Barracuda bites Seagate

dobbie6060 · Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 551

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives are failing

by Matthew Humphries

If your machine contains a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive, and in particular the 1TB model, then you may have been experiencing problems recently.

Apparently lots of the drives are failing due to a fault with the firmware some of the drives use. With no warning the drive will just stop working and if you try to reboot your machine there is no response from the drive because it has gone into a fail safe mode.

If that wasn’t enough of a headache Seagate have also been sending out replacement drives that have exactly the same problem. So you go through the process of returning and replacing the drive, only to have the same thing happen all over again.
Data recovery companies are unofficially reporting up to a 40% failure rate with these specific hard drives...
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/seagate-barracuda-720011-hard-drives...e-faili

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Over the years, going all the way back to 1980, there have been certain models of hard drives from every major HD manufacturer that have had some problem.
Some were so bad that those companies are no longer in business.
What young techie today even knows the names, Connor, NEC, Xebec, Imprimis, Quantum and IBM?

The technology required to get 1 Terrabyte of storage into the same package that's been used for all hard drives for years, is surely a daunting task.

Those drives are still so new, that problems are inevitable.

Personally, I'll wait about another year before I buy one.
Even then I'll only get one that's had a good track record.

Thanks for a great post. Very Happy

The Doctor Cool

dobbie6060 · Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 551

ah,most venerable TimeLord,therein lies the problem:
it seems HD mftrs run cycles of good/bad batches-recall the spate of WD failures a few years back,then it was hitachi, now...
[sorta like jumping supermkt queues&hoping the one you pick will be moving quickest]

goretsky · Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:34 am Post subject:

Hello,

Hard disk drive models affected include:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series (160GB - 1.5TB capacities)
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 series (250GB-1TB capacities)
Seagate (formerly Maxtor) DiamondMax 22 series (160GB-1TB capacities)

Seagate has released knowledge base article #207931, "Firmware Recommendations for Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, and Diamond... 22 Dri" explaining how to obtain a firmware update for affected hard disk drives.

Seagate is providing free data recovery services for anyone affected by the problem.

I have a Seagate ST31000340AS hard disk drive, which is one of the affected models and it does have one of the firmware revisions that is affected. I downloaded the updated firmware to flash my hard disk drive. I also purchased a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB hard disk drive which will replace the Seagate hard disk drive.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

sorahl · Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 3

There is a lot of misinformation.

I want to see some info from the people who have loaded the new firmware, and had it running for more than a day.
Also, what isn't mentioned in this article is that I have not read any failure reports from those NOT using this drive in a RAID array...
the folks who are using this drive in a simple configuration have not had the failures.
this drive is the only 1.5 TB option available to us under the 150 price range. I need a drive this big but not at the cost of lost data. We need accurate information!

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I'm just amazed that the bios (firmware) on those drives is flashable.
Most HD firmware is NOT even on re-writable chips.
They are ROMS, not EProms.

I did some research a while back about getting a Firmware upgrade for a HD and found that there was none.
In fact that the firmware is set at the factory and CANNOT be changed in the field.

Oh well, I guess things change.....

Doc Cool

goretsky · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 9:05 pm Post subject:

Hello,

I suspect if you look at any hard disk drive manufactured within the last five to six years or so, you will see they contain a surface-mounted EEPROM somewhere on their logic board.

Firmware has been loaded into EEPROMS on hard disk drives at least as far back as the mid-1990s; I remember having to update it on SCSI hard disk drives and CD-ROMs back then. Whether or not to implement a ROM or an EEPROM largely comes down to cost issues, however, as the cost of having to replace chips en masse is a lot less expensive than flashing them with new firmware, it probably just becomes an "absorbed cost" for the manufacturer. The only exception I can think of would be a long-lived model which the manufacturer has stopped developing firmware for because it is no longer actively being developed and they wanted to implement further cost reductions. Even then, though, I would surprised if the EEPROM was removed, as it is convenient for "just in case" type updates, or to change the performance characteristics of a drive for specific purposes (RAID, AV recording, embedded/CE device use and so forth).

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky