Seagate 7200.11 1TB/1.5TB dying from mechanical or firmware issue?

[MyLeftNut]

I just bought the infamous Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drive. It hasn't arrived yet, but I was wondering, are all these problematic drives dying from a mechanical issue or is it really mostly the firmware that's temporarily bricking these drives?

 

[Blain]

* Not all the 7200.11 drives are dying
* Why would you buy a drive that you think will probably die?
* Of the drives that do die... mechanical or firmware... Flip a coin

 

[taltamir]

there is known firmware bricking, and its not TEMPORARY bricking... you can't just blind flash it with a "fixed" firmware and suddenly the drive will start working again.

 

[CrystalBay]

I have had a 1TB drive now for almost 18 mos. It has the original firmware SD01 and almost 8000 hours ...Sometimes I get concerned when it starts making a racket ,but so far so good... I am waiting in anxiously for the newer 500GB platters.

 

[akugami]

I've got two 7200.11 1.5TB Seagates and both have been working fine. One thing though, check your drives as soon as you receive them if they're part of the drives with bad firmware. Update the firmware _before_ you use the drives. They should then be as problem free as possible. There is still the possibility that you get a bad drive that passed testing but will fail shortly, not due to the bad firmware.

 

[MyLeftNut]

Originally posted by: taltamir
there is known firmware bricking, and its not TEMPORARY bricking... you can't just blind flash it with a "fixed" firmware and suddenly the drive will start working again.

I read somewhere that seagate was going to release a new firmware for the drives that bricked from the faulty firmware issued previously. It is suppose to just unbrick it like that, but for the time being, the people that have bricked drives from faulty firmware will have to hold on to them until that time.

 

[MyLeftNut]

Originally posted by: akugami
I've got two 7200.11 1.5TB Seagates and both have been working fine. One thing though, check your drives as soon as you receive them if they're part of the drives with bad firmware. Update the firmware _before_ you use the drives. They should then be as problem free as possible. There is still the possibility that you get a bad drive that passed testing but will fail shortly, not due to the bad firmware.

So there are actually quiet a large percentage of people with faulty 7200.11 1.5TB drives that are caused by physical quality issues?

 

[Blain]

I just like saying... "bricked"... 🙂

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: MyLeftNut

Originally posted by: akugami
I've got two 7200.11 1.5TB Seagates and both have been working fine. One thing though, check your drives as soon as you receive them if they're part of the drives with bad firmware. Update the firmware _before_ you use the drives. They should then be as problem free as possible. There is still the possibility that you get a bad drive that passed testing but will fail shortly, not due to the bad firmware.

So there are actually quiet a large percentage of people with faulty 7200.11 1.5TB drives that are caused by physical quality issues?

No, the issue with the 7200.11 1.5TB Seagate drives was due to the firmware. I'm just saying that there is still a possibility (usually low) of a bad HD not related to firmware issues. From pretty much all reports, the 7200.11 drives were affected by bad firmware that bricked the drives.

We pretty much do not know if the drives are affected by manufacturing issues much like the infamous IBM Deskstar drives because pretty much all dead drives have been attributed to bad firmware.

I'm not in any way shape or form saying there are a ton of bad Seagate 7200.11's from non-firmware issues. Just to be aware that all HD's can suffer from mechanical issues that can cause a drive to fail.

Again, I own two of these and they have been working fine for many many months.

 

[andrei3333]

i have a 500GB 7200.11 that seems to have failed on me, one day i turn my PC on and it tells me it cant find some windows load file

i loaded vista onto another hard drive and its fine now, but the original drive is no longer recognized by my PC,, i have stuff on that drive i would like to get access to, what shuold i do ?

i tried putting it into a USB shell, and tried connecting with eSata, still windows does not see it, however it thinks now that i have two vista installs causeit asks me everytime i boot up which windows to start

 

[MyLeftNut]

I have a feeling that there actually is a physical manufacturing defect in these drives after monitoring the S.M.A.R.T. results from the drive with Hard Disk Sentinel. I started another thread on that regarding the Raw Read Error Rate and Seek Error rates that keep accumulating. Nothing's been corrupt so far and the Hardware ECC Recovery rate is on par with the Raw Read Error Rates. Regardless of error recovery abilities, I don't believe there should be such high error rates, especially since 4 of my other hard drives have 0 raw read/seek errors.

 

[Mark R]

There is a particular version of the firmware (SD15) that is buggy, and has resulted in a very high level of drive failure. Older (and newer versions) do not suffer from this problem.

If you have the SD15 firmware on your drive, Seagate advise that you update the firmware to SD1A - the update is available for download from their website.

Once the firmware bug strikes, and the drive locks down - it can't be flashed, and the drive must either be RMAd, or sent for data recovery (Data recovery is usually successful, as the firmware bug results in the drive incorrectly entering 'safe mode' in an attempt to preserve the data on the platters. In safe mode, the drive is completely locked down and unresponsive, so that the platters do not get touched until the drive is repaired; hence why it cannot be flashed once in this state).

Note that the firmware bug is very specific - the bug prevents the drive being detected in the BIOS. The drive will spin up, but will not be detected during boot up.

 

[MyLeftNut]

My drive, a CC1H is supposed to be one of the fixed firmwares, but I like I mentioned regarding the read and seek error rates, it's quite alarming and suggests a physical problem.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: MyLeftNut

Originally posted by: taltamir
there is known firmware bricking, and its not TEMPORARY bricking... you can't just blind flash it with a "fixed" firmware and suddenly the drive will start working again.

I read somewhere that seagate was going to release a new firmware for the drives that bricked from the faulty firmware issued previously. It is suppose to just unbrick it like that, but for the time being, the people that have bricked drives from faulty firmware will have to hold on to them until that time.

nono... see the original firmware was bricking drives... then they released a "fixed" firmware, but the process of flashing it was ALSO bricking drives... so now they will release a "really fixed this time" firmware. not a firmware that "unbricks" bricked drives.

 

[boomhower]

To be fair they are offering to help with data recovery for those that have bricked drives due to a bad flash. Now how well that is working out I don't know but at least they are trying to make it right.