NOTE: If you are using Seagate/Maxtor drives. READ HERE!

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yes, the 1.5Tb drives both stutter and are at risk of bricking due to the journal issue. The Stuttering issue is fairly recent and mostly runs in the 1.5tb drives - but the journal issue is older and exists across many 7200.11 drives. ES2 drives and Diamondmax drives.

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Then the bricking issue came to their attention. It took so long because it's an issue that's hard to track down - pretty much the journal or log space in the firmware is written to if certain events occur. IF the drive is powered down when there are 320 entries in this journal or log, then when it is powered back up, the drive errors out on init and won't boot properly - to the point that it won't even report it's information to the BIOS.

This is a rare, but still obviously bad issue. Up until now, we all figured it was just some standard type of failure, as it was such a rare event, so we'd RMA the drives.

So, for whatever reason, mid management started freaking out (as it could be a liability for seagate, I suspect - ontop of the already potentially liable issue of the stuttering problem causing drives to fail in RAIDs). So, they pushed the release of the SD1A firmware to the general public. They took a few days to 'test', though it was mostly just including some code in the batch file that kicks off the firmware updater, to check that it is a BRINKS drive, and the proper model number. Then it was kicked out to the public.

Please understand, this firmware had to go through five different checks to make sure it applies to the specific conditions to qualify sending to a customer, before now. 5 chances for us to go your drive needs the other (or none) firmware update. Suddenly, it's down to ONE check, and even that was more designed for a contingency just incase the wrong firmware was sent out.

Of course, it starts bricking drives.

Right now, the engineers are crapping themselves, the firmware's been pulled, the support agents are told to say "The firmware will be released soon" and no real procedure to fix this issue is in place. Our phones are flooded so bad that it locks the system up when there are too many calls in queue, and emails are coming in at hundreds an hour.

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I'm no statistician, but the 'drive becoming inaccessable at boot-up' is pretty much a very slim chance - but when you have 10 million drives in the field, it does happen. The conditions have to be just right - you have to reboot just after the drive writes the 320th log file to the firmware space of the drive. this is a log file that's written only occasionally, usually when there are bad sectors, missed writes, etc... might happen every few days on a computer in a nin-RAID home use situation.. and if that log file is written even one time after the magic #320, it rolls over the oldest file kept on the drive and there's no issue. It'll only stop responding IF the drive is powered up with log file #320 being the latest one written... a perfect storm situation. IF this is the case, then seagate is trying to put in place a procedure where you can simply ship them the drive, they hook it up to a serial controller, and re-flashed with the fixed firmware. That's all it takes to restore the drive to operation! As for buying new drives, that's up to you. None of the CC firmware drives were affected - only the SD firmware drives. I'd wait until later in the week, maybe next week, until they have a known working and properly proven firmware update. If you were to have flashed the drives with the 'bad' firmware - it would disable any read/write functions to the drive, but the drive would still be accessible in BIOS and a very good chance that flashing it back to a previous SD formware (or up to the yet to be released proven firmware) would make it all better.

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It was never designed to be a public release. The script checks two things.. to make sure it's a BRINKS or a MOOSE drive, and to check the model number. If you get the firmware from the torrents (it's out there) and tear it apart with uniextract, you can see the batch file and what it checks for. It's a program that was built back in the 90's and used ever since! You remove those 2 checks, and it'll happily flash that IBM or Western Digital drive with the seagate firmware as well.

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As far as "BRINKS" "MOOSE" "GALAXY" etc.. are concerned, they are pretty much the internal development names of the drive family. There can be overlap, but most "BRINKS" drives are 7200.11, I believe, while "MOOSE" drives are almost all 7200.10, and "GALAXY" drives are 7200.9. Generally, those names don't make it out into public, but if you were to tear into the SD1A firmware, you'll notice that it looks for the "BRINKS" drive before it flashes the firmware to the drive. There can be different internal names for different revisions of the drive itself, but generaly they stick to one revision per family - a new internal name would only be used for a MAJOR revision on the drive.

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Actually, Moose and Brinks are both 7200.11 (the model numbers are different though), while Galaxy is 7200.10. 7200.12 is Pharaoh IIRC.

For example, all 7200.11 1TB drives with the model number ST31000333AS are Brinks drives, with 3 disks, while all ST31000340AS drives are Moose, with 4 disks. That having been said, as far as I know, all other times that the internal name has changed, the external name has as well - I.E. all 7200.10s are Galaxy, all 7200.12 are Pharaoh. I don't know any older than Galaxy though, so I can't be certain.

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The problem can only occur if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or some
multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, an end user will not be able to resolve/recover
existing failed drives. Recovery of failed drive requires Seagate technical intervention. However, the
problem can be prevented by updating drive firmware to a newer version and/or by keeping the drive
powered on until a newer firmware version is available.

Note that in order for a drive to be susceptible to this issue, it must have both the firmware revision that
contains the issue, have been tested through the specific manufacturing process, and be power cycled.

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http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/seagate_hd_failures.html#guide

Guide to applying Seagate Firmware Updates on Intel-Based Mac: Although some previous posts last year included notes on applying Seagate firmware updates with intel-based Macs (burning Seagate updater ISO image to CD, booting from CD to apply the update, etc.) here's a Guide from a reader that recently updated his Seagate 7200.11 drive with the latest SD1A firmware update released by Seagate. (He has a Mac Pro - but this should also work for intel-based iMacs.)

Note this requires the Seagate drive to be on the onboard SATA bus (not in a FW case, etc.) - and as mentioned before - there's currently no Seagate updaters for PPC Macs (they've never released an updater that runs under Mac OS)

"Updating Seagate SATA Drive firmware updates in Mac Pro
1. Download the matching firmware update file. (sometimes in the past Seagate support has sent links/codes to download updates)

2. Burn a CD-ROM from that ISO image with Toast or the Finder. If you don't know how (edit: read the next post)

4. Shut down the MacPro with the CD-ROM inside the tray.

3. Remove all drives and move the drive you want to update in bay one (the nearest to the CD-ROM Drive) (FYI - the lone drive/bay 1 note is a common tip from the past - but I had one Mac Pro owner say using the latest SD1 updater he updated several installed drives. But if in doubt, follow the older rules.)

4. Press the on/off button and press C on the keyboard.

5. After awhile your mac boots from the CD and the display looks like a DOS machine. (Command line/text) First read the info shown on the display. It is the same as in the read me text file.

6. After reading the info, you have to hit any key and the updater moves to the next screen.

7. Now you have to select the update option. For the matching type of hard drive, you have to select a letter. (In my case "C" for updating the ST311000340AS.)

8. After sending the binaries (updated firmware) to the drive, there should be a successful response. If not refer, to the troubleshooting section in the read me.

9. After successful update is noted, Press any key and the MacPro shuts down.

10. On the first powerup after the update, hold down the mouse button to eject the updater CD-ROM.

11. After OS X boots, check Apple System Profiler to ensure that everything is ok and that the updated drive's "revision" shows the updated firmware revision.
(In my case "SD1A"

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http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201431

MacOS Disk Utility

Insert a blank disc.

From the Desktop, click on Utilities (or in some cases, Applications, and then Utilities).

Launch Disk Utility.

From the File menu, choose Open Disk Image.

Select the ISO image to be burned.

In the list of volumes, you will now see an item representing the ISO file. Select it.

Click the Burn button and follow the instructions.