Ok,
So I had another Seagate Barracuda die on me a couple of nights ago. This was strange because I've only ever lost a couple of drives in the past 10 years and both have been very recent.

It seems that Seagate have some fault in their firmware and its causing very large numbers of the drives to self brick on reboot. What a piss off. Anyone else had this happen in the last 3 or 4 months?

Apparently the effected firmware is the "SD15" version

Yeah, they were recalled, and I think Seagate have offered to pay for data recovery on affected drives or some s*** under warranty. I read that somewhere, don't know if it's true or not.

Yeah there was a lot of stuff on OCAU a month or two ago about it.

Its made me go WD for a while until they sort their s*** out.

mine died last week

There was a firmware update that helped or something, I've flashed my affected drives and they're still going ok thus far.

I just found a page with the free data recovery info, but as you say, we cant tell if its true or not.

I think some other guys are trying to come up with their own unlock for the drives. Thats the frustrating thing. All the data is there, the drive would work fine, but the firmware is borked, thats all.

I've found something on Seagates own site that talks about the issue, so thats something.
Link to Knowledge base page at Seagate

No mention of free data recovery though.

I can vouch for this as truth 100%

Go to the Seagte website, look in the lower right corner once you are on the support section and look for "firmware update yayayaya"
Punch in your serial number and if your drive is one of the batches that were affected, you can follow through and send your HDD away and have it recovered at no charge.

Turnaround was roughly 4 days for the customer I know of and they recovered the entire drive, regardless of content.

Alternatively, you can take it back to your retailer and get an exchange without any hope of data recovery

That is all
:P

There was a firmware update that helped or something, I've flashed my affected drives and they're still going ok thus far.

Yeah, I'm sure once a working drive is flashed it will be ok. The problem I have is the drive is already borked.

Hermi: If you've flashed the drive to the new firmware does that mean the drive is fixed or is it more a hardware fault the newer firmware just gets around somehow and there's still a chance the drive is more likely to fail than normal?

Yeah Hermi, my drive serial number comes up as one of the ones effected but it only gives me a link to download the updated firmware. Do I have to ring customer support to arrange that do you think?

Ouchies, I have ST3500320AS, firmware SD15. *sigh*

Upgrading now. If you don't hear from me for 24 hours call the police.

Saw this when I wanted to get a 1Tb hdd, made me get a WD hdd..

Sorry for the late response,

If you've flashed the drive to the new firmware does that mean the drive is fixed

Updating to the latest firmware is supposed to resolve the situation.

Do I have to ring customer support to arrange that do you think?

You should just need to go to the next step as prompted by the Seagate website after you enter in your serial and it notifies you that your HDD is an affected model.

2 weeks ago i had two of them die (raid 1)

Yeah, I was complacent with it myself and lost 1 of 2x1TB HDD (which was almost full) :(
Firmware update on second worked ok and haven't had a prob since.

At that stage I didn't realise that Seagate would do the recovery for free so I just swapped the drive out :/

I bought one about a month ago, long after the problem was known about - the first thing I did after getting it was make sure the firmware was the fixed version.

I haven't had any problems yet, and hopefully that'll remain the case.

Ouchies, I have ST3500320AS, firmware SD15. *sigh*

Ditto. f***.

WAIT WAIT
Result ---------------- Action
Drive is not affected. -- No action required

YESSSSS

last edited by MrHardware at 21:07:02 05/Apr/09

4 x 500 gig drives but all is ok

yeah lucky i don't have to worry about my 4x750gb wd's

Ouchies, I have ST3500320AS, firmware SD15. *sigh*

Ditto. f***.

WAIT WAIT
Result ---------------- Action
Drive is not affected. -- No action required

YESSSSSlast edited by MrHardware at 21:07:02 05/Apr/09

Oh good man. Cos I have been f***ing around trying to boot ISO from USB key - no spare CD's, hahaha.

Awesome result. Thank you, sir.

That's only cos i found out my drive's serial number and checked it and Seagate said that my drive is not part of the affected batch. See the knowledge base article in the ever helpful E.T.'s post and follow the steps.

i think my gf's computer i built her late last year has one of these hard drives, it's f***ing up but it's got bad sectors

is this the same problem?

^ Nope
Bad sectors are just something that happens.
Certain Seagate HDD's bricking themselves after powering off is a completely unrelated to this.

Glad I have samsung 1tbs :)

Just an epilogue to this thread. I received my drive back from Seagate on Friday and its all restored and working normally now. Seagate excepted the fault was their own, paid for the courier service each way.

I guess they didnt have to do a data restore as it was never gone. They just needed to unbork their stupid Firmware based autobricker.

Anyway, faith restored for now.

Hey E.T,
Just out of curiousity, how long was your driver away for? And did you have much hassle getting in touch with Seagate and getting the HDD picked up?

^ Nope
Bad sectors are just something that happens.
Certain Seagate HDD's bricking themselves after powering off is a completely unrelated to this.

so is there nothing any other hardware(ie. bad ram) can do that can cause bad sectors?

it's pretty much just bad luck?

Anyone else had this happen in the last 3 or 4 months?

I work mostly with brand new seagates. Last week I had around 7 / 15 that were Dead on Arrival. Starting to frustrate me a little bit to be honest.

And just so everyone knows.. only the 500gb drives were failing. And the old style - the fat ones, not the new ones that are as skinny as the 160gb drives :D they rock.

only the 500gb drives were failing

^ not true:
The following models are susceptible to bricked firmware. You can check your HDD's serial here to see if it's affected.

ST3500320AS,
ST3500620AS,
ST3500820AS,
ST3640330AS,
ST3640530AS,
ST3750330AS,
ST3750630AS,
ST31000340AS,

^^^ in my shop hermi I didnt mean in all instances.. just that in the last few days 7, 500gb drives have failed.

so is there nothing any other hardware(ie. bad ram) can do that can cause bad sectors?

Yup heaps of things,
Exceeding HDD's shock rating, dust, cigarette smoke (man that s***s nasty), power failure etc
You end up with two types of bad sectors in the end. One is caused through some sort of physical problem, the other is a software bad sector (mostly caused by incomplete read/write errors).

Software bad sectors can often be repairable via a zerofill format otherwise some diagnostic tools can repair at theend of the scan. You won't know if it's a software or hardware error until after you do a scan and your HDD's diagnostic tells you that it repaired sectors.

Generally, if a second scan is performed and it finds no further bad sectors you should be ok to continue using the HDD relatively worry free. If the first scan can't repair the sector it will usually mark it as a bad sector so the it doesn't try and write any further data to that area (you should always replace these HDD's ASAP).

got any scanner/repair program you reccommend hermi?

stellar phoenix

that says it's a data recovery program, the hard drive works now that i did a chkdsk and changed the ram

also backed up the s*** onto my computer just in case

Hey E.T,
Just out of curiousity, how long was your driver away for? And did you have much hassle getting in touch with Seagate and getting the HDD picked up?

It was away about 1 week (easter was in the way, but overall only about 5 working days)
I ended up having to ring Seagate, they then put the wheels in motion once they knew the model number ect I had no arguments from them.

I'm impressed to see a company do that but I'm still suss about this autobricking firmware and how it ever came about. I mean, if your a hardware provider, why write code that locks the device and renders it unusable? At what point would this be a benefit to the consumer? I know Sony does s*** like that, but not an OEM.

Bios won't recognise the drive any more.

I didn't even know I had a problem as the drive is in its black box. How do you keep on top of all the hardware issues?
Worth checking manufactures site for any problems with any drive or hardware for that matter.

NICE ONE seagate :|

Steve

Bios won't recognise the drive any more.

I didn't even know I had a problem as the drive is in its black box. How do you keep on top of all the hardware issues?
Worth checking manufactures site for any problems with any drive or hardware for that matter.

NICE ONE seagate :|

Steve

Try unplugging the drive, booting up without it. Then reconnecting it and boot it up. For whatever reason this fixed mine when it decided to not be recognised in the bios.

I didn't even know I had a problem as the drive is in its black box.

Eh?

Worth checking manufactures site for any problems with any drive or hardware for that matter.

Manufacturers don't tend to display this on the front page of their site even when there are problems like this. Your best bet is to stick to popular hardware forums.

well, they did with this one step. Read the whole thread. You'll find links to help you out.

This drive is an external USB.
I've taken it out of the box and tried it in a PC with sata.
The sata start up finds the drive which it recognises as a ST31000340AS but won't show the capacity as it does for the installed drives.

I tried the s/n in their checker and it says it doesn't need any action???

^^ that's weird coz a few months ago my seagate external drive bricked, turned out to be the usb controller card inside the hard drive case though, drive itself works fine sitting in my computer. Maybe your usb controller (in the drive, not on the motherboard) bricked itself and took the data / partition table with it and it's not actually the firmware at fault.

not really relevant anymore, but my 500gb Seagate hhd bricked. turned out it was the firmware issue, called seagate on a pro-tip from hermitech (<3 compy alliance) and they fixed it with no loss of data in around 4 or so days from the time it was picked up by them.

pretty good customer service imo.