Seagate ST31000333AS in a RAID6, different firmwares?

[Kremlar]

Running on an LSI Logic 8708ELP RAID controller, installed my (8) drives in a RAID 6 configuration today. As luck would have it, during the init process, towards the end, one of the drives dropped and got marked as failed. All drives were firmware CC1F. None were listed as having the recent issue fixed by a firmware update.

I had a spare drive kicking around, but it's marked as firmware CC1H.

I'm RMAing the drive, assuming it's bad, but a search on the web has got me concerned about this whole recent Seagate firmware/drive situation. Lots of people having problems with 7200.11 drives in a RAID configuration, and lots of people with dying drives. Overall I've been extremely happy on average with all the Seagate drives I've used (hundreds or thousands even), but have had more problems/failures with WD drives. Based on current forum activity, it seems the tables may have turned.

I have a few questions, looking for advice.

- I put in a call to Seagate support, and they tell me these drives should function fine in a RAID configuration. Anyone have any GOOD experiences to share?

- The Seagate rep told me that different firmware versions in a single RAID configuration WILL cause problems. They also tell me firmware is not upgradeable. This is a bit disturbing to me, because years down the road when a drive does fail how I can replace with the same model, nevermind firmware rev? I realize that identical drives/firmware is ideal, but is it truly necessary? Is this accurate information?

Bottom line is I'm questioning my purchase of these drives and I'm not sure how to proceed. Any opinions welcome.

 

[pjkenned]

Kremlar, I still haven't seen any issues. I'm mixing a few different firmwares in the Raid 6 setup (on the 1.5TB drives) and just for kicks I made sure that I had one of each firmware on the raid 5 3 drive array I use as local backup for the main system. My theory was simply that I knew there were firmware issues, and the odds were that there would be one type of firmware die in a usage scenario so having three different firmwares would be fine. The one of my 13 7200.11's that did die died within about a week. The others have been fine since then.

Also, firmware is upgradeable at least to some extent. Seagate released an at-home upgrade firmware flash package for people with the bad firmware revisions. I never had a CC1F but I think that may be a trouble one. You should check the Seagate site as getting out of the bad firmware will increase reliability several fold.

 

[Kremlar]

Thanks for the response. The Seagate site says my drives are unaffected (per the serial #s). The Seagate rep I spoke with said that all CC firmware versions are fine.

It really threw me for a loop that the rep was so adament about all drives having the same firmware. I have not only replaced bad drives in RAID arrays with different firmware revs, I've always replaced bad drives with different brands/models/capacities without issue so far.