Seagate promises second fault fix in 24 hours
Turn brick into working Barracuda
Update Seagate has promised to issue a fix for the latest Barracuda bricking fault within 24 hours.
This will be firmware to fix the firmware (SD1A) that was issued to fix the firmware (SD15) that caused some 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 drives and others to stop working. The SD1A firmware caused 500GB Barracuda 7200.11s to stop working.
In all cases Seagate assures its customers that none of their data on the drive should be lost as the firmware faults render the drives inaccessible but doesn't cause corrupted data on the drive.
Seagate says that: "This firmware upgrade will be available on the Seagate website within 24 hours"
It adds that: "Seagate is working with customers to expedite a remedy."
The pressure will be on Seagate to get it right this time. Manufacturing problems and bugs are not unknown in the tech industry, but it takes a particular kind of genius to rush out patches that actually compound the problem.
Update:
Seagate has issued a firmware update to address this problem, saying: "Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16. We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers.
To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/news.jsp?DocId=207931. It assures users that data is still on the drive and is working with customers affected with any unrecoverable data 'to expedite a remedy.'
COMMENTS
SEAGATE IS GIVING YOU THE FINGER
SEAGATE IS...
-----> HIDING THE LIST OF CRAP DRIVES...
BY USING A...
-----> ONE-AT-A-TIME DRIVE-MODEL LOOKUP.
ITS FORUM MODERATORS ARE *KILLING RELEVANT MESSAGES*, TOO.
JUST LIKE HP AND FRIENDS DO.
Free upgrade
How dare Seagate call it a FREE upgrade.
They produced a flawed product to begin with and now offer a way of mending it.
Shame on you Seagate. It is NOT free but essential to save your face.
My drives aren't on the list :)
Just checked the model numbers of 8 drives in my home server (from 250Gb to 750Gb). Luckly none of them are on Seagate's list or in their model number checker...
I'm not put off from Seagate (I don't normally update firmware on drives unless I have a very good reason to do so).
Mike
@Rob
Are you seriously saying they reissued it as 1A again? No version change?
I just downloaded the MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB.ISO file and haven't burned it yet but viewing it in WinRAR it doesn't seem to contain anything but DriveDetect.exe and a ReadMe.txt.
Seagate went out of their way to make their site as crappy as possible, I had to allow cookies, javascript, IFRAME's, and popups, yes all 4 of those 7 seven deadly web design sins, just to download a firmware update I'm afraid to apply. And to top it off DriveDetect shows just 1 of the 2 affected drives I have in a RAID. Oh well, I was already thinking about applying the update to just one of them.
They really aren't covering themselves with glory ...
The fix download (bootable CD) is not at all well thought out for a system with five such drives in a RAID array, given that the fault being addressed is that powering off the drive can brick it.
I'm supposed to boot off a CD with all drives disconnected except for the one I want to flash. OK, maybe - SATA is supposedly hot-pluggable so I can yank the data cables from the other four. But then I get to the requirement to power off the flashed drive to continue. Yank its power cable? Don't like it. And the final straw, hitting CR at that prompt powers down the whole system! At which point maybe one or more of the other four drives turns into a brick.
Yes, I know from a number of prior power-downs that probably won't happen. But even so, they should have put more thought into this solution and its documentation. Surely at least half such drives are in RAID arrays?
