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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Troubles


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How do I know which problem I have. The only thing my HDD does and not boot up. It worked up until this morning, and after a reboot, got stuck at "Boot System Failure", when I ran a diagnostics, it did not find the "HDD".

Thanks

Tony

Does the harddrive spin up when you power on the system? If it does, yet the BIOS does not find it, and you do NOT hear any constant click-click-click noise (it would be quite noticeable) then you most likely have the "BSY" problem and would need to reset the drive through it's serial port. That dlethe guy cannot make the ASSumption you have a hardware failure as he did not bother to ask you any specifics about what is happening in your situation.

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I'm just going to quickly post this before I goto bed, sorry if I've put it in the wrong place.

After refusing to accept that my only option was to send my ST3500320AS (part number ending in 303) to seagate for a month, I thought I'd give the UART connection a go but couldn't find a ready made RS232 - TTL level converter in my town. Not wanting to wait 'till next week for something from ebay, I decided to follow this simple example to build my own.

I'm happy to report that this example worked perfectly at 5v TTL voltage from the MAX232 chip with the only difference from the schematics on that page being that I pulled power from a stripped usb lead which I plugged in separately.

The parts cost less than $20 AUD and were all available, in stock, from my local 'Jaycar' dealer. If you're not experienced with this sort of thing, just get a 'breadboard' like I did, a couple of lengths of different coloured wire, some pins and some heatshrink to ensure insulation and you can't really go wrong. Just remember to check the polarization of your capacitors and apply as indicated with the + on the diagram.

To test the device I connected the TTL Tx and Rx together and transmitted some random data, e.g. 'hello', and had it echoed back through the Rx but it is important to note that if the power isn't connected to the device then it will echo back the same no matter what. So also test with the TTL Tx and Rx disconnected to make sure it isn't doing that, thus confirming that the chip is actually getting power.

I followed the instructions and pics here to remove the BSY state on my drive but also checked everything against the instructions on the LBA 0GB fix page. I did notice that between the different sets of instructions, there is one discrepancy. The first power cycle of the drive is said to be done before the 'G-list Erase' command on one set of instructions, but after it on the other. I power cycled the drive before AND after, while holding my breath, and it worked fine.

Excellent. Thanks Gradius2 and Fatlip + anyone else who had anything to do with this fix. It's saved me a month of down time.

If anyone would like any more info or help with this, I'll be glad to do what I can.

Aerostop

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Ok, I have the drive hooked up but in hyperterminal all I get is jiberish. It shows it is communicating with the drive. I tried fliping the tx and rx connection and then all I got was an arrow but I could not get anything by pressing Control Z

The board on the HDA and I got this then I removed the board from the HDA and still got this. Power is up with 2AA and the led power light comes on the RS232 TTL Board.

Is there something wrong in hyperterminal?

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Sorry, guys... there's no way on earth Seagate made or shipped anywhere near 100M 7200.11's last year.

Here's the July - Sept '08 10Q (quarterly financial statement) Seagate filed in October.

On page 46:

Unit shipments for our products in the quarter ended October 3, 2008 were as follows:

Enterprise —5.2 million, flat from the immediately preceding quarter and up from 4.6 million units in the year-ago quarter.

Mobile —9.8 million, up from 6.9 million and 7.9 million units in the immediately preceding quarter and year-ago quarters, respectively.

Desktop —28.2 million, up from 25.4 million units in the immediately preceding quarter and down from 29.0 million units in the year-ago quarter.

Consumer —4.8 million, down from 5.7 million units in both the immediately preceding and year-ago quarters.

The Desktop channel includes all the OEM drives. Although some may be branded vanilla Seagate and Maxtor, they're what's already installed in or available at the OEMs - Dell, HP, etc. The drives reported in various forums across the internet are part of the 4.8M Consumer channel drives sold that quarter through non-OEM distributors and retailers. A drive from an onlike distributor like Newegg is still a Consumer drive, despite being advertised as 'OEM' (= jut not retail packaged).

The Desktop channel (real) OEM drives are the Dell and HP variants that use different firmware. We're not hearing about massive problems at OEMs because there apparently IS NO problem. Different production line, different firmware, different testing. Fore example, the DE15 firmware Dell drives use is not subject to this problem (that we know of). Firmware updates to OEM 7200.11 drives only affect the hesittion/stuttering problem. And nobody is reporting problems here (that I have seen) with a Seagate-branded OEM drive shipped WITH a computer. Almost everyone here with problems bought the drive(s) separately through online distributors or regular retailers, i.e., Seagate's 'Consumer' channel.

So we're talking about 5M consumer drives in the third calendar quarter of 2008, or 1.6M/month - only a portion of which actually were 1) Seagate (vs. Maxtor units) and 2) specifically 7200.11s (which didn't start shiping in volume until sometime in Feb.). So we're looking at a potential population of MAYBE 10M affected 7200.11 drives for all of 2008 tops. The only way you can get to 100M+ drives is to miscount all the OEM Desktop-channel drives along with the Consumer- channel drives. Considering ALL the consumer-channel drives Seagate shipped in 2008, I would guess that the Non-Chinese, non-CCxx firmware 7200.11s potentially affected are in the single-digit millions. And a substantial portion of THOSE have not even been sold or installed yet - they're still in the distribution channels.

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On a different note, the 7200.11 MOOSE firmware seems to apply to 188GB platter drives while BRINKS firmware seems to go with the 250GB platter version of the 7200.11s. Is this consistent with what people are seeing in terminal diagnostics? The information is available at the T> prompt by using CTRL + L key combo.

Seagate's initial firmware 'fix' (later pulled) was only suppose to be for MOOSE drive firmware, although I think it would load on a BRINKS drive and brick it. The latest firmwares are for either the MOOSE or BRINKS drives, depending on what Seagate directes you to download based on S/N and P/N, and can be seen in the firmware file name. I don't know of any app that will give you this information outside of the diagnostic TTY port command above.

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Gibby said, "We're not hearing about massive problems at OEMs because there apparently IS NO problem. Different production line, different firmware, different testing. Fore example, the DE15 firmware Dell drives use is not subject to this problem (that we know of)."

Gibby, have you looked at the Dell web site? From:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/1925...spx?PageIndex=3

"On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, Dell has issued a firmware update DE13 for the ST3500620AS, stating:

Level of Importance: Urgent

Dell highly recommends applying this update as soon as possible. The update contains changes to improve the reliability and availability of your Dell system.

Fixes and Enhancements

The DE13 firmware corrects potential hang on power up. Drive will appear not accessible after hang."

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I just fixed mine and I had no problems. Makre sure your hyperterminal is correct:

1. Make sure you are connecting to correct COM port

2. Make sure settings are correct - refer to screenshot given here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=828228

If it still doesn't work - then I guess you need to check your TTL board.

Ok, I have the drive hooked up but in hyperterminal all I get is jiberish. It shows it is communicating with the drive. I tried fliping the tx and rx connection and then all I got was an arrow but I could not get anything by pressing Control Z

The board on the HDA and I got this then I removed the board from the HDA and still got this. Power is up with 2AA and the led power light comes on the RS232 TTL Board.

Is there something wrong in hyperterminal?

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Didn't see that one - I was Googling for Dell, HP, Seagate, firmware etc. and didn't get anything intresting back. I see the Dell forum thread you posted was actually started by Oliver.HH and he subsequently posted a reply with Dell's firmware fix. This is apparently just for the ST3500620AS. What's up with that, Oliver.HH? It almost looks like they had no idea about the problem until recently. Did Dell support have anything to say?

Looking at the HP site, I can only find a single unanswered post here regarding the problem.

On one hand, I can't believe this problem is 'as big' with OEM drives considering a single post on either forum about the problem. On the other hand, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Dell or HP treadmill support farms missing such a widespread problem - they just send out another drive under warranty whenever anyone calls about a bricked drive and the OEMs return the old one to Seagate for credit. With all the drives they have out there, you would expect them to have recognized the problem months ago and worked out the firmware issues with Seagate. Is it possible that they simply have not recognized a pattern yet? Or is it an extremely rare issue on OEM drives?

I guess I'm really confused, now.

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You all are assuming that Dell, HP, and other large vendors are using this 7200.11 SD15 in their setup. Who knows if that is a fact? If they are not even using 7200.11 SD15, then it kinda explains why there is no big news in that space, isn't it?

Didn't see that one - I was Googling for Dell, HP, Seagate, firmware etc. and didn't get anything intresting back. I see the Dell forum thread you posted was actually started by Oliver.HH and he subsequently posted a reply with Dell's firmware fix. This is apparently just for the ST3500620AS. What's up with that, Oliver.HH? It almost looks like they had no idea about the problem until recently. Did Dell support have anything to say?

Looking at the HP site, I can only find a single unanswered post here regarding the problem.

On one hand, I can't believe this problem is 'as big' with OEM drives considering a single post on either forum about the problem. On the other hand, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Dell or HP treadmill support farms missing such a widespread problem - they just send out another drive under warranty whenever anyone calls about a bricked drive and the OEMs return the old one to Seagate for credit. With all the drives they have out there, you would expect them to have recognized the problem months ago and worked out the firmware issues with Seagate. Is it possible that they simply have not recognized a pattern yet? Or is it an extremely rare issue on OEM drives?

I guess I'm really confused, now.

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I just fixed mine and I had no problems. Makre sure your hyperterminal is correct:

1. Make sure you are connecting to correct COM port

2. Make sure settings are correct - refer to screenshot given here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=828228

If it still doesn't work - then I guess you need to check your TTL board.

The board is an RS232-ttl board. No cable hooked up since I pluged it right into the RS232 port on the back on an older laptop. I tried both connections and it still just gave me jiberish on the screen.

Do I need to have a cable go between the RS232 board and the computer? That is the only step that I am missing since I just pluged it directly to the computer.

That board I got is an MDRS3232m Ver 1.0

The power LED lights up when I hook up the 3V to it with 2AA bateries.

It's trying to communicate but when I type Control Z it just gives me garbage on the screen.

The hard disk does spin up if I have power to it. Just stuck in BSY.

Any ideas?

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perhaps you can take a photo of it and see if anyone else here is using the same board??

I just fixed mine and I had no problems. Makre sure your hyperterminal is correct:

1. Make sure you are connecting to correct COM port

2. Make sure settings are correct - refer to screenshot given here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=828228

If it still doesn't work - then I guess you need to check your TTL board.

The board is an RS232-ttl board. No cable hooked up since I pluged it right into the RS232 port on the back on an older laptop. I tried both connections and it still just gave me jiberish on the screen.

Do I need to have a cable go between the RS232 board and the computer? That is the only step that I am missing since I just pluged it directly to the computer.

That board I got is an MDRS3232m Ver 1.0

The power LED lights up when I hook up the 3V to it with 2AA bateries.

It's trying to communicate but when I type Control Z it just gives me garbage on the screen.

The hard disk does spin up if I have power to it. Just stuck in BSY.

Any ideas?

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You all are assuming that Dell, HP, and other large vendors are using this 7200.11 SD15 in their setup. Who knows if that is a fact? If they are not even using 7200.11 SD15, then it kinda explains why there is no big news in that space, isn't it?

No - I was assuming that they were using their OEM version of the 720011 with DE12 or HP12 or whatever non-SDxx firmware, hence my comment that they don't appear to be affected by the bricking problem. It turns out that Dell IS having this issue with at least one Seagate model and THEIR Dell OEM firmware: DE12. The link shows Dell published a firmware update (DE13) two days ago for the Dell OEM ST3500620AS to prevent the bricking/dissappearing drive problem being discussed here.

A Dell or HP user is a lot less likely than people here to be Googling problems with Seagate drives and firmware. They're not likely to show up here reporting their bad drives. They're much more likely just to call Dell or HP support and just get a replacement drive. And neither Dell, HP nor Seagate would be eager to publish ANY news about significant problems with their OEM drives. So I'm wondering if there IS a problem with OEM drives that the OEMs haven't recognized yet or are just trying to keep quiet about. Or the other obvious possibility is that there have been NO significant problems with OEM 7200.11 drives and corresponding firmware at all - with the single Dell exception just posted.

Edited by Gibby
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Considering ALL the consumer-channel drives Seagate shipped in 2008, I would guess that the Non-Chinese, non-CCxx firmware 7200.11s potentially affected are in the single-digit millions. And a substantial portion of THOSE have not even been sold or installed yet - they're still in the distribution channels.

Well, using the "safety factor", I already used a speculative "base" of 10,000,000.

As already posted, them being 5,000,000 instead:

In other words, the hypothesys is that throughout 2008 Seagate manufactured between 10,000,000 and 100,000,000 drives of the "family".

Then, the lower number is taken and multiplied by the smallest possible incidence of "affected drives" (per Seagate statement) 0.002, i.e. that 1/500 of the drives in the family may be affected.

Since "some percentage" can mean ANY number <1, the found 20,000 can easily come out by a lesser number of drives "in the family" manufactured multiplied by a higher percentage:

10,000,000*0.002=20,000 (1/500)

5,000,000*0.004=20,000 (1/250)

2,500,000*0.008=20,000 (1/125)

1,000,000*0.02=20,000 (1/50)

while still within the same definition of "some percentage", and at the lower end of it......

And in any case, the "objective" of the speculation:

Without official data, and as clearly stated, the above numbers are just speculative, and, while they might be inaccurate, the order of magnitude seems relevant enough to rule out that the 100÷150 reports here on MSFN, represent NOT a significant fraction (1/7 or 1/8) of all affected drives.

was NOT to determine exactly:

  • how many drives were produced
  • how many drives are affected and have developed the problem

only to check if it should be a matter of a few hundreds (a "few" or a "handful") as opposed to several thousands (a "lot" or "too many to count").

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Didn't see that one - I was Googling for Dell, HP, Seagate, firmware etc. and didn't get anything intresting back. I see the Dell forum thread you posted was actually started by Oliver.HH and he subsequently posted a reply with Dell's firmware fix. This is apparently just for the ST3500620AS. What's up with that, Oliver.HH? It almost looks like they had no idea about the problem until recently. Did Dell support have anything to say?
I became aware of the problem by the media and found out that Seagate's support website offered no remedy for OEM drives while the Dell website had no information about the problem at all. I contacted Dell and Seagate support to find out whether DE12 firmware was affected. Seagate provided only an automated answer not related to my case while Dell support was not aware of the issue at that time. Then Dell's fix quietly appeared on their website while German support staff still did not have any further information. However, I do have a support contact who tries to help as much as possible. He is now attempting to find out whether the published Dell fix is really the correct one (I'm not sure as there might be a BRINKS/MOOSE confusion).
Looking at the HP site, I can only find a single unanswered post here regarding the problem.

On one hand, I can't believe this problem is 'as big' with OEM drives considering a single post on either forum about the problem. On the other hand, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Dell or HP treadmill support farms missing such a widespread problem - they just send out another drive under warranty whenever anyone calls about a bricked drive and the OEMs return the old one to Seagate for credit. With all the drives they have out there, you would expect them to have recognized the problem months ago and worked out the firmware issues with Seagate. Is it possible that they simply have not recognized a pattern yet? Or is it an extremely rare issue on OEM drives?

I guess what we're seeing here are huge delays in corporate information pipelines. My impression is that many OEM customers aren't even aware that they've got a Seagate drive in their PCs, let alone that there's a firmware bug out there. While drive failures happen, the reason may not be diagnosed correctly for some time so it may just be too early for these huge support organisations to discover an unusual pattern of failures.

Initially, I could not tell whether my drive was affected so my first question was whether Dell's DE12 firmware was based on Seagate's SD15 (or another affected version). Dell support did not have that information. So I read the manufacturing date from my drive's label (September) and compared that to the manufacturing dates of drives which had already failed (from the fail/fine thread in this forum). My impression was that my firmware had a high probability of being derived from the buggy ones and this turned out to be true. In contrast, I've read statements on the web where people just compare the firmware version DE12 to the versions confirmed by Seagate as buggy and then incorrectly deduct that their firmware is OK (try googling "7200.11 +DE12").

By the way, Dell has another fix on their site for ST3750630AS and ST31000340AS drives.

Edited by Oliver.HH
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