  But that's the nature of all drive manufacturers' warranties.  Have a look.

WD did offer to send me the replacement before I send the broken drive.  A nice feature that, last I checked, Seagate does not offer me (a Canadian customer).

Data recovery is difficult and succeeds only sometimes.  The prices charged reflect this.  That's why we are all encouraged to do backups.

I do wish that the manufacturers clearly promised that any data on the drive you return to them would be securely destroyed.  After all, if someone happens to recover your data that could be a huge security breach.  For that reason, think twice before RMAing.

I managed to zero the drive I am returning.  There is still risk: the bad blocks that were mapped out were not zeroed (I cannot do that); apparently residual signals remain after zeroing allowing some chance of recovery (with very fancy tools).

[AlanM]

Just FYI, to everyone, I checked with the makers of the checker tool, and they said it has not been changed.  

[PrinzII]

I have a 7200.11 (SD 15 firmware) drive that is behaving as if it's got the BSY issue.  When I power it up, it does spin up but is not being recognized by the BIOS.  When I checked my serial number on the checker, I was told that my drive was not affected based on serial number.

I need to get this resolved so that I can get my 1 TB portable back.  I have sent an Email relaying this issue to Seagate but I have not gotten any response.

[ekirefo]

Is it possible that a Barracuda 7200.11 with 2 partitions will have only one partition effected by the  BSY issue?

[Setko]

I've RMA an ST3750330AS once ( paying for the postal service to another country, as there is no Sheatgate office in mine ) , so after some time and loosing all my data i got the "Certified Repaired HDD" that worked somehow ( and by that i mean - bad for a disk with that price tag ) for few months, now i once again have a brick and once again will loose all my work and i don't know about you guys, but i think that this is unacceptable.

I think that SG had to pull those disks from the market and replace with another model those that were RMA and not send the same BS to their customers, but that's me, [Edited per the community rules and regulations.].

I guess it's the BSY error as the drive is not recognized in BIOS and the PC has a long boot time ( i guess cuz of SATA channel being blocked ) but i don't like the sound that the drive is making, it's not a normal spin up, and connected to a external case it sounds like the power cuts of or something in repeating manner. I'm still thinking about RMA, the disk is covered up to 2013, but the disk costs like 100$ or less now and postal services will cost me like 30$ and i guess they will return me another drive that will work few months and i will loose again a lot of $ of data Anyone with more 7200.11 BSY error experience - can you please tell me if you think that could be fixed via the terminal method, i guess removing the pcb will void warranty. I guess there is no other way to fix this as the SATA channel is blocked and using MHDD or some ATA shell to pass ata commands will not work.

Well no more sg products for me, i guess most of you think that way also, but are civilized enough not to write it in the official sg forum, but sg must realize how easy it is to loose respect and business because of bad decision making.

[HughR]

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ekirefo wrote:

Is it possible that a Barracuda 7200.11 with 2 partitions will have only one partition effected by the  BSY issue?

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No.  Partitions are not a hardware thing.  They are a data-structure imposed on the disk by the OS (and bootloader, kind of a part of the OS).  As far as the hardware is concerned, the disk is a single unit.