Updated: Seagate 1TB Drives Biting The Dust

Didn't Tom's recommend these drives?

I guess Tom's didn't review the one manufactured in Thailand...

I do have the Firmware update to fix this issue. If anyone wants it, just email me at matt@bytespeed.com

Straight from Seagates website. It tells you which drives are bad and what to do to get the firmware!!

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/s [...] ds/cuda-fw

roynaldi, did you bother to read that page? It says right there on the top: "A small number of Barracuda 7200.11 drives with firmware versions SD04 or SD14 may show and utilize only part of the available cache."
That's a DIFFERENT problem.

Just to clarify: The firmware I have WILL NOT correct the problem, but it will prevent it.

I think this may be something with their whole 7200.11 series drive. I have the 750GB version of this drive and I'm on my third drive in 10 months. I hope they figure this problem out cause I would hate to loose my information again.

I had one of two Hitachi 1TB drives (in a Raid1 configuration) fail after 2 weeks, it was replaced and both drives have been good for the last 15 months (running 24/7).

I definitely wouldn't trust 1TB drives outside of some sort of RAID architecture (and if not mirrored then I'd be sure to have a hot swap with auto-rebuild in the system).

Crap. I have two 7200.11 1.5TB in RAID 0.

The problems started to appear in October but only in December did they become so widespread. The drives don't always fail right away. If yuo read the article I linked in the first paragraph (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-barracuda-1-5TB-freezing,6558.html) you will see that a comment was made at the end that no problems were found with the 1.5TB drives when reviewed. I haven't seen a 1TB review by TH myself, but I don't read everything here



As someone else mentioned, that is for a problem with an older firmware version. But by fixing performance issues, Seagate seems to have made things worse




Better make it RAID 1 and hope both drives don't die together

Never trusted Seagate... Too many problems over the years to people I know. For me there is only one company worth considering: WD

crap. just checked and I have that Seagate 1tb hdd. Son of a bitch. I'm gonna back up quite regularly now.

My mistake. From Tom’s Winter 2008 Hard Drive Guide:

"Today, we recommend against the first-generation Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB (ST31000340AS), as the updated model (ST31000333AS) delivers greatly increased performance with lower power consumption."

I knew it rang a bell.....

Just give it some time and the ST31000333AS drives will start to fail as well...I think these drives produced in Thailand are just Maxtor drives with a Seagate sticker on them.

I have a "Free Agent Pro 1TB External HDD" that is a Seagate external HDD does anybody what kind of drive is running inside the box, it is my primary backup solution and I would like to know if it could be affected.

Sorry if this is a silly question but i guess that it is just a controller and an internal Seagate drive so I think it could be affected

Problems with 500GB 7200.11 Seagate drives
Between November, 2007, and June, 2008, I bought six 7200.11 500GB SATA disk drives,
all Seagate model ST3500320AS.
Two of those drives failed internally.
On an earlier SATA disk drive, its SATA plastic connection broke,
ruining that disk drive.
I buy 500GB drives because they have only 2 platters, so should be more reliable.
For 10 years, I bought mostly Seagate disk drives; eg, the 2GB Seagate Hawk for $600.
Most of these drives were SCSI drives, so were more for businesses and were reliable until I switched from SCSI to SATA, particularly the 7200.11 series.
I am not sure if this unreliability lies in chance, Seagate, SATA, or perpendicular magnetic fields.

With last year's experience with Seagate, this last month I bought 5
Western Digital RE3 (Caviar RAID Edition 3) 500GB, model WD5002ABYS
marketed for the enterprise market.
While I do not use RAID, others' tests indicate this drive is reliable.
I probably would not buy other Western Digital disk drives
and I have never before bought Western Digital disk drives in my 15 years of purchasing.
These days, I buy 500GB disk drives, either Seagate or Western Digital,
because I seek reliability -- I do not seek performance.
Whatever I might gain in performance gets greatly overwhelmed by a failed disk drive.
I will loose far more time repurchasing and reinstalling a new disk drive
than I will ever gain from performance.
When reliability becomes too low,
I worry even about the failure of all my backup drives.
With the unreliability I have seen, despite multiple offsite backups,
I worry about permanent loss of data over all backups with no possibility of restoration.
I now keep 3-4 disconnected and stored offsite 500GB drives, each with multiple backups
within them.
I physically carry these disk drives to another site.
For this, the marketplace could help:
I have found no physical protection besides the shipping container (foam or a clam shell: Seagate's Seashell) for the internal hard drives I carry offsite.

RELIABILITY, NOT PERFORMANCE!

Are these drives used in the Maxtor Basics 1TB USB-drives? Just had mine fail yesterday...

it seems that seagate finally acknowledged the problem and will provide a firmware update to people with drives that are still working.
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/ [...] cId=207931

Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on*.

As part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, we are offering a free firmware upgrade to those with affected products. To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/ [...] Id=207931.

Support is also available through Seagate’s call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283)

Customers can expedite assistance by sending an email to Seagate (discsupport@seagate.com). Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial number and current firmware revision. We will respond, promptly, to your email request with appropriate instructions. There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive. But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.

For a list of international telephone numbers to Seagate Support and alternative methods of contact, please access http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/

*There is no safety issue with these products.

I received that email today also, I'll update the article shortly.

Deathstar 2009!

i wondered what was wrong with my drive, I ended up buying an usb enclosure and use it as an external with a maxtor 500gb(IDE) to boot off of internally.

Thank god, i thought my sata was fried in my motherboard, good thing i didn't buy a new motherboard yet.

hehehe good 1
by the way, WD also has it share of problems (with GP drives):
www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401

I spoke to Seagate in Singapore and they are only recovering data for the December batch of drives. Since mine failed in October, they will not pay for my recovery.

note that the widely-reported problems continue, some regardless of the update, some BECAUSE of the update -- and some cannot even apply any update. and this is more widespread that the drive model mentioned in the article, other 7200.11 series are also affected. see forums.seagate.com

I found this thread after my (Oct 2010) Seagate LP 2TB drive (ST32000542AS) failed this week.

Looked at the Seagate site and they have a BIOS update for that one - probably useless to me now.

I will try to install their update. If can't, I will ask Seagate for Data Recovery and fix or replace drive. If they want to charge me to recover data I will "kick up a stink" because the data loss is the fault of their faulty drive, problem seems to be same one they've been aware of since before Jan 2009, and they apparently do not issue recalls, or include advice with new drives to check for firmware updates, or advise customers how important the updates may be "Please note that Seagate does not offer details about specific firmware." (Quote from Seagate website "http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931" today - 18 March 2011).

Sounds real user friendly, doesn't it - something like "your drive may fail suddenly if you don't install this update, but we're not going to tell you that!"

I have had my seagate 1Tb hardrive for 3 days and it has stopped working.. I didnt see the need 2 back everything up just yet but now i am really mad because it isnt working.. Does any1 know if they can do data recovery for any seagate hardrive..?

There was a batch of (now reported faulty) 1TB Barracuda Seagate hard drives installed in mainstream systems early 2011and late 2010 (inc Dell and MAC). As fate would have it, a number ended up at two of my clients. Though I haven't specialized in hard disk recovery for some years, I'm now developing software only, it was my forte for over a decade. That aside, I was commissioned to recover the data on drives that had totally frozen..no drive movement at all..the issue has been reported in many newsgroups as a bios problem and my findings concured with this. The drives I worked on did require opening and the mechanicals manually triggered. The read heads were definately not parked where they should of been, so they needed to be coxed back to place. No requirement to swap platters, or anything else dramatic, just a little TLC. Result: 90%+ recovery. So if you need assistance or advice with data recovery contact me at Datamaster (in Toowong QLD Australia) Cheers Joe.