Problem with Seagate HD: A Follow Up But Not the End Yet, 2009-01-20 - Your reactions

[linathael]

Seagate posted yesterday the first firmware update for some of its HD affected by the "sudden death syndrome". It concerned only Drives from the following series: ST3500320AS, ST3640330AS, ST3750330AS, ST31000340AS hosting one of the following firmware: SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19 or AD14. The new firmware is entitled SD1A. You can download the disk image (.iso) from the following address: http://support.seagate.com/firmware/MooseDT-32MB-SD1A.ISO

A second firmware dedicated HD belonging to the following series ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS is being evaluated and should be release soon.

To apply this firmware update, you need to burn the iso image on a CD with the integrated disk utility, then insert the CD and reboot while pressing "C" key. You will need to launch the file DriveDetect.exe and to follow the instruction (only works on a MacIntel). The firmware patcher does only work properly if one drive is directly connected via a SATA port. No other HD must be connected internally or externally. Last but not least, do not apply a firmware which is not associated with your HD model. According to The Register, Seagate offers customers with "bricked" HD to get their data recovered for free.

Unfortunately, Seagate servers went down due to the high number of requests, making most customers upset. Some customers with the precious firmware patcher tried to use it on their HD model, but it often did not work. Considering that it was a free day and impossible to reach Seagate support team, it did not contribute to make unfortunate Seagate customers happy. Once more this problem will have contributed to demonstrate to users that it is necessary to backup data as one can not rely only on a single storage volume.

[translation by Linathael]