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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Troubles


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EDIT: Wooah, so this thread got a lot of attention over the years! Hopefully it was a good starting point for those that figured out how to fix the issues.

To this day I have not bought another Seagate drive, not really due to this issue but I generally find WD and Samsung drives are slightly better value and I have not had one die on me yet which is a start!

Well guys I know MSFN will not take this thread down like Seagate so kindly did on their own forums so here goes.

This thread was created by a user on the Seagate forums and the first post read like this:

Good day.

I've been using Seagate hard drives for 8 years.And that's why when, being in Beijing

(Olympycs'08) and feeling a lack of space for photos, i've purchased a ST3500320AS.

It was working ok as a reserve-hdd for 2.5 months, when, suddenly, did not appear in the morning after the PC started...

The problem is:

-the motor is started (the power is ok)

-not detected by bios

-not detected by winxp

-after winxp boot from an other drive - the PC is very slow for 5-7 minutes (maybe detecting the drive) - and then works fine - the hdd is not detected by any win' programm

Searching the internet i've found that:

-it should be (probably) the firmware problem called "CC" (SA-problem - LED:000000CC

FAddr:0024A051)

-about 20-30% of 7200.11 have such problems(not detecting or "0gb space":smileywink:

-seagate knows about this problem

-such drives are still selling all-around-the-world

So' i have some questions:

1)can it be fixed at home (by myself) - wia firmware update or something else

2)can i restore some data

3)as the drive was purchased in China and i live in Belarus - can i hope for some kind of

warranty?

ps Sorry for posting this message in the forum - i cant create a question case at seagate's

site - it writes that there is a "missed xml" or smth like this.

END

So the URL for this thread is here: http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/messag...;thread.id=3283

A member called Fatlip was making extremely good progress on the problem and had almost solved it when it was shut down. Hardly anyone on the thread had yet heard back from Seagate about the problem including myself. So I would like this thread to continue on from the other one as here we won't have moderators editing and deleting posts.

Read the Seagate thread in full (yes I know its 19 pages) and you will get what I mean. Hopefully someone here can get help somehow for the large amount of people affected by this terrible firmware problem.

Edited by Zenskas
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Yes it can be fixed with a firmware upgrade however $eagate (hey their new name) could not be bothered making new firmware for these drives available. I am directing others from the $eagate forums to come to this thread as it wont be shut down...I hope Lol.

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no a relative newcomer to the topic, MDG. Hehehe sorry I couldn't resist the name, I don't actually hate them I just feel it's a huge shame that they wont offer a solution or even just acknowledge the issue and state they are working on it. If they did then they would get more feedback from end users experiencing the issue giving them more info thereby making fixing the fw issue easier.

On top of that ott censoring on posts and private messages from mods stating I wasn't contributing but just "whinging" etc etc. Fair enough to some extent I was I admit but am I supposed to be happy with being shafted. Hey my 6 week old drive with both OSs and recovery partition died and I cannot work for a week on that rig (my main work rig!), thanks seagate is probably more appropriate except I'm not that derranged yet (not for lack of trying hehe).

Like I've said in posts I'm under warranty and contacted HP support (happened in my HP prebuild, I use WD in home builds) about this and asked for brand replacement on the 2 500Gb seagates at cost difference if need be. I am returning comp on monday to get replacement at store i bought from (thankfully I'm covered for 5 years) so not issue (other than minor data loss, most backed up), but not content since this could easily happen again. Hopefully seagate will address this issue so all users can have a solution rather than write off and switch brand. Wouldn't mind but the hardware is decent enough. I know wd are not perfect either but nothing of this scale on the likes of the wd blacks, only their slightly cheaper models have high failure rates (due to hardware design in many cases), even then often it can be predictable.

As for multiple media data backup strategy dvdr/cdr is known to be unreliable for extended periods and not archive standard. I tend to backup temp stuff on flash and dvdr and my long term backups on HDD. Even then OS failure is big issue even if backed up as takes time to fix (especially since a lot of my linux install is compiled from source).

Edited by seahateHDD
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I'm here!! I am sooo p***ed off with Seagate for terminating that thread. Instead of helping, they are pushing us away. Fine, whatever happens, Seagate - you have lost one customer for LIFE! and many others through word of mouth and blogs and forums.

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To be honest, I'm not exactly surprised. I've had similar-ish trouble with pretty much every HD company out there. From 6.x to 8.x GB Fujitsu's dying by the hundreds (big class action lawsuit over those), to DOA and died-within-a-week NEC drives where NEC never actually honored its warranty, to $1200 worth of western digitals dying on me in the summer of 2001, various drives of different companies dying on me in PVRs and such applicances, IBM "deathstars", etc... I currently have some WDs and Seagates (7200.11's indeed), all are working great so far.

All companies have problematic series, problematic batches within a particular serie, problematic firmwares, etc. And you can't always count on them replacing your drives. And most of them have some really good products too. Just like when you buy a car, you can be stuck with a lemon, and it really sucks then (and understandably you can be angry about it).

Moral of the story: you have to make sure all your data is backed up, and preferably twice, one copy being in a "off-site" location (in case of flood, fire, theft or what not). Especially data that can't ever be replaced, like family photos. Storage is dirt cheap, some data is priceless.

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To be honest, I'm not exactly surprised. I've had similar-ish trouble with pretty much every HD company out there. From 6.x to 8.x GB Fujitsu's dying by the hundreds (big class action lawsuit over those), to DOA and died-within-a-week NEC drives where NEC never actually honored its warranty, to $1200 worth of western digitals dying on me in the summer of 2001, various drives of different companies dying on me in PVRs and such applicances, IBM "deathstars", etc... I currently have some WDs and Seagates (7200.11's indeed), all are working great so far.

All companies have problematic series, problematic batches within a particular serie, problematic firmwares, etc. And you can't always count on them replacing your drives. And most of them have some really good products too. Just like when you buy a car, you can be stuck with a lemon, and it really sucks then (and understandably you can be angry about it).

Moral of the story: you have to make sure all your data is backed up, and preferably twice, one copy being in a "off-site" location (in case of flood, fire, theft or what not). Especially data that can't ever be replaced, like family photos. Storage is dirt cheap, some data is priceless.

Yes I am just going to get a replacement but alot of people on the seagate forum lost their backups as well like when they had a raid configuration. Other people used the drive as a storage drive and lost all of it. Others had only had the drive for less than a month (like me) and did not have backing up on their mind straight away. Plus the drives fail without any warning at all so it can be hard. I will only use my replacement drive it it has firmware different to sd15. I know the drive is a good drive and is really fast but seagate is doing nothing about atm. And their were people working on the problem but the thread was closed. Just goes to show how much seagate care.

EDIT: If the moral of the story is true then everyone would have to spend double on storage because thay would have twice the amount of data (back ups). I had a back up of everything but I'm still just as angry at seagate for their ignorance to this problem. A simple firmware update is all I ask for.

Edited by RiderZen
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hey thanks for the link Zenska , can anybody here get a hold of Fatlip and have him join the forumn, i want to be updated on his progress and replicate for everybody.. good luck to us all.

timha

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hey thanks for the link Zenska , can anybody here get a hold of Fatlip and have him join the forumn, i want to be updated on his progress and replicate for everybody.. good luck to us all.

timha

Yeah i PM'd fatlip

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Nice job if he comes here maybe we can get some answers. Trouble is, I'm afraid that when I get my replacement drive it will have the same problems and I will have to send it back again. I emailed "PC MEAL" (the people I bought the drive from) and asked for a refund instead but I think it is already in the mail to me so if fatlip can find a fix I can use it on the replacement if it had SD15 firmware.

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I'm here too!! Well.... you guys can finally see the frustration and lack of support we've been dealing with forever!! Like their S**T doesn't stink. As I stated in the Seagate forum, we have sold tens of thousands of Seagate drives - for them not to offer any support is deplorable!

I have already placed an order for some WD Green, Black and Enterprise drives in the 500GB and 1TB sizes..... What sucks is that we still have stock on the Seagate 500GB and 1TB 7200.11 drives!! I know there will be some customers who will have difficulty switching so we'll eventually be able to sell them....

I'll be replacing my defective 1TB and good (so far!) 500GB drives with WD 1TB enterprise drives and use my crap seagate's as backup.

I also PM'd fatlip.... haven't gotten a response yet. He seems like the only person who knows how to fix this. Does anyone know the cost of the HDD recovery hardware and software from SalvationData??

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