[kadolf]

Gradius2, on Jan 25 2009, 05:54 PM, said:

Are you using IDE Extended (or enhanced) only ? Do not use RAID or AHCI.

Also the drive is alone? No other is connected, except CD/DVD drive?

Yes, I'm using IDE mode. No other drives are connected, exept a SATA-DVD-writer - I will try to get one with IDE, maybe that's the problem.

[arnd]

I'm becoming more and more clueless: I have one of the famous ST3500320AS (which didn't fail as it was running 24/7), which I bought to replace a failed Samsung HD501LJ (failed after 478 hours of use, already 3 reallocated sectors and 71 pending sectors, and unable to read important sectors at all). I now tried WD disks and bough a RE3 (to be used in RAID) and a 640GB Caviar Black (WD6401AALS)... I immediately returned the RE3 as it was sold without warranty... And I will return the Caviar Black because I cancelled the bad block scan after just 32GB (of 640 GB): Between 73 and 125 uncorrected read errors reported to OS, 208 raw read errors, 2 reallocated sectors, 2 current pending sectors, and the log shows "UNC" unrecoverable data errors.

Up to now only laptop 2.5" drives failed on me after years of use, which I can understand due to shock and wear.

I had very good experience with Seagate in the past (mainly SCSI drives like Cheetah 15k) but the current 7200.11 events made me reluctant to stay with Seagate (even though these stories were regarding firmware and not data on the platters). Both Samsung and WD failed with lots of unrecoverable data errors on brand new drives...

So... Which hard disk manufacturer and which drive models can I rely on?

73, Arnd

[eli2k]

enrolb, on Jan 25 2009, 05:56 AM, said:

Yesterday I had an amusing day at a big electronics store. When I asked about hard drives the sales person said "Oh you got to see the great sale on Seagate drives we have!" I thought to myself, "I bet", but proceeded to follow him. He showed me a whole stack of Seagate drives. I looked at them and they were the recent 7200.11 models! He said that they had marked them all down by $40. When I asked him why, he said with a big smile "Seagate wants us to clear them out!" I thought to myself, I bet they do..

At the check out the clerk said they were discounted even more to $109 for 1Tbs. Although I won't trust them with key data, Seagate has great hardware and once the firmware is sorted out I will have some really inexpensive drive storage... Course it'll be relegated to non important tasks! Going to be a while before I trust their drives again.

I wish a store nearby would discount these, so I can get a replacement PCB board to try the flashing

[timha]

I wish a store nearby would discount these, so I can get a replacement PCB board to try the flashing
[/quote]


just so your on the right track, you are getting the donor goodharddisk , you are going to attache the badpcb to it for flashing... dont do it the other way around....hahh

[endeavor]

Hey guys

I've got a ST3750330AS drive and it flashed okay with yesterdays latest firmware, and all seemed to work okay, then the next day all the sudden I heard the drives head engage and disengage clicking back and forth a number of times as it disrupted everything I had running, and then stopped. It hasn't done this again yet and it's been quite a few more hours, but this head engage/disengage never ever did this before the firmware upgrade and I've had it for a year now. This is very disconcerting and I don't feel safe with this new firmware.

Everest shows all things in its SMART tab Okay though.

You know, I wish there had been an option on the firmware flash program to save the Original SD15 Firmware that was on there from the beginning, so that I could at least have the Option now to re-flash it back to what it was.

Anyone know where I can get the good version of the SD15 firmware I had?

[sieve-x]

Gradius2, on Jan 23 2009, 04:39 PM, said:

On old days (back in 2000) I used to hack firmwares for Pioneer burners (DVR-Axx family) as you can see here:
http://gradius.rpc1.org

Those old days reminds me of "conversions" thru firmware patches (ie. Liteon SOHW-812S
to Liteon 832S). That makes me wonder if it's possible to convert/flash a ST3500320AS to
ST3500320NS (Enterprise) using firmware SN06C (or ST31000340AS to ST31000340NS).

arnd, on Jan 25 2009, 01:11 PM, said:

I'm becoming more and more clueless: I have one of the famous ST3500320AS (which didn't fail as it was running 24/7), which I bought to replace a failed Samsung HD501LJ (failed after 478 hours of use, already 3 reallocated sectors and 71 pending sectors, and unable to read important sectors at all). I now tried WD disks and bough a RE3 (to be used in RAID) and a 640GB Caviar Black (WD6401AALS)... I immediately returned the RE3 as it was sold without warranty... And I will return the Caviar Black because I cancelled the bad block scan after just 32GB (of 640 GB): Between 73 and 125 uncorrected read errors reported to OS, 208 raw read errors, 2 reallocated sectors, 2 current pending sectors, and the log shows "UNC" unrecoverable data errors.

Up to now only laptop 2.5" drives failed on me after years of use, which I can understand due to shock and wear.

I had very good experience with Seagate in the past (mainly SCSI drives like Cheetah 15k) but the current 7200.11 events made me reluctant to stay with Seagate (even though these stories were regarding firmware and not data on the platters). Both Samsung and WD failed with lots of unrecoverable data errors on brand new drives...

So... Which hard disk manufacturer and which drive models can I rely on?

73, Arnd

I still have a 7 year old 36 GB Atlas II alive and running. SCSI always had a higher reliability
than (S)ATA drives (although higher reliability does not mean failure free - myself a victim of
a Micropolis 2217 crash very long time ago). SATA is the cheap bandwagon of reliability and
you could still rely on Seagate SAS/SCSI (all manufacturers have an issue at some point).

[endeavor]

Also, fwiw, I've seen a few links to bring you to the Seagate page to download the firmware, like the link in the post a few above mine, but there's a much better link to go and I wish I went to it First to checknot only their #2 check link there for the Model number, but then more importantly the next #3 check link for the Serial number, and for me my model number said Yes but the Serial number said No it was not affected, and that could of saved me the predicament I'm in.

So as mentioned go This Link to verify #2 and especially #3 before you make a decision to firmware update.

[dlethe]

The 7200.11 problems are being hyped all out of proportion. Seagate just released full details of the issue to OEMs. It is not anything like people are reporting it to be. Problem tied to certain test equipment and junk that it left on reserved areas of disk. More details on link below:

http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/seagate-...-overhyped-fud/

[poolcarpet]

Hyped all out of proportion?? I don't think so.

Do you know how many people have ended up spending their own $$ to fix this **** problem? How are they going to compensate these people? This is a serious failure in Seagate's QC and they way they handled it earlier is downright unacceptable in terms of customer service. I know, people will say it is customer responsibility to ensure data backup, etc etc. I agree with that. However, I will NOT accept my data being unavailable due to some firmware/test defect in their manufacturing process. I accept hardware failures, but not this as this is clearly a breakdown in their process or human negligence (if someone was manning that test machine).

So now, they are providing analysis on what happened. I don't even want to know - to me, all I want to know is how Seagate is going to fix my hard disk for me for FREE . How many people have actually received details on that free recovery? I've contacted them but have not got an email reply yet so I am waiting.

How am I to know that the next Seagate hard disk will not be subjected to this same problem? How do you expect customers to continue to believe in this company's products? Everyone is p***ed off at the way they handled this problem - denying it and arrogantly asking customers to send in their drive for RMA OR expensive (read=thousands $$$) data recovery services is NOT the way to go for this sort of problem. Admitting it early and telling customers that they are working on a plan to assist customers should have been the way to go.

dlethe, on Jan 26 2009, 08:16 AM, said:

The 7200.11 problems are being hyped all out of proportion. Seagate just released full details of the issue to OEMs. It is not anything like people are reporting it to be. Problem tied to certain test equipment and junk that it left on reserved areas of disk. More details on link below:

http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/seagate-...-overhyped-fud/

[dlethe]

How many people actually have a bricked drive due to a firmware bug vs. disks that died due to the traditional mechanical problems??? I don't know, do you know?
In any event the storagesecrets.org blog posted the Seagate 24x7 emergency data recovery telephone number, so you can contact them right now and chew them a good one. I'm not saying they don't deserve it, but if you want to find out what seagate is going to do to fix your disk, seems to me best way to find out is to call the data recovery people and ask them directly.

As for how do you know this won't happen again -- get real. Nobody knows. The only certainties in life are death & taxes

This post has been edited by dlethe: 25 January 2009 - 08:25 PM

[PrOfiLer]

Hellow from Portugal, help me please!
I have a Seagate 7200.11 st3500320as SD15 500GB BARRACUDA and my disk is dead, not detectable in BIOS.

I use this materials:









Nokia 3210 Unlock Cable to PS/2 connector
PS/2 connector to RS232 Serial connector

http://english.cxem....e/mobile129.php
http://free-zg.htnet...Jurkovic/nokia/
http://www.panuworld.net/nuukiaworld/hardw...les/general.htm





1-Green(BTEMP),2-Blue(TX),3-Black(GND),4-Red(MBUS),5-Orange(RX),6-Yellow(VPP) - (6 cables/colors)

I connect the GND pin from mother board for Black PS/2 cable.
I connect the +5v of Power LED pin from mother board for Yellow PS/2 cable.
I connect the TX (the blue cable in picture) for Orange PS/2 cable.
I connect the RX (the white cable in disk picture) for Blue PS/2 cable.

I connect the cables with hand made.

Example picture:



So I followed all the procedures of the 1st post of Gradius2, and the console's "HyperTerminal Private Edition" when I'm on, the computer begins to be something slow, CTRL+Z and nothing happens. As if there were no connection.

I´m stopped because of this problem disk and the data on my disk is very important to continue with my work for college.

Can all help me please? Thanks all very much!

Anth, on Jan 20 2009, 12:25 PM, said:

WHOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

ITS ALIVE!!!!!!!!

Extra special thanks to everyone who worked towards the BSY fix and all those people who took the time to help me and reply to all my questions.

I couldn't wait for my rs232 adapter that i ordered so i gambled and modified a nokia 3210 data cable and it worked. (Just with the RX TX connected..And SATA power to the drive of course).

Fortunately after I recovered the BSY fault, my drive was recognised as its proper size by my bios sata.

As we speak my data is being dumped from the drive to a different one.

Guy's i owe one hell of a lot of data to you lot.

THANK YOU!!!

[dlethe]

The obvious question comes to mind .. how do you know your disk suffers from boot-of-death, and not something like a circuit board failure or massive head crash?

[arnd]

dlethe, on Jan 26 2009, 01:16 AM, said:

The 7200.11 problems are being hyped all out of proportion. Seagate just released full details of the issue to OEMs. It is not anything like people are reporting it to be. Problem tied to certain test equipment and junk that it left on reserved areas of disk. More details on link below:

http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/seagate-...-overhyped-fud/

I'm not quite sure whether the root cause of the problem or the existence of the problem by itself has been the cause for the reactions. I think that the negligence and ignorance Seagate showed in regard to their customers ignited these reactions. It seems they did everything to harm their reputation IMHO. The storage business is built on trust and price competitiveness, where trust is a hard requirement. Furthermore they would have been aware that this was not to be expected hardware failures if they wouldn't have focused on removing posts from there forums and would have instead paid attention to their customers feedback.

[dlethe]

Arnd, your statement will only prove to be correct if the true number of bricked drives due to this problem is "significant". My contention is that the odds of this happening are remote .. incredibly remote. Perhaps when/if there is a lawsuit, you will see a study of how many disks Seagate took on RMA that had confirmed bricking incidents. Furthermore, you said that Seagate should be aware this this was not to be expected failures? Well, duh, bugs are never expected. If they were expected they wouldn't be bugs. If they were aware of the bugs they would fix them.

Speaking from perspective of a former firmware architect. This was a nasty thing to track down and probably took thousands of man-hours to diagnose. Give them some credit for putting enough manpower on the problem so it was diagnosed and fixed so quickly. Furthermore, you have no idea what bugs there are in other models of disk drives, many are much worse, some have 100% guarantee of data destruction. I know, I have the NDA reports and won't tell you any more ... except that the number of people who have this problem, due to the nature of the chain-of-events that must lead up to the event, is rather small compared to other issues.

Trust me, there isn't a disk drive or raid controller, or any product in the marketplace that is 100% bug-free. That is why people buy redundant hardware and make backups. You can get all "ignited" over the issue, but I rather vent my dissatisfaction with Microsoft. Look at the fear out there. You have a previous poster showing us pictures of his rigging of the serial port for a drive that may or may not be bricked ... no telling how much money he has spent. Odds strongly favor his problem has nothing to do with the firmware. If this issue wasn't so hyped up, perhaps he would have sent it to seagate who would have fixed it for free if it was a bricking problem, or at least they would quote him a repair price before he spent all of this time risking making the problem worse. People think because they have a dead drive, that it is due to a massive firmware bug that afflicts 30%-40% of the seagate disks out there, according to a certain lawfirm. Give me a break. no way. If the problem was that prevalent, then it would have been caught in test in a matter of minutes.

P.S. As for removing posts, I do not know the contents of the deleted posts. If the posts had inaccurate information about Seagate that was stated as fact, then Seagate should remove them. At the very least it degrades the value of the forum, especially when people google those specific posts looking for some answers. Bad/inaccurate info must always be removed for benefit of who comes in the future. What if it turned out that the problem was due to a bad motor? I wouldn't want to come to the Seagate site some time in the future and waste my time looking for a firmware update. Conversely, if Seagate removed posts due to a little public relations work, then I agree with you, the posts should have stayed. (Providing they had some inherent value to the forum. If the posts were complaints and rants from somebody who had a mechanical disk drive that didn't survive the warranty period, then I can forgive deleting it

[steveredman]

Hey guys,

I've been trying to get somewhere with a Seagate ST31000333AS for a couple of weeks now, after reading these forums I tried the serial fix but never got a response from the drive, I figured maybe my RS232 => TTL converter was not right for the job. I bought a second identical drive a while ago that still works so I figured after reading this morning that I'd try swapping the faulty drive's PCB onto the new drive and then flash it with the firmware, this was successful but after swapping it back onto the faulty disk it still is not detected by the BIOS. The drive itself makes a pulsing buzzing sound quietly when it is powered up, has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks,

Steve

[dlethe]

Steve: Respectfully ... are you nuts?? Send it to seagate or some other company that will fix this for you. (Of course it may be a moot point now, as you have possibly tampered with the disk too much and destroyed the replacement warranty). It costs you nothing but return postage for them to tell you exactly what is wrong, and if it really is the bricking problem, they may fix it for free (some people report this, I can not confirm or deny). If the problem is something else then you can't fix it yourself anyway .. unless you have a bunny suit, a clean room, and a half-million dollars worth of equipment.

[poolcarpet]

dlethe,

are you someone with interests in seagate? or a data recovery person who does not want to see people fix their own hard disk of this stupid problem? do you know how this thread started? this thread is what it is today, because numerous people have encountered this problem:

1. hard disk working fine
2. shutdown pc
3. with no apparent damage to any other components (ruling out electrical surges) and no physical damage to the hard disk, the hard disks totally disappears from the BIOS

From a few people reporting the exact same symptoms as above, to now a long list of people (look here http://www.msfn.org/...owtopic=128514) and even more people reporting success in unlocking their hard disks using the methods posted in here - you come in here to question whether we have diagnosed our problems correctly and start defending seagate??

tell me, if it's a hardware problem - why is it that so many hard disks 'fail' in/around december?

are you AlanM or BradC in disguise??

dlethe, on Jan 26 2009, 08:47 PM, said:

Steve: Respectfully ... are you nuts?? Send it to seagate or some other company that will fix this for you. (Of course it may be a moot point now, as you have possibly tampered with the disk too much and destroyed the replacement warranty). It costs you nothing but return postage for them to tell you exactly what is wrong, and if it really is the bricking problem, they may fix it for free (some people report this, I can not confirm or deny). If the problem is something else then you can't fix it yourself anyway .. unless you have a bunny suit, a clean room, and a half-million dollars worth of equipment.

[dlethe]

Nope, I actually write disk testing software for storage subsystem manufacturers. I do not sell any hardware, or do I sell 3rd-party software. On rare situations, I fix disk drives for friends and families, but my company only does data recovery for certain RAID controllers that lose their metadata. We do not fix or repair disk drives. Metadata recovery is something different. HP has purchased almost 100,000 CDs of a consumer-oriented diagnostic that they bundle with business class PCs, which puts things in perspective. I've written firmware for RAID controllers, and dozens of companies slap their names on RAID configurators that I wrote. I published one of the first S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic products back in 1998, but it really didn't ship until 1999.

(I think it was the first that supported SCSI, but can't prove it. here is a writeup by a Ziff Davis from the web archive about that package that was written almost 10 years ago http://web.archive.org/web/20010219010850/...2391076,00.html

Heck, some of the manufactures call me when they have certain problems, and a fair number of OEMs VARs, and people in the disk drive testing business (like some who process RMAs for Dell) use my code.

So enough about me, Have I earned at least a little bit of credibility? (P.S. I don't mean to be arrogant, and I apologize if I have presented myself in that way. Rather I wish to point out that I do know what I am talking about, and well, chances are good that I'm the big dog here when it comes to disk technology).

http://www.santools.com is my company, and I wrote vast majority of the code.

This post has been edited by dlethe: 26 January 2009 - 08:49 AM

[jaclaz]

poolcarpet, on Jan 26 2009, 03:16 PM, said:

are you AlanM or BradC in disguise??

Not actually that secret "identity":
http://storagesecrets.org/2/

Quote

The purpose of this site is to provide a forum for users to exchange information about their storage subsystems. The site is owned and maintained by David A. Lethe, of SANtools, Inc.

Basically it seems, from this:
http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/seagate-...-overhyped-fud/

that the site should be called hxxp://teasing_about_storage_secrets-that_I_know_but_wont_reveal.org

With reference to this:
http://storagesecrets.org/2/

Quote

Please help me design this sight right the first time! What do you like? What do you hate? How can I make it better, and how should it be arranged. I could really use some help on layout, especially when it comes to content that falls under multiple categories. Be brutal, but keep the contents rated P.G.

First suggestion that comes to mind is that, although I understand perfectly the problem with NDA's, I simply hate people telling me (or anyone else):

Quote

You are WRONG, DEADLY WRONG, but I won't prove it, as I am under a NDA. Here is some teasing to show you (without actually telling you anything useful) how I have an advantage on you.

My personal opinion is that should have Seagate managed more professionally and quickly the issues arisen and solved the problem timingly, everything would have been cool.
Once that the damage is done, their only way out is to publish some (if not all) the actual reasons why that happened and public excuses to all their customers affected.
The more they try to keep things secret, the more some cunning user will dig in the matter and possibly find and publish something that should not be (for security reasons).


jaclaz

[poolcarpet]

Great, you are big dog I guess. So you would be well equipped to understand that at least 100+ failures (working fine - reboot - bam! it disappears) around the same time just cannot be a hardware problem. it's only the tip of the iceberg, as you've mentioned - many others may have just RMAed the drives.

Those who came here made the biggest mistake any user can make - placing important data on a hard disk that is not RAID protected and with no backups. That I admit is my problem.

But also do understand that they biggest problem we have with Seagate is how they handled this - arrogantly censoring our threads/messages and just denying the problem despite many people hitting the same problem around the same time.

You credentials looked solid, so stop spoiling it by defending Seagate's actions of deleting threads and how they handled this. I am from the computing industry as well, and I am fully aware that there is no firmware with bugs, no hardware that does not fail. But I am also very very aware that customer service is also very important, although not legally required by Seagate.

dlethe, on Jan 26 2009, 10:45 PM, said:

Nope, I actually write disk testing software for storage subsystem manufacturers. I do not sell any hardware, or do I sell 3rd-party software. On rare situations, I fix disk drives for friends and families, but my company only does data recovery for certain RAID controllers that lose their metadata. We do not fix or repair disk drives. Metadata recovery is something different. HP has purchased almost 100,000 CDs of a consumer-oriented diagnostic that they bundle with business class PCs, which puts things in perspective. I've written firmware for RAID controllers, and dozens of companies slap their names on RAID configurators that I wrote. I published one of the first S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic products back in 1998, but it really didn't ship until 1999.

(I think it was the first that supported SCSI, but can't prove it. here is a writeup by a Ziff Davis from the web archive about that package that was written almost 10 years ago http://web.archive.org/web/20010219010850/...2391076,00.html

Heck, some of the manufactures call me when they have certain problems, and a fair number of OEMs VARs, and people in the disk drive testing business (like some who process RMAs for Dell) use my code.

So enough about me, Have I earned at least a little bit of credibility? (P.S. I don't mean to be arrogant, and I apologize if I have presented myself in that way. Rather I wish to point out that I do know what I am talking about, and well, chances are good that I'm the big dog here when it comes to disk technology).

http://www.santools.com is my company, and I wrote vast majority of the code.