Oh, no.. not Seagate drives!!

Unsettling link, and the news spreading to all news outlets.

Might just be a bad batch. But what's left for reliable SATA-- Hitachi?

- Loren
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well all thats left is hitachi and caldigit. my seagate is working fine knock on wood,

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

That's corrected by a firmware update. It's not ALL Seagate drives...just a bad batch (from what I know about it...it's limited to the 1 TB drives).

BTW...for anyone looking for advice...CalDigit is not a drive manufacturer. They are storage experts that use the highest performance drives from Hitachi & Seagate (drive manufacturers) to build their RAID solutions around.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

i thought they only used hitachi. my bad joe thanx for the clarity.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

i wonder if its limited to 1tb in a external raid.

mine is internal 7200.11 internal use.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I just got the first DOA Seagate drive I've ever bought. It was a 500 gig (ST3500641AS-RK) and this news is NOT making me very comfortable. I bought the same exact drive about 3 weeks ago and it initialized and performed perfectly (so far) as has the replacement drive but I'm going to keep my eye on both of them. I'm dumping footage onto them for offline storage until I can afford to get a Drobo or something similar.

Even Hitachi drives fail. I had one 3 years ago. No such thing as a failure proof drives. Maybe when all go solid state. But then something else might crop up.

Michael Horton
-------------------

You're so right, Michael. I haven't owned a brand yet that didn't fail eventually. Unfortunately, they've become such a commodity item over the last few years that I'm afraid QC has gone out the window. I'd be willing to pay a bit more to get an "enterprise level" drive if I knew that its' MTBF was measurably higher.

dave

Thanks for the heads up Loren... Just lost a 1TB drive in a new PC I just built - had to replace it with a 1.5 TB 'cause the dealer was out of 1TB drives. The problem is I've still got two more in the machine.

Seagate used to be the best for reliability and service. But last year, when I upgraded to Leopard, my 500GB Firewire Drive- which said was Mac compatible right on the box, wouldn't mount when rebooting. Apple said it was Seagate's fault, Seagate said it was Apple's - Neither side wanted to solve my problem. I'm left with a useless drive.

Now, I gotta shell out another three-hundred bucks and three hours, to make sure my machine continues to operate, then deal with either fixing the drives or returning them to Seagate.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

It's interesting that Seagate 1TB is available at MicroCenter for 110.00, down from 139.00, down from around 200.00. Probably cheaper online, but what do you bet each one will need that firmware upgrade indicated by Joey?

Affects 500 GB drives as well, according to the Seagate forum.

- Loren
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I had the same problem with 4 500 GB Seagates. I thought it my RAID box that was melting them.
Where can I get that update?

God Bless,

Douglas Villalba
director/cinematographer/editor
Miami, Florida

[www.DouglasVillalba.info]
[www.youtube.com]
[vimeo.com]

Seagate will only allow access to the update if you submit a trouble ticket. They claim that they don't want people messing with their drive firmware until Seagate has the chance to verify that they need it. This may be a reasonable approach.

Here's the link:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Thanks for the link

God Bless,

Douglas Villalba
director/cinematographer/editor
Miami, Florida

[www.DouglasVillalba.info]
[www.youtube.com]
[vimeo.com]

I researched this for an hour today as I was just about to buy two Seagate 1.5TB drives to run in a Raid 1. The Seagates' 1TB and 1.5TB 7200.11 drives that have shipped out since July had problems with the disk write cache that is leading to peoples' drives failing. This has particularly affected Mac and Linux users. Seagate has said the data remains intact on the drives so there is no data loss. Seagate has released firmware upgrades that supposedly fix the problem.

As of 1/17/09, there are 2 firmware upgrades floating around: CC1H and CC1J. One could easily presume that CC1J is later than CC1H but someone on a forum claimed that Seagate chat support stated that they are the same firmware. CC1J is new from the factory, while CC1H is an upgrade for the defective CC1G firmware. This is not 100% confirmed. People are saying that Seagate is promising another firmware update next week. Since there appears to be people still having problems I would wait it out if you were planning to buy a drive.

If you absolutely must buy a drive, I read on the the thread below, which btw is quite informative, that Newegg is shipping with the latest CC1J models while Amazon continues to ship defective CC1G models. So I would order from Newegg as they seem to get newer stock.

This thread has a lot of information by people who seem very passionate about this subject:
Seagate 1.5 Drives

According to Seagate's website, the drives that have been affected are:
Seagate 7200.11 Problem

Barracuda 7200.11
ST31000340AS
ST31000640AS
ST3750330AS
ST3750630AS
ST3640330AS
ST3640630AS
ST3500320AS
ST3500620AS
ST3500820AS
ST31500341AS
ST31000333AS
ST3640323AS
ST3640623AS
ST3320613AS
ST3320813AS
ST3160813AS

Barracuda ES.2 SATA
ST31000340NS
ST3750330NS
ST3500320NS
ST3250310NS

DiamondMax 22
STM31000340AS
STM31000640AS
STM3750330AS
STM3750630AS
STM3500320AS
STM3500620AS
STM3500820AS
STM31000334AS
STM3320614AS
STM3160813AS

On that page, there is only software for the PC, so like someone said above you have to e-mail Seagate tech support for Mac support.

Hope my research helps someone :-)

Best,
Alexander

So for a problem that primarily effects Mac and Linux users they provide Windows software to determine your drive information. Which by the way probably won't work on a Mac formatted drive, which doesn't normally mount on Windows machines unless you have additional software. What level of stupidity is this?

You can find out if you have one of those drives by accessing the 'About this mac' panel, then selecting 'More Info', then selecting the drive type (ie Serial-ATA). This shows you the drive(s) and thier associated numbers.

The methodology for reporting is still pretty dumb though. I seem to have one of those listed drives, so I'll see how it goes...

That method, while it does provide the model number and serial number, does not provide the firmware version. It least it doesn't on mine. This is apparently the critical information Seagate needs before they will give out information on how to fix it.

I'm curious about the external drives. I got some Freeagents for archiving P2 recently. The forum list seems to differ from the FAQ.



www.strypesinpost.com

I have 4x 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas with Serial ST31500341AS and Firmware SD17 and checked on their online check and it said there is not an issue with it...

However (as you have put above Alexander) they do indicate a possible problem on the support page - it seems to me they are a bit lax in their cross-checking!

I will have to do some rigorous testing for a few months I guess...

I'm not happy that they don't just off the updates anyway without the need to wait for a tech to cross check.

Surely the all similar models with the same firmware will all be affected at some point?

That is unless the actual firmware/HDD are slightly different even with the same revision number!

If this is the case then Seagate REALLY need to get their act together, it is a very shoddy state of affairs when the world relies on HDD technology so heavily to have something as potentially serious as this.

Whatever happened to quality control? Sheesh - I'm starting to sound like my granddad!

"Can't rely on anyone blah blah, do it yourself blah blah, in my day we made do with a tin bath and steam powered calculating machines..."



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Quite a coincidence, just had a guy pop in this afternoon with a non-detecting drive. Popped in Disk Warrior and it didn't mount.

Checked the drive and it was a Seagate Barricuda 7200.11, listed as one of those affected. Called Seagate, and waited the customary 20 min for Seagate tech support with elevator jazz playing on the other end.

When the tech guy got through, he recommended a firmware upgrade on a FAILED DRIVE! Prompted him to repeat to the Seagate Tech support that the drive has FAILED (yea, run an update on a drive that doesn't mount. What idiots!), they promised to get back to him, which they haven't yet.



www.strypesinpost.com

I have one of the affected drive models, but I can't figure out how determine the firmware version on a Mac. Disk Utility doesn't report it. Any other ways I can see it?

thanks,

-Russ

That's how to check the firmware version. But Seagate has apparently removed the firmware updates, so we may have to wait a bit.



www.strypesinpost.com

You don't have to go to that trouble...in the System Profiler, highlight the hard drive and look at the stats. "Revision" should be the Firmware Version.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Nice. I'm working on a Maxtor...



www.strypesinpost.com

Good luck with that

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Quote

Quite a coincidence, just had a guy pop in this afternoon with a non-detecting drive. Popped in Disk Warrior and it didn't mount.

Checked the drive and it was a Seagate Barricuda 7200.11, listed as one of those affected. Called Seagate, and waited the customary 20 min for Seagate tech support with elevator jazz playing on the other end.

When the tech guy got through, he recommended a firmware upgrade on a FAILED DRIVE! Prompted him to repeat to the Seagate Tech support that the drive has FAILED (yea, run an update on a drive that doesn't mount. What idiots!), they promised to get back to him, which they haven't yet.

The update to this is that Seagate did get back. However they absolved responsibility without checking the drive (from what i'm told it's more to do with the manufacturing date, so perhaps they had a different cook that day). The drive is apparently not affected by the firmware bug that's bricking up Seagate drives by the droves. This is despite the fact that the drive model coincides with the faulty firmware installed, and it's also made in the same country (Thailand) as the rest of the lemons. Drive was 4-6 months old (manufactured in June), used solely as an internal drive, and working fine the day before it suddenly refused to mount. Neither Disk Utility nor Disk Warrior sees it at all.

Also, the issue of drives failing is definitely not restricted to drives made in December (or "through December".



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes and grafixjoe,

Thanks, you guys are the greatest.

-Russ

Okay, latest news is that don't upgrade your firmware yet, as they botched up the last one. Yes, you should upgrade the firmware as the old one seems brickly, but we also have to wait for a stable version to be released (kinda feeling like a QT update, this one), and hopefully it happens before the drives go.


[www.lafcpug.org]



www.strypesinpost.com

It seems to me that Seagate really does not support OS X. I have an exe file that doesn't work even on a reboot from disk.
They should simply have a mac version. If it is this difficult to get the update, then I will never know any other drive unless it's called Hitachi.

This is ridiculous.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Corbett,

.exe files are PC files. Let's stay on topic here.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.