Seagate Official Statement on 7200.11 Drive Failures

**UPDATE** => It would seem even the supposed firmware fix offered is EPIC FAIL. This is one less customer they can be  assured of that.

This news should be flying around right now. Apparently Seagate has been manufacturing expensive bricks for sometime now.

Yeah, I’m pissed. Why?

1) My Seagate Barracuda bricked 6 mths into use and I lost pretty much all my photos and projects. Stuff I can never get back (unlike anime). It experienced the symptoms descibed

2) My NEW Barracuda they replaced for me is ALSO affected by this paper weight/door stop making nonsense.

And to think I thought it was my fault and my luck. Heck, the quote the data recovery center gave me for data recovery would have made any university student shit in his pants. I can’t even begin to imagine how many figmas I can buy with that much moolah.

Anyway, more info after the break.

Here’s some info with regards to the symptoms.

Seagate Offers Firmware Fix for All Problematic Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drives
Seagate has issued an official statement today, acknowledging all recent problems with some Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Based on the information posted in the company’s forums here, select Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 3.5-inch hard drives made in Thailand, suffer from a firmware issue that bricks the HDDs after a short period of time. After three to five months of normal operation these defective hard drives will suddenly lock-up as a protective measure and prevent the system from recognizing the drive from then onwards. In most cases the information won’t be lost, but the drive will be completely useless, changing the drive’s electronics won’t help much either. This problem occurs not only to the 1TB Barracuda models, but to Seagate 1.5TB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB Barracuda 7200.11 drives, along with some Maxtor and ES.2 models. That’s pretty disturbing, but now Seagate will provide its customers with an updated firmware if their drive is problematic.

Source

Here’s the statement.

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/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931.

Support is also available through Seagate’s call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 8…)

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/

Tell that to my lost data.

Now excuse me while I go fix this problem. I suggest you guys check out the link given in the statement if you have bought any Seagate HDDs recently.