arnd

Did anybody notice, that Seagate seems to have updated the firmware (at least for ST3500320AS) on http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/self...sp?DocId=207951? I just downloaded the file again, it has a different checksum and a different date (2009-02-10 00:01), I haven't yet checked for differences in content.

I'm not quite sure whether the root cause of the problem or the existence of the problem by itself has been the cause for the reactions. I think that the negligence and ignorance Seagate showed in regard to their customers ignited these reactions. It seems they did everything to harm their reputation IMHO. The storage business is built on trust and price competitiveness, where trust is a hard requirement. Furthermore they would have been aware that this was not to be expected hardware failures if they wouldn't have focused on removing posts from there forums and would have instead paid attention to their customers feedback.

I'm becoming more and more clueless: I have one of the famous ST3500320AS (which didn't fail as it was running 24/7), which I bought to replace a failed Samsung HD501LJ (failed after 478 hours of use, already 3 reallocated sectors and 71 pending sectors, and unable to read important sectors at all). I now tried WD disks and bough a RE3 (to be used in RAID) and a 640GB Caviar Black (WD6401AALS)... I immediately returned the RE3 as it was sold without warranty... And I will return the Caviar Black because I cancelled the bad block scan after just 32GB (of 640 GB): Between 73 and 125 uncorrected read errors reported to OS, 208 raw read errors, 2 reallocated sectors, 2 current pending sectors, and the log shows "UNC" unrecoverable data errors. Up to now only laptop 2.5" drives failed on me after years of use, which I can understand due to shock and wear. I had very good experience with Seagate in the past (mainly SCSI drives like Cheetah 15k) but the current 7200.11 events made me reluctant to stay with Seagate (even though these stories were regarding firmware and not data on the platters). Both Samsung and WD failed with lots of unrecoverable data errors on brand new drives... So... Which hard disk manufacturer and which drive models can I rely on? 73, Arnd

Thanks for this feedback! And of course many thanks to fatlip, pichi and the others involved. My 500GB 7200.11 (ST3500320AS, SD15, 5QM2****) has not yet died and according to Seagates serial number check is should not be affected. But I don't have any confidence...

Gradius, a question: Will the quick format wipe out / erase the existing data? Thanks, Arnd