A warning to all seagate hard drives users and buyers

**The Sorcerer** · 02-11-09, 09:31 AM

It has hit the news long back but forgot to post here:

SEAGATE'S FLAGSHIP desktop Barracuda 7200.11 drives, in particular the 1TB (ST31000340AS) units, are failing at an alarming rate and prompting outrage from their faithful customers.
A new self-bricking feature apparently resides in faulty firmware microcode which will rear its ugly head sometime at boot detection. Essentially the drive will be working as normal for a while, then - out of the blue - it'll brick itself to death. The next time you reboot your computer the drive will simply lock itself up as a failsafe and won't be detected by the BIOS. In other words, there's power, spin-up, but no detection to enable booting.

]Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing - The Inquirer
Seagate did release a new firmware for these hard drives, but many people reported that the new firmware update does brick the hard drive. Free recovery is given, but only to retail pack and not OEM drives. People who has their seagate drives are requested to backup their files in another source. The following gives you necessary information to flash, but do so on your own risk since it made many hard drives worthless and since many in India buy OEM drives, you are not entitled to free backup if the hard drive gets bricked:
Seagate Knowledge Base

**thats_me** · 02-15-09, 10:17 PM

I have Seagate Sata 400 GB 7200. And its running fine. But good info for those who want to buy new hdd.

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-15-09, 10:31 PM

I just checked my 250GB HDD after reading this post. It is a Barracuda 7200.9 I hope i am out of the danger zone.

**robert_0007** · 02-15-09, 10:59 PM

Mine is also Barracuda 7200.9 and I am also not facing no problem

**Gary4gar** · 02-15-09, 11:05 PM

It only applies to 7200.11 series and that too selected models. so others don't need to worry!

saurav_k · 02-16-09, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by Gary4gar

It only applies to 7200.11 series and that too selected models. so others don't need to worry!

thank god ... i really got worried for my 160 gb seagate 5200 model which i use as a external HDD with casing ...

**StarK** · 02-16-09, 12:08 PM

Western Digital ftw!!! :thumbup1: (ftw=for the win

)

saurav_k · 02-16-09, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by StarryKnight

Western Digital ftw!!! :thumbup1: (ftw=for the win

)

yes ... Western digital came up as a great competition in the HDD market proving to be a pain in the A** for seagate, samsung and maxtor

**puchu** · 02-16-09, 04:43 PM

ST380817AS -failed to boot after 2 years of use,then replaced with
ST380811AS -failed to detect after every 30-40 days,replaced 5 times,then for the last replacement I insisted upon changing the model,got ST380815AS -working fine for last 1year,but still there is some problem with SEAGATE HDDs.
I have got another HITACHI 250GB(more than 2 years), works better than SEAGATE(the latest one).

**StarK** · 02-16-09, 05:13 PM

Originally Posted by saurav_kataruka

yes ... Western digital came up as a great competition in the HDD market proving to be a pain in the A** for seagate, samsung and maxtor

they are very high quality... u can see that in my samsung hate thread too (my sig

)... i've seen many seagate's die abruptly.

and puchu just provides more evidence. :thumbup1:

saurav_k · 02-16-09, 08:29 PM

i agree ... but actually i tend to have a soft corner for seagate ... the very first hdd bought in my home was of seagate 1.2gb(as far as i remember) ... and it worked for long time ...

newprouser · 02-16-09, 08:49 PM

I was worried initially when this news came out a few days ago.. but luckily mine's not among those affected.

Hmm so many guys have problem wid seagate eh

my 8 yr old seagate 20gb s working fine..

saurav_k · 02-16-09, 11:03 PM

Originally Posted by newprouser

I was worried initially when this news came out a few days ago.. but luckily mine's not among those affected.

Hmm so many guys have problem wid seagate eh

my 8 yr old seagate 20gb s working fine..

wow ... thats quite some duration ...

... even my first 1.2 gb seagate hdd gave very good service ...

**StarK** · 02-16-09, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by saurav_kataruka

wow ... thats quite some duration ...

... even my first 1.2 gb seagate hdd gave very good service ...

then it means that the drives used to be good... but now they suck. even i have a friend who swore by seagate 6 years ago.... but now we all know its not that good... WDC all the way.

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-16-09, 11:27 PM

Even one of my 40GB Seagate drives, bought back in 2001 is still rocking!! Touch wood

**StarK** · 02-16-09, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by cool_techie_tvm

Even one of my 40GB Seagate drives, bought back in 2001 is still rocking!! Touch wood

and this further proves my point !

saurav_k · 02-17-09, 02:23 AM

Originally Posted by cool_techie_tvm

Even one of my 40GB Seagate drives, bought back in 2001 is still rocking!! Touch wood

Originally Posted by StarryKnight

then it means that the drives used to be good... but now they suck. even i have a friend who swore by seagate 6 years ago.... but now we all know its not that good... WDC all the way.

i really dont think that seagate HDDs suck these days ... ya ... of course it is facing some tough competition from WD ... but seagate HDDs are still good ... my current experience with the 160gb laptop hdd which i am using as an external one is quite satisfying ...

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-17-09, 08:40 AM

U see HDDs need to be tended with great care and caution. Most of the drives will last longer if they are regularly subjected to disk defragmentation and error checks. Make sure u do the same atleast once in a month and u will have a long lasting drive.

**StarK** · 02-17-09, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by cool_techie_tvm

U see HDDs need to be tended with great care and caution. Most of the drives will last longer if they are regularly subjected to disk defragmentation and error checks. Make sure u do the same atleast once in a month and u will have a long lasting drive.

i regularly did everything u say with my samsung, and today i face an ever increasing number of bad sectors. anything i download onto that drive results in a data error.

i have checked it a lot of times, windows marks the bad sectors but new bad sectors are cropping up everyday with the samsung which was sparingly used for 2 years, in comparison to my stock wdc which is still running at peak performance after 4 1/2 years.
so if you have bad quality hardware those disk checks will do nothing, in fact they will probably further the damage of a failing drive by putting more stress to it.

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-17-09, 10:43 AM

Voltage fluctuations and shocks are also some of the common causes for HDDs failing.

**StarK** · 02-17-09, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by cool_techie_tvm

Voltage fluctuations and shocks are also some of the common causes for HDDs failing.

then why dint the other stock one fail? if this reply concerned me.

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-17-09, 11:18 AM

@StarryKnight Google for a software termed HDAT2. We use it regularly over here to fix up bad sectors and other minor niggles pertaining to HDDs..

**StarK** · 02-17-09, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by cool_techie_tvm

@StarryKnight Google for a software termed HDAT2. We use it regularly over here to fix up bad sectors and other minor niggles pertaining to HDDs..

thanks for the tip... will it not run from inside windows?

**cool_techie_tvm** · 02-17-09, 12:13 PM

Nopes, we need to boot from the software and run it. Mind u, it might take much time. Each and every sector is examined minutely and repaired.

**cableguy** · 02-17-09, 03:06 PM

If you have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive, better to check if your model is one of those affected and update it with the latest firmware provided by Seagate.

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