Seagate Offers Firmware Fix for All Problematic Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drives

RemnanteK

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Seagate has issued an official statement today, acknowledging all recent problems with some Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Based on the information posted in the company's forums here, select Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 3.5-inch hard drives made in Thailand, suffer from a firmware issue that bricks the HDDs after a short period of time. After three to five months of normal operation these defective hard drives will suddenly lock-up as a protective measure and prevent the system from recognizing the drive from then onwards. In most cases the information won't be lost, but the drive will be completely useless, changing the drive's electronics won't help much either. This problem occurs not only to the 1TB Barracuda models, but to Seagate 1.5TB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB Barracuda 7200.11 drives, along with some Maxtor and ES.2 models. That's pretty disturbing, but now Seagate will provide its customers with an updated firmware if their drive is problematic.

Here's the full statement from the company's spokesman Mike Hall:
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 Seagate Knowledge Base.

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 ([email protected]). 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 Seagate Technology - Contact Us

*There is no safety issue with these products.​
The following are potentially affected models:

seagate.png


It is important however to use the online serial number validation tool to verify whether or not your specific drive is affected as not all drives of the same model necessarily share the same firmware revision.

I have 3 drives on this list and it sucks. But they are doing RMA for drives on this list.
 

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    RemnanteK
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Wow. Epic fail........ Lol.
That sucks that you have that. I was gonna buy one of those too.... *shudders*

~Lordbob
 

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Drats! I have 2 of the affected drives. Just went to the Seagate site and they have taken the firmware updates "off line for validation".

Alan
 

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    My Build/#1
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    Intel Corei7 920
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    ASUS P6T
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    6 GB Corsair Dominator oc1600
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    (2) EVGA GTX260 SLI
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    on board Soundmax HD audio
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    ViewSonic VX2236wm,VX2035wm,
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    1680 x 1500
    Hard Drives
    OCZ CORE_SSD 64 GB (Boot:System Drive)
    Segate SATA 500 (Programs/Page File/RestorePoints)
    Segate SATA 1 TB (Data Drive)
    2 Fujitsu 75 GB SAS on MARVELL Raid VD 0 SCSI Disk Device
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    CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1000W
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    ?

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    Me
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    Acer P221w and Acer 1916w
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    1680x1050 and 1440x900
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    2x80 GB Seagate 7200.10 in RAID0, 500 GB Seagate 7200.12
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    Antec Sonata III
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    AC Freezer 64 Pro and a couple of 120 mm case fans
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    Logitech Wave
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    Logitech G5 v2
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    10000/1000
Does anyone happen to know the URL to Seagate's web site where this notice was posted?

Thanks.
 

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    These are my computer specs, not necessarily the computer that I am seeking assistance with. I dual boot Windows XP Pro and Kubuntu (my primary operating system). I have Windows 7 and Vista Business running virtualized within Kubuntu.

My Computer

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    RemnanteK
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    Q9300 3.0Ghz @ 1.175v Stable
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    EVGA 780i
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    4x1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-8500 (5-5-5-15 :1067)
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 8800GT 1Gb Akimbo
    Sound Card
    Onboard 7.1
    Monitor(s) Displays
    DELL 2005FPW
    Screen Resolution
    1650x1080
    Hard Drives
    2x 750Gb Seagate SATA
    1x 1Tb Seagate SATA
    1x 250Gb Seagate SATA
    PSU
    ABS Tagan BZ 700W
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    Cooler Master Cosmos 1000
    Cooling
    Zalman 9700 // CORSAIR CMXAF1 Fans
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    MS Ergo 4000
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    MS Explorer 3.0
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    12MB
mmm strange ...i have 3 of these HD's no problems...guess i lucked out.
 

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    2XWestern Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB
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When did you bought them Grim ? I also have two of their drives, which may be affected, the 500GB and the 750GB drives, but according to what Seagate is saying they were able to narrow the issue down to drives manufactured in december 2008... theoretically. Both of my drives were bought earlier, in march and july 2008. But still I wrote an email to seagate containing my drives information, model no., serial no. and firmware version to ensure if they're really safe from this issue. Hope they'll respond to it.
 

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    LG Flatron W2252TQ 22"
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    Seagate Barracuda 11 500GB & 750GB,
    Total Capacity: 1.2TB
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    Genius SW-HF5.1 5000 Speakers,
    Roland RH-50 Headphones
After reading through 14,327.5 posts on the Seagate forum I'm going to wait for the dust to settle on this one. Bought my two Barracudas in December. Backup, backup, backup.

Alan
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    My Build/#1
    CPU
    Intel Corei7 920
    Motherboard
    ASUS P6T
    Memory
    6 GB Corsair Dominator oc1600
    Graphics Card(s)
    (2) EVGA GTX260 SLI
    Sound Card
    on board Soundmax HD audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ViewSonic VX2236wm,VX2035wm,
    Screen Resolution
    1680 x 1500
    Hard Drives
    OCZ CORE_SSD 64 GB (Boot:System Drive)
    Segate SATA 500 (Programs/Page File/RestorePoints)
    Segate SATA 1 TB (Data Drive)
    2 Fujitsu 75 GB SAS on MARVELL Raid VD 0 SCSI Disk Device
    PSU
    CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1000W
    Case
    CoolerMaster CosmosS
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Wireless Laser 500
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    Logitec wireless
    Internet Speed
    ?
After reading through 14,327.5 posts on the Seagate forum I'm going to wait for the dust to settle on this one. Bought my two Barracudas in December. Backup, backup, backup.

Alan

Same here.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    RemnanteK
    CPU
    Q9300 3.0Ghz @ 1.175v Stable
    Motherboard
    EVGA 780i
    Memory
    4x1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-8500 (5-5-5-15 :1067)
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 8800GT 1Gb Akimbo
    Sound Card
    Onboard 7.1
    Monitor(s) Displays
    DELL 2005FPW
    Screen Resolution
    1650x1080
    Hard Drives
    2x 750Gb Seagate SATA
    1x 1Tb Seagate SATA
    1x 250Gb Seagate SATA
    PSU
    ABS Tagan BZ 700W
    Case
    Cooler Master Cosmos 1000
    Cooling
    Zalman 9700 // CORSAIR CMXAF1 Fans
    Keyboard
    MS Ergo 4000
    Mouse
    MS Explorer 3.0
    Internet Speed
    12MB
Seagate has released a revised and verified firmware (version is the same - SD1A - though .iso images has been splited to few parts, regarding the disk capacity). I made a backup of important data and proceeded with firmware upgrade. I feared that the drives might become bricked but they were updated successfully, computer has powerd on flawlessly, vista booted up and recognized the disks again, so everything went fine :)

here's the addres to the site:
(http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931)
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    My Own Build
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 3.73 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P5E
    Memory
    Kingston DDR2 HyperX PC2-8500 4x1GB CL5 @ 1117MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gainward GeForce 8800GT 512MB GS (700 / 1700 / 1020 MHz)
    Sound Card
    SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Edition
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG Flatron W2252TQ 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    Seagate Barracuda 11 500GB & 750GB,
    Total Capacity: 1.2TB
    PSU
    Corsair HX520W PSU
    Case
    AeroCool S9 Pro with 40cm Side Fan
    Cooling
    Scythe Mugen (Infinity) CPU Cooler, 4x Noctua NF-P12-1300
    Keyboard
    Logitech Media Keyboard 600
    Mouse
    Logitech MX1000
    Internet Speed
    ADSL Broadband - 1 Mbit Down / 256 Kbit Up
    Other Info
    Genius SW-HF5.1 5000 Speakers,
    Roland RH-50 Headphones
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