After emailing Seagate Support and trying "Online Chat", they asked me to call their technical support. So I called and the person was not helpful at all and did not manage to solve the problem. Worse still, he just hung up! He does not even understand the problem at all. What made matters worst was that he was not familiar with the firmware update process as well. Terrible phone support!!! FYI, I tried to update using WinXP, Win Vista, Windows 7 and even MacOS machines. Format the drive many times and still cannot update.
Out of frustrations, I took the drive back to the shop where I bought it and managed to change a brand new set. Thank gosh for 7 days exchange policy. With the new drive, I put in the firmware file on the root folder and viola, firmware updated to latest 1.3.5. I was right when I insisted to Seagate Support that it is a hardware problem and they refused to believe. In fact, the person on the phone even suggested that if I am able to use the drive as per a portable harddisk, failure to update firmware does not constitute a faulty product.
Singapore is right to introduce the Lemon Law to protect consumers from terrible support from companies that refused to acknowledge that the product is faulty, even suggesting that it is okay to sell me a product that is not 100% working.
