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Latest News Seagate 7200.11, ES2 and DiamondMax 22 Firmware Failures 16/02/2009  The problem affects drives with capacities of 500GB, 750GB, 1TB or 1.5TB. Drives that suffer this failure either ‘hang’ in a ‘busy’ state, have their total capacity detected as 0 LBA or may report a ‘SMART’ failure. The fault stems from a firmware issue that set an invalid boundary value for the drive’s ‘circular event log’. Where this coincides with a particular test pattern being placed in the system tracks of the reserved area by some of the manufacturers ‘tester’ applications, the event log pointer is incremented beyond its allowable boundary. This is detected as an ‘Assert Failure’ by the drive which ‘freezes’ as a self-protection response. Once this occurs the drive is remains inoperable however many times it is subsequently powered up. The unpredictable nature of the problem means that it is near impossible to say whether or when drives with the firmware in question will fail. Seagate responded to reports of drives failing by offering a firmware upgrade or ‘patch’ for working drives, to remove the possibility of them failing. However this does not solve the problem of those whose drives had already failed and been rendered little more than paperweights. Other reports suggest that installing the firmware ‘upgrade’ may give rise to other, previously unseen firmware problems, and users should also be aware that the upgrade is designed merely to ‘repair’ the drive but, will in the process, erase all user data stored on it. Seagate’s offer of support to those with drives affected by this issue, only extends to those with ‘retail’ drives, anyone with an OEM drive that came as part of a system, should approach the supplier of their system. Furthermore, not all suppliers seem as yet to be geared up to provide effective solutions. Specific instances of such OEM drives include Seagate drives installed within Hewlett Packard (HP) systems. These have additional HP labelling on the drives themselves and also have subtly different firmware versions installed, that require different remedial actions to rectify the problem. Working with our Data Recovery partners, Computer Science Labs have devised methods to ‘resuscitate’ the affected drives, allowing complete recovery of users’ valuable data from them. The applications and procedures that CSL have been able to bring to bear on the problem have achieved recoveries on all the various versions that have been received to date. The applications CSL support, with the unique training and technical support they can offer, mean that this problem offers a unique opportunity for Computer Science Labs’ partners, or those considering partnership, to market a proven solution to their clients. Drive Model Numbers Affected: (those so far reported, other models may prove to be at risk) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11: ST31000340AS, ST3750330AS, ST3640330AS, ST3500320AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS Seagate Barracuda ES.2: ST31000340NS, ST3750330NS, ST3500320NS, ST3250310NS Maxtor DiamondMax 22: STM3500320AS, STM3750330AS, STM31000340AS, STM31000334AS, STM3640323AS, STM3320614AS, STM3160813AS. |
