Seagate Barracuda Drives Failing at an Alarming Rate. Are You Affected?
Posted 01/16/09 at 02:15:10 PM by Paul Lilly
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According to news site The Register, Seagate's 1TB Barracuda hard drives are giving up the ghost "at an alarming rate." Users all across the globe have started complaining of lockups, non-detection in the BIOS, 0GB reported disc size, and other ailments, as reported by The Register and forum threads like the one at MSFN (Microsoft Software Forum Network).
If true, the problem appears to affect Barracuda 7200.11 drives made in Thailand (ST3100034AS) with firmware SD15. Users claim the reported failures are higher than what would be considered normal for hard drives, and adding insult to injury, some users are complaining of deleted and edited posts in an 18+ page support thread on Seagate's own forum.
And for you conspiracy theorists out there, while no Seagate Knowledge Base article yet exists on this specific topic, the company did recently reduce its bare drive warranty period from 5 to 3 years. For you non-conspiracy theorists, that means your drive is still under warranty.
Update 1/16/09 - Seagate Responds
Seagate sent us an update regarding the failures and what steps potentially affected users can take to both resolve the issue and recover data. Full statement below:
Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on*.
As part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, we are offering a free firmware upgrade to those with affected products. To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931.
Support is also available through Seagate's call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283)
Customers can expedite assistance by sending an email to Seagate (discsupport@seagate.com). Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial number and current firmware revision. We will respond, promptly, to your email request with appropriate instructions. There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive. But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.
For a list of international telephone numbers to Seagate Support and alternative methods of contact, please access http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/
*There is no safety issue with these products.
1TB firmware released
Submitted by Caboose on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 2:23pm
Seagate has released the firmware for a number of drives already, if your drive is affected then go to http://tinyurl.com/8c86fn (Seagate firmware) and get the firmware for your drive. Be sure to follow the instructions very very carefully so you don't brick your drive!!
Best of luck
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
Submitted by Caboose on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 7:05am
Success! I've just updated the firmware on 2 1TB drives, and 2 500GB drives. The process is painless and easy as can be. Burn the ISO to disc, reboot your PC, disable any RAID you might have (set drives to IDE mode), boot from the CD, (I scan for drives first), select the type of drive to update. Updates ALL drives of that model in your PC, power off the PC. Lather rinse, repeat for any other drives. Once all your drives are done, re-enable your RAID, set your boot options (incase they get changed) and boot back into Windows (don't forget to remove the CD).
Any drive you have in an enclosure that needs the update, needs to be installed into your case to update.
*UPDATE* Ya... the 500GB drives failed... Both the one in my PC, and the one in my wife's PC... Im not happy with Seagate at all. And on top of that, they pulled the firmware last night at about 8pm cst... 2hrs after I flashed the drives. At least my 1TB drives are ok
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
It happens to everyone
Submitted by Shalbatana on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 1:45pm
Things like this will happen. It happens to every manufacturer eventually. This company seems to be responding properly and appropriately. If it happens over and over then that company should be avoided. Meantime, if there's a fix and a way to recover everything then no harm done.
_______________________________
"There's no time like the future."
Submitted by Caboose on Sun, 01/18/2009 - 1:36pm
I just got off the phone with Seagate support as I didn't trust the online tool. THe tool used to check the SN of affected drives is being removed and re-written as it was giving fales information (all my drives are affected). The new tool should be up soon (how soon, I don't know). Also, if you drive is dead, you can send it in and they can either flash it, or replace it altogether. I was told that the new firmware should (hopefully) be released Tuesday or Wednesday...
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
Submitted by Frogprince on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 2:33pm
After reading about the failure rate of this drive, I can't believe that MaxPC picked this drive. Sure it has great numbers on the test bench, but with an unusually high failure rate, it at least deserves a large asterisk.(check out comments @ newegg). I hope Seagate can get this fixed. I'm taking a wait and see approach to the latest firmware. I was set to get this drive until I read about its problems.
Submitted by exoticracerx on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 6:35pm
i just got this and all my data is on this, and i havent backuped yet. I ticked. I emailed seagate support for suggestions. to get firmware just install seatools from seagate downloads. I have always like seagate for their reliable drives. IDK what to do know.
Got burned by Maxtor Seagate on Christmas!
Submitted by metafuente on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 6:33pm
Bought a 500 GB external Maxtor Plus Touch 4 and after a week of transfering VERY valuable files to the drive in order to "safely back them up", lost all of them. The drive stopped working and I had no way to retrieve them. Of course I kept copies of the data but what's the point of spending money on a product that does the opposite of what you pay for (lose your data and stop working altogether)?
I will never buy a Maxtor or Seagate drive since this was supposed to be a Christmas treat that ended up as a 'cyber-nightmare'. To be fair, I have owned internal Maxtor drives that were actually good and didn't die on me but playing the will-it-die-on-me-or-not? game is more than ridiculous. By the way this was a Seagate drive inside a Maxtor enclosure and yes I do know about both companies merging into one magnificent blob . I have never had a Western Digital that dissapointed and will keep on buying them from now on.
I wish I could rant like Gordon though...
Put A Wig On A Stranger's Head
Submitted by MediaPackRat86 on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 4:36pm
My drives model is ST31500341AS is it affected? And how do I now what firmware my drive is? I Bought this drive to store my movie collection (Video TS /vob/etc) just a few days ago and I'd be really dissapointed if it just randomly failed.
Submitted by xs0u1x on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 4:03pm
i recall a max pc web article awhile back about seagate slashing the life of their warranty's.
did they know something we didnt?
does this violate lemon laws if it could be proven? highly doubtful but still.
Submitted by Caboose on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 3:24pm
*knocks on wood*
I have 4 in my desktop and one in my media centre... Hopefully I'm one of the lucky few.
BTW, how new or old are these drives? The one in my media centre is about a year old, the ones in my desktop are about 4mo old
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
Great...
Submitted by Cache on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 2:53pm
Apparently I am one of the deathly accursed, the walking dead. I tend to like Seagate, but if it's not a safe product to use, I'll go elsewhere.
Submitted by VoodooChicken on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 2:39pm
I have two and they work fine, but I'm not running them in RAID.----------------------------------------------------------
Look behind you! A THREE-headed monkey!!!!!!!!
Submitted by Lord Omega on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 2:35pm
I am not using 1 TB drives. I have 2 250GB ones and they work just fine.
[url=http://www.specbox.net/usersonly/profile.aspx?id=oF2jUffq9dc%3d&sid=DX9E77yoGb8%3d][img]http://www.specbox.net/images/SigBanners/6en.jpg[/img][/url]
Submitted by zodi on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 2:12pm
I won't be holding my breath the 2 TB will work either. 1.5 TB firmware fix. 1 TB crapping out unexpectedly.
Was hoping to to buy one soon, but I think I will wait a while.
Submitted by monkiga on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:42pm
I was too lucky to pick this drive up during the boxing day sale... sigh... it was too late to retuen it to cancel the order when I figure out the problem from the retail store`s forum! I`m just hoping that Seagate will release a firmware fix just like the 1.5TB drive.
Submitted by hg2WJW on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:36pm
I hope things get straightened out.
Mike
I have 2 questions: 1. How
Submitted by AMD64Blondie on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:29pm
I have 2 questions:
1. How can you tell what firmware your Seagate 1TB drive has,and where it was made?
2.Does this only affect the 1TB Seagate drives, and not the 1.5TB Seagate drives ?
speed fan
Submitted by wk on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 9:33am
use speed fan, it contain S.M.A.R.T tab that include firmware version.
u can download speed fan from:
www.almico.com/sfdownload.phpMPC is my home page
Intel Q9550 with crappy
Submitted by daveangel on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 5:07pm
Intel Q9550 with crappy stock heatsink
Evga 8800GTS 320MB not 256MB--really that's a Vista bug!
Kingston valueram 800mhz ddr2 8GB
Intel DP35DP motherboard
SB X-Fi Xtremegamer
Plextor sata px755sa burner
150GB and 74GB raptoYou can download seatools for windows and it will tell you your firmware,etc.
Personally, I have the 1TB internal and 1.5TB external and haven't had any problems so far "knock on wood".
I've been buying Seagate for years now due to 5yr warranty and reliability since I've never had one fail vs Maxtor and Wester Digital drives which always seem to go bad on me in the past.
But now I'm holding off on buying any more Seagate until they clear this up since I know they released an update for the 1.5TB drives and when I searched their knowledgebase a while back they also had a firmware update for certain 500GB and 1TB drive to fix a disc cache issue I thought but I don't see how that has anything with the drives going bad early?
Anyways, I just wish I knew someone at Google that would spill the beans on which hard drive manufacturer's drives seemed to die before the others since they did some like 2 year survey on off the shelf hardware they used a while back or something and admitted that certain brands which they wouldn't say died faster than others!!!
Submitted by monkiga on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:45pm
1. It is written on the HDD itself. You can check that out if it`s not too hard to open your case!
2. Seagate released a new firmware to fix the problem for the 1.5TB drive. (at least it sounds like a fix from some reply...)
Submitted by AndyYankee17 on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:39pm
1. I would guess a S.M.A.R.T. tool
2. idk, but the 1.5 TB drives have a ton of other problems from what I've heard
I used to be a fan...
Submitted by Devo85x on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:12pm
I used to be a big fan of seagate, their parts have never failed on me before but thats probibly because i havent bought anything from them since last year (a 500GB HDD)... they have been screwing up their parts lately and its sad for me to see this happen
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