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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Troubles


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Hey guys,

...its true the new fix is good...thanx Vinicius, i too was having issues with the hyperterminal....i dont reccomend for others to persue it...though at the time it was necessary as the firmware was not available....this is what i did as did Vinicius

1. swap pcb boards on 2 like hd's ...flash the bad pcb with the new SD1 firmware

2. swap back the pcb's

voila !! full recovery from bsy hd with no LB0.

this post is for real, my brick is fully recovered.....i know you all paid for the rs232, as did i, but it is a real hard fix compared to doing it this way

as far as i know you do need to 7200.11's though .. .

Question, after you swap the PCB boards, and then you boot up, does the BIOS detect the HDD?

Hello, I'm very happy now because I figured this out. :) :) :) :)

When you swap the boards the "old" board should boot the new drive with 0Mb. Since the disk is not made for that PCB. Will be normally detected on BIOS.

After this fireup firmware update. You'll some errors like Cylinder 0, assuming 63! Something like this. But just ignore and flash the drive.

After the power cycle reswap PCB's and use the old drive. It should be fixed from BSY and from LBA=0!

See details of what I've done in the Solution Thread.

[]'s

I'm wondering if one can get away with not even attaching the PCB to the disk of the 2nd drive. The reason being is that when they make these at the

factory, they probably just attach the PCB to a test machine which flashes the PCB and runs electrical tests on it. This would be easier

to make these in mass and then ship a box of these to another site that attaches the PCBs to the actual disk that some other factory

site made in mass. Then both are run through another test machine to make sure the PCB and drive heads and platters work together.

Thus, for those with the PCB having LBA=0 and BSY, try just removing the PCB from the drive, attach the PCB to the power and

IDE/SATA cable, and then reflash with the new firmware. It'd be interesting to see if this works. Maybe the BIOS doesn't need to

detect them. This will also eliminate the possible damaging of the disk heads and platter of the drive that is incompatible since there isn't one.

The most that will happen is there is no spinup, 0 heads, 0MB/GB, 0 cylinders etc or this method won't work. The only thing that will happen

is that you are SOL!

The other possiblilty to bypass the BIOS is to attach just the PCB to an external SATA or IDE to USB adaptor cable (see sabrent adaptors or equiv)

and power cable ,then plug in the USB and flash thru the USB port. I'm not sure if one can flash thru the USB even if updating working drives, but

without any knowledge about it working or not, the only way to attain knowledge is to experiment.....and hopefully the BIOS is too stupid.

Using just the PCB without the disk simply fail. Since the PCB doesn't find a disk it waits for timeout. And this take an eternity. When finally Seagate Firmware Update launches it reports NO DISK.

[]'s

Seagate replied my email regarding data recovery for free... Hmmm it appers that they are really interested in a good reputation after this lamentable firmware episode.

[]'s

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I've got an email from seagate disksupport with a link to kb article and firmware - took them one week to respond.

Will wait a week or two before applying the fw. Maybe there will be another release.

After reading comments on slashdot things are getting clearer.

The conditions have to be just right - you have to reboot just after the drive writes the 320th log file to the firmware space of the drive. this is a log file that's written only occasionally, usually when there are bad sectors, missed writes, etc... might happen every few days on a computer in a nin-RAID home use situation.. and if that log file is written even one time after the magic #320, it rolls over the oldest file kept on the drive and there's no issue. It'll only stop responding IF the drive is powered up with log file #320 being the latest one written... a perfect storm situation. IF this is the case, then seagate is trying to put in place a procedure where you can simply ship them the drive, they hook it up to a serial controller, and re-flashed with the fixed firmware. That's all it takes to restore the drive to operation! As for buying new drives, that's up to you. None of the CC firmware drives were affected - only the SD firmware drives. I'd wait until later in the week, maybe next week, until they have a known working and properly proven firmware update

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/21/0052236

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For information sake: I have a bricked ST31000340AS drive with the BSY problem. I have a second Seagate 1Tb drive but its model number is ST31000333AS. I tried the the (bricked) 340AS PCB on the working 333AS HDA but still got the BSY issue and could not flash the firmware because it couldn't recognize it in BIOS.... My thoughts are that some part of the firmware is stored on the harddrive or maybe a key register for the BSY signal... anyway for information sake this doesn't work.... I did put back the 333AS (working drive toether) and it worked as normal.

Oh well I thought it worth a try.

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i happen to have 3 barracuda st300320AS, it would probably work on any two different models, when you swap the bad pcb to a good disk it is seen in the bios and that gets you half there.....flash the new firmware and your done....remember to flash the other hard disk as well when you swap back.. i used PowerISo to make the firmware cd....

as a note i've been swapping that pcb back and forth and tinkering with it so much with that dang rs232 that it should be broke but it isnt, dont be scared of it use torx6 screwdriver , but dont break it either ....good to have my hd back

The only other seagate SATA model that I have is a 7200.9 series, which I don't think will be quite compatible. I guess if Seagate offers data recovery, I may take that offer up =/

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For information sake: I have a bricked ST31000340AS drive with the BSY problem. I have a second Seagate 1Tb drive but its model number is ST31000333AS. I tried the the (bricked) 340AS PCB on the working 333AS HDA but still got the BSY issue and could not flash the firmware because it couldn't recognize it in BIOS.... My thoughts are that some part of the firmware is stored on the harddrive or maybe a key register for the BSY signal... anyway for information sake this doesn't work.... I did put back the 333AS (working drive toether) and it worked as normal.

Oh well I thought it worth a try.

OUCHHHH! You're crazy !!

340 means 4 (four) plates and heads, and 333 means 3 (three) plates and heads, you might fry the PCB, or HDA or both !

Plus, you can scratch the platers, if that happens, you'll lost the HD forever.

Edited by Gradius2
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For information sake: I have a bricked ST31000340AS drive with the BSY problem. I have a second Seagate 1Tb drive but its model number is ST31000333AS. I tried the the (bricked) 340AS PCB on the working 333AS HDA but still got the BSY issue and could not flash the firmware because it couldn't recognize it in BIOS.... My thoughts are that some part of the firmware is stored on the harddrive or maybe a key register for the BSY signal... anyway for information sake this doesn't work.... I did put back the 333AS (working drive toether) and it worked as normal.

Oh well I thought it worth a try.

Man this is insane! You cannot do this! o.O

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Has anyone tried to flash the new firmware for ST3320613AS?

I tried, but without success: The firmware update tool says that it will work with ST3320613AS/9FZ162-300, SDxx only.

My drive is such a ST3320613AS/9FZ162-300 with SD11 and the tool recognizes that:

Model ST3320613AS SN 9SZ0**** FW SD11 on Generic PCI ATA Bus 0 Device 1

But then it aborts with following error messages:

NO MATCH! WILL NOT DOWNLOAD FIRMWARE!

*********

Error: Specific model not found. ST3320613AS expected.

*********

Cycle power to continue...

Edited by kadolf
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Yesterday I had an amusing day at a big electronics store. When I asked about hard drives the sales person said "Oh you got to see the great sale on Seagate drives we have!" I thought to myself, "I bet", but proceeded to follow him. He showed me a whole stack of Seagate drives. I looked at them and they were the recent 7200.11 models! He said that they had marked them all down by $40. When I asked him why, he said with a big smile "Seagate wants us to clear them out!" I thought to myself, I bet they do..

At the check out the clerk said they were discounted even more to $109 for 1Tbs. Although I won't trust them with key data, Seagate has great hardware and once the firmware is sorted out I will have some really inexpensive drive storage... Course it'll be relegated to non important tasks! Going to be a while before I trust their drives again.

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Has anyone tried to flash the new firmware for ST3320613AS?

I tried, but without success: The firmware update tool says that it will work with ST3320613AS/9FZ162-300, SDxx only.

My drive is such a ST3320613AS/9FZ162-300 with SD11 and the tool recognizes that:

Model ST3320613AS SN 9SZ0**** FW SD11 on Generic PCI ATA Bus 0 Device 1

But then it aborts with following error messages:

NO MATCH! WILL NOT DOWNLOAD FIRMWARE!

*********

Error: Specific model not found. ST3320613AS expected.

*********

Cycle power to continue...

Are you using IDE Extended (or enhanced) only ? Do not use RAID or AHCI.

Also the drive is alone? No other is connected, except CD/DVD drive?

Yesterday I had an amusing day at a big electronics store. When I asked about hard drives the sales person said "Oh you got to see the great sale on Seagate drives we have!" I thought to myself, "I bet", but proceeded to follow him. He showed me a whole stack of Seagate drives. I looked at them and they were the recent 7200.11 models! He said that they had marked them all down by $40. When I asked him why, he said with a big smile "Seagate wants us to clear them out!" I thought to myself, I bet they do..

At the check out the clerk said they were discounted even more to $109 for 1Tbs. Although I won't trust them with key data, Seagate has great hardware and once the firmware is sorted out I will have some really inexpensive drive storage... Course it'll be relegated to non important tasks! Going to be a while before I trust their drives again.

Funny and sad at same time. :blink:

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Are you using IDE Extended (or enhanced) only ? Do not use RAID or AHCI.

Also the drive is alone? No other is connected, except CD/DVD drive?

Yes, I'm using IDE mode. No other drives are connected, exept a SATA-DVD-writer - I will try to get one with IDE, maybe that's the problem.

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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

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Yesterday I had an amusing day at a big electronics store. When I asked about hard drives the sales person said "Oh you got to see the great sale on Seagate drives we have!" I thought to myself, "I bet", but proceeded to follow him. He showed me a whole stack of Seagate drives. I looked at them and they were the recent 7200.11 models! He said that they had marked them all down by $40. When I asked him why, he said with a big smile "Seagate wants us to clear them out!" I thought to myself, I bet they do..

At the check out the clerk said they were discounted even more to $109 for 1Tbs. Although I won't trust them with key data, Seagate has great hardware and once the firmware is sorted out I will have some really inexpensive drive storage... Course it'll be relegated to non important tasks! Going to be a while before I trust their drives again.

I wish a store nearby would discount these, so I can get a replacement PCB board to try the flashing :P

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I wish a store nearby would discount these, so I can get a replacement PCB board to try the flashing :P

just so your on the right track, you are getting the donor goodharddisk , you are going to attache the badpcb to it for flashing... dont do it the other way around....hahh :thumbup

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Hey guys

I've got a ST3750330AS drive and it flashed okay with yesterdays latest firmware, and all seemed to work okay, then the next day all the sudden I heard the drives head engage and disengage clicking back and forth a number of times as it disrupted everything I had running, and then stopped. It hasn't done this again yet and it's been quite a few more hours, but this head engage/disengage never ever did this before the firmware upgrade and I've had it for a year now. This is very disconcerting and I don't feel safe with this new firmware.

Everest shows all things in its SMART tab Okay though.

You know, I wish there had been an option on the firmware flash program to save the Original SD15 Firmware that was on there from the beginning, so that I could at least have the Option now to re-flash it back to what it was.

Anyone know where I can get the good version of the SD15 firmware I had?

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