Seagate Hard Disk Owners Beware | Forums

[TheFamilyMan]

It seems some recent seagate drives have a firmware bug which can brick the drive but fortunately does not destroy its contents. Here's the seagate KB article on the problem. This is definately worth looking into. I hope my drives are not on their list. S!

[-HH-Quazi]

Thanks for the headsup FamilyMan! It is appreciated very much!

[Aaron_GT]

I think there is a related issue which means if you try a firmware update it can lead to failure of RAIDs. A few people here run RAIDs.

[B16Enk]

Primarily Seagate 500Gb and 1Tb drives affected, there is a full list in the KB article.

There was a major gooley dropped whereby the firmware released would render the drives unreadable to the OS, this faulty firmware was withdrawn quickly (Monday IIRC) and new firmware was reposted.

I updated my 500Gb drive with the new firmware yesterday without any drama, and all now appears well

[bmoffa]

Oh, lucky me. I've got 3 of the 500GB drives in a RAID 5. However, they have been running as smooth as silk since I installed them back in September of 08. I can't determine the firmware version because they are in a RAID.

[B16Enk]

Seagate tools, will that not query the drives?

The DOS version I would think will...depends on what you are using as a raid controller..

The issue as I understand it is the S.M.A.R.T log, plays a game of Russian roulette each time system posts..

[bmoffa]

Originally posted by B16Enk:
Seagate tools, will that not query the drives?

The DOS version I would think will...depends on what you are using as a raid controller..

The issue as I understand it is the S.M.A.R.T log, plays a game of Russian roulette each time system posts..

No. The DOS version locks up on the License Accept screen and the Windows version gets a program error. This is probably because the RAID is hiding the drives. By the way, its the NVidia on-board RAID controller. Given that, I don't think the firmware update will work either unless I break the RAID first.

Like I said, things are working fine so I will leave well enough alone on this one. I've downloaded the firmware update so I'll have it if I need it.

Thanks

[bmoffa]

Well, again, I spoke to soon. This just bit me. I did a shut down and a restart and one of these drives just vanished. Still running on the other two. Thank God for RAID.

[B16Enk]

Firmware upgrade should work without breaking the array, it is a bootable CD image so would be near painless to try.

I guess you will have already done this by now..

[bmoffa]

Yes, I've already updated the 2 remaing drives. However, I did break the RAID first. The drives in the RAID are picked up by the RAID controllor before the boot.

Its worth noting that I did get some data corruption when I lost that drive--NOT GOOD. The Windows check disk went into a loop so something must have been really bad somewhere. Fortunately, I had a full system backup from 4 days earlier and incremental backups that I take daily. Nothing was lost.

I am now waiting for the replacement drive from Seagate which should be here tomorrow. I've also ordered another drive to use as either a hot spare for the RAID 5, or to use in a rebuilt RAID 10.