Trouble with certain Seagate HDDs

[PrntRhd]

A firmware problem may be causing failures:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212901076

[Mini-Me]

Reading lots about this tonight, it would seem to be a major problem for thousands of the affected Seagate drive models(EDIT: thousands of drives over several different models - not thousands of models! :D ). And I was about to buy 2x 1.5TB Seagate 11 series drives. I wonder if the new firmware really does fix the problem? I might now take another look at the Samsung offerings...

Some very unhappy campers here (http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=3668&view=by_date_ascending&page=1) on the Seagate forum:

[Mini-Me]

...and it seems to be getting even worse, if that is possible.
:(

According to the Seagate page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology#Recent_Developments_.28Jan.2C_2 009.29) on Wikipedia:

January 20, 2009 - Seagate's firmware upgrade to previous bug bricks 99.9% of 500GB Hard Drives.

Oh dear...
:(

Things are not looking good at the moment for Seagate.
Who would have thought...

Updated firmware kills even more drives (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=215066)

This comes a something of a shock to me, that Seagate could have so many problems, what with their resources, and techs, you would imagine they would be on top of this like a snake up a drainpipe.

It also saddens me, as I never(up until this major issue) would have considdered any other drive for the most part, as I have built ALL my systems on Seagate drives, and they ALL work, and they all STILL work. All my drives, apart from a couple of 80GB ones, are IDE which luckily are totally uneffected by this problem. Perhaps Seagate should not have discontinued the IDE line as soon as they did(in favor of SATA-only drives)?

[Mini-Me]

I've found a link here (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1098793&cid=26542735) to an explanation about what is actually happening from a Seagate engineer. Interesting reading...

[PrntRhd]

I would not hesitate to buy a Seagate drive, just not the affected ones until the issue is fixed.

[Mini-Me]

I would not hesitate to buy a Seagate drive, just not the affected ones until the issue is fixed.

Fair comment, but I am looking at 1TB or 1.5TB ones, and they are the ones affected, so this time around I think it will have to be Samsung - just until Seagate get this issue sorted. :)

[PrntRhd]

This article has a list of the affected HDDs, larger than first thought:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090121-seagate-cops-to-widespread-hd-problems-vows-full-support.html

[Mini-Me]

It's pretty amazing thing to happen, and not that good.
However, as most of us in the PC world can appreciate, things can and do go wrong wherever technology is concerned.

I know myself from personal experience in writing code for PIC-based dedicated control systems, that firmware bugs can be a problem from time to time. You do your very best to avoid them, and to prevent them, and to ensure you are providing the best product you can, but subtle errors sometimes do get past even weeks of product testing on the prototype.

So, at the end of the day, I have not really lost any faith in Seagate, but I will just be staying clear of their drives for about 6 months. My reason for that timeframe, is to allow the GOOD firmware to be released, applied and tested for a few months. Most of these 1TB and 1.5TB drives have been falling over and dying at the 2-month mark or thereabouts(from purchase date), so after about 4 months from firmware update, we should know for sure what is happening. Then I add another couple of months for good luck! ;)

[Paul Komski]

Some time back there were simply loads of HDD manufacturers. As time has passed many have gone to the wall or been taken-over; the last big one being Maxtor >> Seagate. So, in reality, there are only a handful of hard drive manufacturers and all pretty big name firms. Any of them can have bad product lines from time to time such as the big product recall for a number of Maxtors some time back. I have no problem getting WD or Seagate or Samsung and I usually do simply because they are the three main manufacturers that my main supplier stocks. I buy on a bang for buck basis rather than going for any particular name. I like and have had great service from Raptors so those remain the high performance drives I would go for and there are not many 10k lines in any case. Of course this sort of news is bad for Seagate and I'm not sure that Maxtor ever really recovered after their recalls.

[Mini-Me]

I for one hope that Seagate can recover from this. I thank my lucky stars that here in NZ at least, there are not so many sharks circling at the first smell of blood(read: Bloody Lawyers - and I used the word bloody on purpose to get my point across - once lawyers are involved, EVERYTHING is ripped to shreads in order to turn a profit for their clients - techincially true or not). Sure here in NZ, we have lawyers too, but they don't tend to circle like sharks attacking prey when they sense ANY problem at all. In NZ, the company is expected to offer a solution, and provided they do, the legal issues tend to go away, but in the States, it would seem that if you make a perfectly innocent mistake, the lawyers take you to the cleaners. "OK, we made a mistake, but we want to fix it." does not seem like something said a-lot in any American-based business, rather they all clam up from fear of class-action lawsuits. No wonder all American businesses are not all that forthcoming with info on anything - once lawyers get a sniff, it's all over for ALL of us - the company in question and the end-users aswell... :(

[Paul Komski]

Mini-Me. Out of interest, and a bit off topic I know, but is there still an Accident Compensation Commission in New Zealand.

[Mini-Me]

Yes - ACC - Accident Compensation Corporation, whose purpose is supposed to be to compensate those who injure themselves during work. They tend to compensate the criminals more then the workers though. Example: Burglar is legging it over your back fense with your DVD recorder under his/her arm and cuts their thigh open on your sharp fense. ACC will compensate him/her, as nicking things from you is their chosen "Profession" and that therefore qualifies them for compensation. EXPLAIN THAT. We in NZ obviously have our own problems...

The above example is based on a similar case here in NZ a few years ago.
I would be delighted to be corrected by other NZ members here, who can prove that this kind of thing is no longer allowed by ACC.

But I digress...(from the thread topic)

[karbon]

I have 14 Seagate 500 GB HD and never had a single issue with them. I use it for video editing and very demanding disk access with other programs.

This is news to me, that they have an issue with them. Then again, there are many different models in 500GB range.
I also have 1GB drives from them that functions just fine.

[jlreich]

I have a 500 and a 320 Seagate. Thankfully neither are on the list. :)

[Mini-Me]

I have 14 Seagate 500 GB HD and never had a single issue with them. I use it for video editing and very demanding disk access with other programs.

This is news to me, that they have an issue with them. Then again, there are many different models in 500GB range.
I also have 1GB drives from them that functions just fine.

NONE of the IDE models are effected, so if your 500GB drives are IDE ones, then there is no problems.

The issue seems to stem from the fact that the 1TB and 1.5TB SATA drives fail for no apparent reason after about 2 months from new - will be working perfectly fine one day, then the next it fails to detect in BIOS or even hangs the POST.

Read some of the links posted in this thread. It would appear to be a firmware bug. The link in post #4 gives the most technical reasons for this. I think that Seagate have now released an updated firmware to the updated firmware they initially released which bricked even perfectly good drives. These things happen, and so long as the updated firmware restores the drive to normal with the data intact, then I still see that as a good thing. :)

People are far to quick to critisize - Seagate would NOT have done this on purpose, as some posters on their forums seem to imply, and reading the Seagate forums posts on the subject, many of the owners are very unforgiving. Every now and again, mistakes are made. You do try not to have them happen, but that is life and Human nature, but many people these days seem to be of the opinion that mistakes - ANY mistakes - are worse then murder and set about a crusade of bad-mouthing the company which in all honesty, was probably doing it's best. My 2c...

[karbon]

I have all SATA drives, not IDE.

[MR. HT]

I have three of the Seagate 7200.11 750 GB drives. They are all on that list.

I think they have been acting fine. I've been having some issues with my PC but it hasn't seemed drive related. Things like my internet will stop working and my firewall will shut down, things like that.

I wonder what this means for me...

Should I take any action here or am I good?

[mjc]

Until all the other mess is over and done with, please LEAVE THE DRIVES ALONE!!! and then don't do anything with them until triple checking that there may be a problem and that Seagate has a final fixed firmware released.

[Mini-Me]

I agree with mjc, for what it is worth.
While you might feel anxious to do something NOW, remember that NOW, your drives are still working. :)
Not to paraphrase mjc at all, but once the new firmware has been out there for a few weeks, we will then know how good(or bad!) it is at fixing the problem, so wait.

[MR. HT]

Will do. Hope this gets worked out.

[Mini-Me]

Does anyone know if anything has happened lately with this bricking problem?

I see that Seagate have released a new series of drive(series 12), which impressively have 500GB on one platter. :p OK purists, the 1TB and 1.5TB drives would be two and three platter versions respectively, but still - 500GB on on platter still impresses me. ;)

[jlreich]

I haven't heard anything, but I would think they would have taken care of the problem by now.

If I were looking for a drive right now I wouldn't have any problem getting Seagate. Particularly if it is the .12 model.