Seagate offers fix, free data recovery for disks affected by firmware bug

After a ground-swell of angry Barracuda owners voiced concern over their failing disk drives, Seagate has fessed-to the issue. According to Seagate, a firmware bug in Barracuda 7200.11, DiamondMax 22, and Barracuda ES.2 SATA drives could make the disks "inaccessible when the host system is powered on." Right, inaccessible -- Seagate assures owners that data is not lost (it's still on the disk). However, should data loss occur, it's providing a free data recovery service. Hit the read link to find out if your drive is affected. If so, a link is provided to contact Seagate to expedite resolution on a case-by-case issue. Good on ya Seagate, way to flip a public relations fiasco into a customer support victory.

[Via The Register]

[John @ Jan 19th 2009 1:52AM]

Wow, offering free data recovery services, way to go Seagate, way to go.

[fapsalot @ Jan 19th 2009 2:11AM]

Phew. Imagine how much porn you can lose! 1TB, that's a serious collection. Good thing Seagate will recover all that lost porn.

[zioncat @ Jan 19th 2009 3:26AM]

Funny thing I have lost data in the past. I learned simply to back up your back up and everything is always fine.

[jack1701 @ Jan 19th 2009 4:13AM]

"Good thing Seagate will recover all that lost porn."

Yes I need my private homemade porn back so I don't need to redo all those hard work again.

[Andrew Lazetera @ Jan 19th 2009 4:52AM]

My friend started ragging on me because we have a rivalry going (He likes Western Digital, I like Seagate). I always pick on him whenever a WD dies (which is often, where I work), so he had a ball with this, and I sat back and smiled and said "Just wait". Thank you for having my back Seagate!!

[makomk @ Jan 19th 2009 6:28AM]

The thing is, it's not like the free data recovery really costs them much (well, apart from a few $BIGNUM payments they'd otherwise be able to extort from victims via their data recovery wing - in the $1000-2000 region per drive, from the reports I've read). If you have the right cables and software - and I'm betting they do - it's pretty much just a question of hooking up the drive and pushing a button. (The commerically-available tool requires you temporarily disconnect the board from the drive in some cases, but they might know a way around that issue too.)

What's more, they're probably repairing the drives that people have sent in anyway, since they're sending refurb drives out to people who've RMAed dead drives, and I can't see there being enought of those to go around otherwise.

[E71 @ Jan 19th 2009 7:43AM]

Anyone else having a problem with the READ link?

I guess their web server must be overwhelmed with requests.

[Michael Writhe @ Jan 19th 2009 1:45PM]

heh, i had 2 of these drives fail on me in my raid 5 array within only hours apart... i put them in the freezer and one of them worked long enough to rebuild my array to a new drive. High fail rate enough?

Glad to know that if i had lost any data, i could now hold them to getting it back. Good work seagate.... would have been better if the drives didn't fail at all though.

[kal326 @ Jan 20th 2009 9:42AM]

@makomk
I'm pretty sure they have the tools, software, and/or hardware to resolve the problem as they MADE THE DEVICE in question. Most likely they are probably just replacing the controller boards on the drives with onces with the correct firmware revision or have some method of correcting the issue directly with the controller board in question.

[Erb @ Jan 19th 2009 1:52AM]

I love the purple and green smoke effect.

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 19th 2009 3:03AM]

Yes, I love it too. What an artistically shape and colorful smoke! Just like a filthy paintbrush dipped in water.

[AV-Logistics @ Jan 19th 2009 1:52AM]

Thats good customer service. Always used seagate and never had a problem, but good to know they make right on their wrong

[paul @ Jan 19th 2009 2:02AM]

thats gonna be awkward when they gotta recover your pr0n collection off the fried HDD.

[Oli D @ Jan 19th 2009 2:22AM]

"Dear sir, (Or madam) we are writing to inform you that disk recovery was a success, however you will now be arrested after violating State law 22 times, P.S. I will be personally safeguarding the evidence.... mmmm"

[Boyo @ Jan 19th 2009 2:04AM]

Outstanding Seagate! I was worried about this as I use and always recommend Seagate. With times like they are, one good side effect is that customer service will once again have power to make or break a company. Seagate you have made me proud. Customer Loyalty is once again meaningful.

[XIYL @ Jan 20th 2009 12:09AM]

I was worried cause I recently bought one of the drives affected by the bug but after following the read link i found out that I already have a firmware on it that fixes it.

[Garst @ Jan 19th 2009 2:04AM]

It's too late Seagate, I've already bought two HDD from Western Digital. And free data recovery is not enough for me to regret the decision to go for the smaller HDD for my desktop. The laptop drive was less of a no-brainer, because the WD drive didn't have a Seagate drive to compete with so this issue wasn't a deciding factor.

[jeesusfreek @ Jan 19th 2009 4:26AM]

what are you talking about? WD is the one who first made a two-platter 500GB scorpio drive..
just installed one in a friend's MBP and it is SCREAMIN fast.

[Eli L @ Jan 19th 2009 6:22AM]

WD is not bad if you stick with 2-platter design or the BLACK edition.

[Garst @ Jan 19th 2009 8:09PM]

I never said there was anything wrong with WD. In fact, for the laptop drive it was my first choice. I just was saying that instead of going for the 1.5 TB drive from Seagate for $30 more, I opted to go for a 1 TB drive from WD because of the Seagate's failure rate. Wouldn't you go for an extra half a terabyte for $30?

Sorry if this is a repost, but I'm sure we'll all tired of Engadget's posting problem by now.

[brian @ Jan 19th 2009 2:06AM]

I emailed them Friday and am still waiting on a response about a firmware update.

[Junk Carter @ Jan 19th 2009 9:25AM]

Ditto

[Paul M @ Jan 19th 2009 12:47PM]

Same here. Emailed through the website, direct email to discsupport@seagate, and called them "Unfortunately, we are experiencing difficulties with our call delivery system..."

[Joshua Ochs @ Jan 19th 2009 2:49AM]

I don't know about a "victory". Salvaging what they can from a fiasco is more like it. I know I'm going to be wary of Seagate in the future, and until now every drive I bought was a Seagate.

[Bender @ Jan 19th 2009 2:09AM]

At first glance this sounds great, but after having personally called tech support and checking the Seagate forums over and over again...it's really evident that Seagate knew about this issue a long time ago and was hoping nobody else would notice.

Seagates just doing damage control now because they're tech support lines are being flooded (takes almost an hour to get through now a days) and their forum is full of angry customers demanding answers (and an updated firmware...which still hasn't been released to address the problem).

Never buying Seagate again!

[superhobo @ Jan 19th 2009 2:12AM]

Just doing what they should.

[Oli D @ Jan 19th 2009 2:19AM]

Shit... I sure hope im not about to get 20 emails from guys i made servers for saying their disks are busted

Well at least its not my fault....

[Bender @ Jan 19th 2009 2:20AM]

I stand corrected, the firmware has been released.

[scootinger @ Jan 19th 2009 2:26AM]

Too bad Seagate....I just returned a couple of 7200.11 drives that I'd bought a couple of weeks back and replaced them with other drives. While I do applaud what Seagate has done to resolve the problem, Seagate should have come out MUCH EARLIER about this problem rather than screwing around and denying the problem, leaving everyone in the dark. In that case I might have decided not to return the drives.

Plus they hasn't announced anything for people who own FreeAgent drives that have the affected disks inside of them. (Not to mention many other brands of external drives, of which it would be near-impossible to diagnose this problem.) We're waiting on you, Seagate....

[Harley3k @ Jan 19th 2009 2:32AM]

I've sent in my model/serial#/firmware version info to them repeatedly and no response.

And the firmware page is giving a "SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE" at the moment.

I wish they'd just post the damn firmware download, instead of requiring an e-mail.
It seems like they want to hide how widespread the issue is, but making you e-mail your info instead of just publishing which drives require it.

[Jarret @ Jan 19th 2009 2:47AM]

I have a LOT of data on these drives... I can forgive them for having a bug.. I've had a good experience with all of my seagate drives in the past. All I want to do is to be able to fix this but the mentioned site isn't even loading at the moment. Dammit seagate, just post the damn fix for us already.

[Gast @ Jan 19th 2009 3:24AM]

The following are potentially affected models. If you have one of these drives please choose it from the list for model-specific instructions.
Link for Drive Detect: http://support.seagate.com/kbimg/utils/drivedetect.exe

Barracuda 7200.11:

ST31000340AS
ST3750330AS
ST3640330AS
ST3500320AS

Firmwares affected - SD15-SD19, AD14
Firmware update - SD1A
----

Barracuda 7200.11:

ST31500341AS
ST31000333AS
ST3640323AS
ST3640623AS
ST3320613AS
ST3320813AS
ST3160813AS

CC or LC firmware not affected.
Other firmware and fix currently in testing
-----

Barracuda ES.2 SATA:

ST31000340NS
ST3750330NS
ST3500320NS
ST3250310NS

Firmware and fix currently in testing
--------

DiamondMax 22:

STM31000340AS
STM3750330AS
STM3500320AS
STM31000333AS

Affected firmware - MX15 (or higher)
Firmware update - MX1A
---

DiamondMax 22:

STM31000334AS
STM3320614AS
STM3160813AS

Firmware and fix currently in testing.

[gerrrg @ Jan 19th 2009 3:31AM]

So, I guess I'd be playing Russian Roulette if I bought one today, since they haven't recalled it officially.

[hustler @ Jan 19th 2009 3:42AM]

I'm waiting over a month.

[krooked44 @ Jan 19th 2009 4:03AM]

I have the following:
Barracuda 7200.11:

ST31000340AS

Firmwares affected - SD15
Firmware update - SD1A

I used the Drive detect to get that, then selected my drive on the links to be taken to
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951
which has a link to download firmware for my drive onto a Dos startup disk, with no other drives attached besides my cd drive and harddrive i scan (S) and it detects my drive with the following information as well using the disk.
i then choose to update firmware for my drive (A) and it gives me a bunch of command error numbers then
tells me the specific model isnt present. Expecting ST31000340AS

I feel like they are just trying to break my hardrive during a firmware update so they can drop responsibility for having to retrieve my data at this point.

[Solarnz @ Jan 19th 2009 4:54AM]

You'll find that you are having the same problem as many other people.
The problem is that this firmware is for drives which have a partnumber ending in -300 and the drive you are trying to apply the firmware to most likely will have a partnumber ending in -303

[krooked44 @ Jan 19th 2009 4:03AM]

Was able to pull up the actual words used
In Scan: "Device:0 Model:ST3100034AS FW:SD15"

When updating (A):
"Error: Specific model not found. ST3100034AS expected."

[Davey @ Jan 19th 2009 11:04AM]

I received the exact same error.

[cocoviper @ Jan 19th 2009 12:28PM]

Same error as well with the same drive/firmware (3100034AS/SD15).

Anyone tried it with the floppy bootdisk instead of the CD-ROM? I'm wondering if the firmware utility starts to search- finds the CDROM and then gives up.

[Michael Moody @ Jan 19th 2009 4:29AM]

I happen to have 28 of these drives in production in two 16-bay servers. Unfortunately, they're all behind hardware raid cards, which is going to make this week fun fun fun! (I've also happened to have 4 of the 28 DIE already)

Michael

[sam @ Jan 19th 2009 4:35AM]

i'm glad they are offering free data recovery, i hope they are just using a disk image maker to do this as i dont want them looking at my files.

i have a 1.5TB 7200.11 with firmware: CC1G, bought it around 2 months ago with 5yr warranty.

Seagate now only give 3 year warranties on new drives as of a few days ago, luckily those who purchased earlier still get 5yr warranty.

Their 7200.12 drives look nice, 500gb/platter!

[ChrisMGio @ Jan 21st 2009 12:46AM]

Wait...did your disk drive actually die? You said you have CC1G firmware, and Seagate's site says CC firmware is not affected. Is this untrue?

[A.R. @ Jan 19th 2009 4:50AM]

I have 2 500GB Seagate units with the affected model numbers sitting inside a LaCie Raid unit.
I wish LaCie would have sent me a unit with 2 Hitachi drives instead now as the other half of customers buying that unit were getting.
Maybe i'll bug them for it.

[Karel Jansens @ Jan 19th 2009 5:48AM]

I don't trust them with this firmware upgrade, Seagate's been into some sneaky doings lately. First, they were deleting posts in the user forum left and right and now I see that they deleteted from this knowledge base site the "tool" they had previously up where users supposedly could check the serial # of their drive to see if it was affected.

This "tool" did not work! It flagged dead drives as not affected and has thus probably caused more harm than without it. Now I read about people having problems with the new "firmware". This is rapidly turning into a humangous trust issue, insofar that Seagate no longer can be trusted at all...

[Deanodxb @ Jan 19th 2009 6:04AM]

Just to add not all Thailand manu drives with firmware SD-15 are affected. I have 8 of these drives in a RAID array and all were cleared OK with Seagate's online checker.

[Deanodxb @ Jan 19th 2009 6:08AM]

Doh! Just read Karel's comment above. If that's true then I have a serious issue ever trusting Seagate again...

[Pastry Chef @ Jan 19th 2009 6:13AM]

The updater didn't work for me. I have two 1TB models in a Mac Pro.

[AVG @ Jan 19th 2009 4:16PM]

Put 'em in a normal computer (aka: Windows) and try.

[Frederik @ Mar 24th 2009 6:43AM]

Worked nicely for me on a Mac Pro (model number ST31000340AS).

[Anthony Thomas @ Jan 19th 2009 6:43AM]

Just to add. I have two of the affected drives. The 1TB and a 500GB version. Turns out they both have the SD15 firmwares after a little bit of looking. It seems the drivedetect program they've made available doesn't want to look at what drives are on my PCI SATA cards, which is where 4 of my 5 Seagate drives live, including the two affected ones, which happen to be on two different cards with two different chipsets.

Surely they didn't expect everyone to have their drives connected to the motherboard?

Also, the drives are in a server hidden in the attic with a lack of keyboard monitor and mouse. It only recently got a CD drive. This should be fun, but not as fun as the people with huge RAID arrays!