Seagate drives have firmware defect; Macs can't apply upgrade
Macs can't see cache, can't apply firmware update.
[Tuesday, February 5th]
Some Seagate hard drives -- specifically model 7200.11, revisions SD04 and SD14 -- have a firmware defect that causes the host computer to ignore the included 32MB cache. This causes much slower-than-normal operation.
Seagate has released a firmware update that addresses this problem. However, the firmware update cannot be applied using Mac OS X; it must be applied from a Windows computer.
MacFixIt reader Mark Kozlowski received this response from Seagate technical support regarding the issue:
"Unfortunately in order to apply the firmware update on this drive you would need to find a PC to install this drive on and apply the firmware. Once this is done you should be able to take the drive to your MAC and run the drive as normal. We do not have a firmware update procedure for MACs."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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