Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals
Tick tick tick... significant number of Seagate hard drives failing
It hasn't been a great year so far for care companies and banks. Now, add Seagate to the list of enterprises facing unexpected challenges. The big manufacturer of hard disks reports that a 'small' number of Barracuda 7200.11 drives are failing. Once they fail, the data on them is supposedly still intact but can't be accessed without expert recovery procedures. Seagate has promised to expedite data recovery for affected users, which is nice enough but cold comfort if you're among the unlucky.Seagate offers a software utility that will tell you if your drive is at risk, but that only works on Windows PCs. The firm is providing some firmware updates for the affected, but at this point they do not appear to have an updater that will run under OS X.
The problem drives also extend to the Barracuda ES.2 SATA units and the DiamondMax22. The flaky drives could be internal models, or drives installed in external cases.
Wondering if you have one of these drives? You can use the 'more info' button when you select 'About this Mac' from the Apple menu (or just run the Apple System Profiler utility from your Utilities folder -- same result), and click on the Serial-ATA label in the left column. You'll get all your drive model numbers, and the firmware revisions. If the numbers match the bad news provided by Seagate, you'll know you may be living on borrowed time.
Lots of people around the 'net are reporting failures, and others say their drives match the numbers and aren't sure what to do without a viable firmware updater. I tried to call Seagate myself this morning and after navigating the inevitable phone tree a recording said they were too busy to take my call. I'll bet they are. Seagate did say today they will fix any defective drives and they will provide a free data recovery service. That is nice but it's a time consuming and troublesome process.
There is some talk of a class action lawsuit (of course) but clearly something is amiss with some Seagate drives so if you have one or more check them out, and hope the company comes up with some Mac friendly answers. If anyone has tried updating the firmware of a drive via Boot Camp, please advise (no, before you ask, trying to use a virtualization tool like VMware or Parallels to modify your drive firmware is neither advisable nor particularly feasible). Note that back in 2007 we reported on some problems involving Seagate drives and Apple laptops.
Here's how to contact Seagate, but I suspect they are pretty busy. No telling how many Macs have these drives in them. Apple uses a lot of different vendors, including Seagate. Check your backups, folks.
[via Engadget & The Register]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
j0510 said 8:35PM on 1-19-2009
I got burned by their 1.5 TB drives. Stay away from Seagate.
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SpinThis! said 12:36AM on 1-20-2009
On the other side of the sword, I've never had a problem with Seagate.
cargojack said 5:34AM on 1-20-2009
I have bought two Maxtor drive over a five year period, and both failed.
Another bad brand.
vandil said 8:39PM on 1-19-2009
Same thing happened to IBM's Deskstar drives (aka "Deathstar"), especially the 75GB models.
IBM denied there was a problem until so many people had problems they finally had to admit to it. IBM never recovered from that and had to sell their Deskstar hard disk business to Hitachi.
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Zippy said 12:51PM on 2-14-2009
@vandil .. IBM selling it's hd business had nothing to do with that. Hard drives are a commodity business, generating really really crappy margins. Wall Street wants IBM to operate at 40% GP+, for which hard drives will not. It's that simple. They have exited all low margin business segments... the only exception is PCs, and it's a loss leader offset by higher margins on other h/w lines.
Chris said 8:57PM on 1-19-2009
Great, my boot drive is the 500gb version and my time capsule drive is the 1000gb version. This should be fun.
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Chris said 9:04PM on 1-19-2009
Wait, read their site wrong. I was too hasty and didn't read that the model numbers they have listed are FINE. It's model numbers that differ from the the three listed that have problems.
I do still have one of the affected drives. It's a 500gb with my whole itunes Library (459gb) used. I'd be very upset if that bad boy crapped out, more so than my boot drive. Ha! Oh well it's backed up on time machine, but I think I may go out and buy a hefty external just in case.
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SpinThis! said 12:37AM on 1-20-2009
Actually this post is utterly confusing. The "bad news" link actually refers to an unrelated firmware issue relating to cache.
The takeaway link people need to get from this story is here:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
Dump into your system profiler and see if your drive is listed in Seagate's table near the bottom of the page. If it is, then click that link; that model specific page lists the firmware that is affected which you can compare to what the system profiler is spitting out.
Ry said 9:16PM on 1-19-2009
I have sent Seagate an e-mail to the support address that they list explicitly for this issue with all of the correct information weeks ago. I've only received one e-mail in response stating that I sent it to the wrong e-mail address and that they would route it accordingly. I haven't heard from them since.
I realize they're being flooded with complaints but I would like some sort of follow-up response. Weeks of waiting is absurd for a huge technology company such as Seagate. Failing service from Seagate along with failing drives.
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Dan said 9:25PM on 1-19-2009
I haven't had any problems at all with my new 1.5GB Seagate. I also don't even see the 1.5GB listed on the page with the affected drives. I'm running it in an IcyDock Firewire 800 enclosure and it is very quiet and reasonably cool. Just make sure your drive's numbers don't differ from those on the page at Seagate and if they do update your firmware.
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David said 3:15AM on 1-20-2009
The ST31500341AS 1.5TB drive is listed. Updated FW is "In Validation"
Dan said 1:50AM on 1-24-2009
I pulled the drive out of the enclosure and verified that it is CC1H firmware revision. According to the Seagate website:
* Note: If your drive has CC or LC firmware, your drive is not affected and no further action is required. Attempting to flash the firmware of a drive with CC or LC firmware will result in rendering your drive inoperable.
Like I said no problems so far. (knock on wood)
Junk Carter said 9:37PM on 1-19-2009
I have one of the supposedly "infected" drives. I have sent Seagate an email per their instructions however, I have yet to hear back. I know that I am potentially living on borrowed time, but at least I feel a little bit better running time machine every hour.
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Ben K. said 9:55PM on 1-19-2009
I had a Seagate drive in my MacBook that died in late October. Fortunately I was covered under AppleCare, but this doesn't surprise me one bit, hearing some of the news about other Seagate failures lately.
This company and Hitachi are ones I plan to STAY AWAY from in the future.
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south said 3:10PM on 1-22-2009
I never bought AppleCare, but the genius bar staff at my Apple Store have replaced TWO failed Seagate drives in my Macbook for free, both after the warranty had expired, because of a "known issue" with them.
Unfortunately they'd only replace one useless Seagate drive with another one, so I pulled that third one out to use as a spare and just bought a different brand (whose name I can't even remember, but I can say it's better than the Seagate junk).
Aelver said 9:59PM on 1-19-2009
You say the Barracuda ES.2 SATA drives are also affected, but I do not see them listed on their website.
Could you please provide a reference?
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Trev said 10:58PM on 1-19-2009
Try this ... I found it on the support site after some digging:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
ES.2's don't have a FW update at this time:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207963
Aelver said 11:04PM on 1-19-2009
Many thanks Trev. After digging I discovered that page too, and not much else.
Fingers crossed!
univac said 10:17PM on 1-19-2009
How do you determine the manufacture of drive in a Time Capsule?
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cliver said 10:29PM on 1-19-2009
Try "Disk Utility" in Apps/Utilities-It will show make & model.