Seagate says it now fixes 7200.11 drives for real

This Seagate tool determines the model of the installed hard drive.

(Credit: Seagate)

After releasing a bug-fixing firmware that actually caused havoc by potentially rendering some drives seemingly dead, Seagate on Thursday offered this statement:

Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some unique circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on.

While we believe that the vast majority of customers will not experience any disruption related to this issue, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16. We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers.

You can go to this Web site to see if your hard drive is affected and download the new working firmware.

For owners of hard drives that are bricked due to the previous firmware, Seagate assures customers that the data still resides on the drive, there is no data loss associated with this issue, and the company is working with customers to expedite a remedy.

If you are among those concerned, you can e-mail Seagate at:

• Americas: [e-mail], [e-mail]
• APAC: [e-mail]
• EMEA: [e-mail]

Or you can call Seagate's support center at 1-800-Seagate (1-800-732-4283)

However, before anything and when it's still possible, make sure you make a backup of important data.

[BW_Jones]

Yeah, but apparently only for those with access to a Windows computer. For those with Linux or OS X, Seagate's solutions do not work.

[NewsReader_]

Looks like it is time for you to switch to Windows :-)

[rapier1]

Isn't one of the big selling point of linux and OS X supposed to be that you can dual boot or run vmware?

[Dalkorian]

by NewsReader_ January 22, 2009 12:54 PM PST
Looks like it is time for you to switch to Windows :-)
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LOL. Slavery, while certainly easier, is never the way to a bright future.

[FunEee]

They do work. I use Ubuntu. What you download is an ISO, that you burn to a CD-ROM. It will check which drive you have.

[linnsondek]

I have a Mac Pro and have just successfully updated my two 7200.11 750Gb drives. It worked fine.

[Throgged]

i never thought i'd say this. Windows FTW!!!!!

[s. maller]

I successfully updated five Seagate ST31000340AS (7200.11 1TB drives) which were at SD15 firmware to 'SD1A' firmware. This was a little complicated because after I did the two that were internal to my Mac Pro, I had to remove three of my internal drives and replace them with the three from my eSATA drive. It turns out the sixth 1TB drive was actually a Maxtor-labeled drive, and the firmware hasn't been posted for that drive yet.

Details here: http://stevemaller.com/blog/2009/01/22/my-seagate-hard-drives-are-safe-now/

[AnonTip]

Too late...

[jsawyer1181]

Well another option would be to get the 7200.12 series drive instead as they aren't plagued with the firmware issue, or get a older Seagate drive. There is no way on this earth that I will get a 11 series drive even if someone gave it to me. That's all I need, one day it works, the next I am yelling at Seagate technical support lol. I believe that I think it was WD that had an issue with their drives a few years back where they would fail out of the blue, except the data was totally gone. This has hurt Seagate's reputation and I know they are a good company. They just had a bad batch just like any other manufacturer does from time to time. Oh well, let's hope with the new 7200.12 series drive that I just bought will end up being as good as my 7200.10 has been. This should prompt Seagate to get it's act together.