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Seagate Hard Drive Fiasco Grows
AnInkle writes "Two months after acknowledging that their flagship 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11s could hang while streaming video or during low-speed file transfers, Seagate again faces a swell of complaints about more drives failing just months after purchase. Again, The Tech Report pursued the matter until they received a response acknowledging the bricking issue. Seagate says they've isolated a 'potential firmware issue.' They say there's 'no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive;' however, 'the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on.' If users don't like the idea of an expensive data-laden paperweight, Seagate is offering a firmware upgrade to address the matter, as well as data recovery services if needed. By offering free data recovery, Seagate seems to be trying to head off what could become a PR nightmare that may affect several models under both the Seagate and Maxtor brands."
And, of course, the Seagate referenced page says: "This can be done in Windows - it's easy! Download and run, or simply run as is, the Seagate Drive Detect software program." No mention of Linux, MacOS, Solaris, or BSD. So I guess there is an implied "If you are not using Windows - it's hard!".
Then later in the page, "you can download SeaTools for Windows" with a convenient link. Again, no mention of Linux, MacOS, Solaris, or BSD.
What they don't tell you is that you can create a self-booting (MS)-DOS floppy/CD so you can test your drive, regardless of your OS (as long as the system is X86). Get it here: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/seatooldreg but if you DO need to flash it, you have to contact Seagate via Email and wait for a response and code so you can use yet another program to flash the drive.
Oops, hdparm not sdparm. And note the option is uppercase "i". /dev/sda /dev/sdb
hdparm -I
For your second:
hdparm -I
Better yet: /dev/sda | grep Model
sudo hdparm -I
Save yourself the time and effort, the required firmware updates are on bittorrent http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4627627/Seagate_1.5TB_ST31500341AS_Firmware_Update
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Oh, it gets better. We purchased two expensive 15,000 RPM SCA drives recently to work as backups for our RAID arrays on our Linux servers. Called Seagate *FIRST* to verify compatibility, as well as with Adaptec. Then a few months later when we needed to use one to replace a failed drive, it would NOT negotiate properly, making it useless.
Hours on the phone with Seagate we FINALLY get confirmation that there is a "firmware problem" with the drives we have and we should "upgrade the firmware". We go through the crap of getting a "key" and being sent the firmware only to find that their self-booting program would not run on our servers. Their suggestion? Find some other SCSI SCA machine just lying around and try it there. WE DON'T HAVE any such machines. We asked if we could mail the expensive, useless drives to them so THEY could upgrade the firmware. The response was "you can send in the drives for exchange, but we can't guarantee the drives sent back will have the firmware you need". This is support?????
I think you have that backwards, no? Seagate bought Maxtor, not the other way around.
However, this replacement for me was the opposite process, only worse. They also had a list of other things I had to comply with in order to get a replacement for a drive that failed when only 2 months old:
Needless to say, I wasn't happy with that. I spent some time on the phone with them, after spending two days running around town trying to find shipping materials that would comply with their asinine requirements (they stated they would void the warranty on my drive if I failed to comply with the packing requirements). Eventually I convinced the person on the phone - we'll call him Raj - to talk to his manager about the situation. Raj then was able to to get his manager to eventually approve of sending the drive first, so I would have the proper packing materials to send my drive back in.
And then when the replacement arrived, there was a copy of a note that Raj had written while on the phone with me where he described me as "extremely irate". If I ever have to deal with them again, they'll see what irate really is when it comes from me...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You're suffering from some data retrieval issues:
Maxtor bought Quantum in 2000.
Seagate bought Maxtor in 2006.
Hitachi bought IBM HDD division in 2002.
Sadly, many of the Seagate HDDs are losing the 5 year warranty and moving to three. Here.
I don't understand why manufacturer's keep insisting on writing the apps for Windows or DOS, with the growing trend to use these drives in other systems.
I use Supermicro systems in my datacenter, and the coolest thing is, all of their flash utils, and CDROM discs boot FreeDOS. This alleviates the problem that you just might not be running Windows on your server. I wish all manufacturers would get the hint.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
I tried getting through their contact page. It was incredibly frustrating, and they won't even let you contact them unless you agree to some ridiculous terms absolving them from anything and everything, allowing them to email you whenever they want, stuff like that, in order to signup for an account.
Google's a little more helpful. This page at least might be kinda sorta related: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/other_downloads/cuda-fw
Then I tried to search for some of the terms in the title of the page (eg. "SD14") and it couldn't find any pages. That's some search function you've got there, Seagate -- it isn't by any chance hooked up to an empty database is it? Did you by chance have it on a 7200.11 drive?
On top of that, all of Western Digital's performance-tuned "Caviar Black" line of drives are now carrying 5-year warranties (in addition to their enterprise-class and Raptor drives, which have always had 5-year warranties). I used to be a big Seagate fanboy and only bought their drives when possible, but lately I've been a lot more impressed with Western Digital's product lineup. My next hard drive purchase will probably be WD.
That's a totally different issue, albeit still an annoying one. The SD15 issue results in the drive reporting BSY continuously (seems to be kind of NCQ-related bug in the firmware) , which prevents the computer's BIOS from being able to see it on power up, which does effectively brick the drive. The problem only shows itself on power-up (the drives don't die while the machine is running), and the only way to bring the drive back to life once it's in that state is to connect to it via the drive's on-board serial port, and reset the BSY signal manually via the terminal interface. Once that's been done, the drive can then be flashed with the new firmware without data loss, but otherwise it's a paperweight unless you happen to have the little external RS-232 interface board needed for this adventure along with a bit of courage.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I recently picked up the 2.5in Elite Series 500GB Western Digital portable hard drive from Costco when it was on sale and it's been running great so far.
Also, picked up a 1TB Seagate SATAII drive as my primary HD for the PC I am using now. I thought about the 1.5TB and then I remember all the problems people are having with them so I picked up the 1TB instead. The little price difference wasn't worth it to me.
Hmmmm.
I'm CTO of a Telco and we buy and use a lot of HDDs - Server and Desktop.
On the Desktop, the Maxtor Story has been simply appalling. Fortunately we backup data properly and keep spares in the server room - so when a HDD dies, it's nothing more than a PITA. I don't even bother checking whether there's any kind of warranty. I don't want a replacement from Maxtor even if it is free.
On the Server - well I was persuaded to buy some Seagate/Maxtor drives specifically intended for RAID. Everything cross checked for compatibility.
Result ? Several lost night's sleep while I drove 100 miles to Data Centres to reset RAIDs where one of the HDDs has dropped out for no apparent reason. "Hot Spare" prevented serious consequences, but the situation was not sustainable. A firmware flash improved things - but not enough. We've still got those drives lying around in boxes somewhere and give them to employees who want a HDD.
So we went with WD and their (very) top end stuff.
Result : Not hugely different.
Current policy here is Raptors on the Desktop. They seem to be performing well.
Top-end SAS only on the Servers and Raid. Even then only with every component fully cross-checked for specific support. If we are anything less than mega-fussy, it bites us!
A.
AJB
I doubt it. I own a hosting company and we buy about 5-10K drives a month from Seagate. We'll continue to buy drives from them, just not the ones they're having problems with (the 1.5TBs). Their service for us has been fantastic (and should be because of our volume with them). Feel free to not buy another drive from them. You'll be stuck in the same boat as US cellular customers. There's only a handful of businesses to choose from, and you have to buy from one of them if you need the product *shrugs*
I bought two of the Seagate 1.5 TB drives. I put them through the standard 7-day torture test pre-deployment before they went into production, which revealed a problem. A quick google search revealed that I wasn't the only one.
Seagate support emailed me a firmware update that completely solved the problem. (knock on wood) They then easily passed the next round of torture test, and have been in production ever since as part of a D2D backup storage array.
What parent poster says is true - ALL manufacturers have the occasional bad seed. In my experience, hard drive failures are usually due to mfg defects, much less so due to "wearing out". I have the most problems within the first month of purchase, or 5 years later, but I have plenty of drives from about 1 GB on up that have seen so many years of heavy, continuous use that their size is no longer relevant, but still work beautifully.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Some people really do have x86 servers that aren't Windows... Being able to build a DOS "disk" for flashing purposes on such "1%" machines (because it's not feasible to put Windows on) is extremely important in such scenarios and doesn't seem unreasonable.
There really is a not-insignificant chunk of other stuff out there.
Hmmmm.
I'm CTO of a Telco and we buy and use a lot of HDDs
Result ? Several lost night's sleep while I drove 100 miles to Data Centres to reset RAIDs where one of the HDDs has dropped out for no apparent reason.
No matter what it says on your business card, you're not a CTO, poser.
This can also be seen by them needing "Raid-Edition" drives, because their normal SATA drives keep dropping out of RAID arrays. No other manufacturer has this issue with healty drives
Seagate recently had the same problem with some of their drives. Spontaneously dropping out of RAID arrays is often a symptom of the drive experiencing occasional read/write errors and taking too long on the retry, which prompts the controller to kick it from the array. This can manifest itself on a single-drive system as a temporary lockup while the drive figures out what to go do with itself. The "RAID-edition" drives shorten the retry cycle substantially, which keeps the RAID controller happy.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas