Take two of the Seagate saga

When we last left this running soap opera of some Seagate hard drives failing, the drive manufacturer had issued some firmware fixes, then pulled a couple out of circulation, and now has returned them with some fixes for the fixes.

The firmware updater, at first glance, looks like it needs a Windows PC, but the reality is the ISO images, once burned to a CD, will boot on an Intel based Mac. They will not work on any PowerPC platform, so don't even try. I was surprised that these discs would boot, but it worked for me and there are similar reports all over the tech support boards.

Let me state up front that firmware updates can be deadly, and only try this if you have good, recent backups of all your data. This is really important, because if it fails because you haven't followed the instructions, your hard drive is offline. The data will be OK, but it will not be accessible. Seagate is saying they will retrieve data from problem drives, but that is a slow process and a gigantic hassle.

These instructions are for a Mac Pro, which are the Macs most likely to have added internal drives. If you are brave, and only if you are brave, read on for the steps...

Go to this Seagate support page, scroll down and determine if your Seagate drive is one of the models that is likely to fail. To find out your model, serial number and firmware number consult the 'About this Mac' option under your Apple menu. Then click on 'More Info' and click on the 'Serial-ATA' text to get a list of your drives or drives. If they match the specs of suspect drives from Seagate, you can proceed. To match they must be the same model number and firmware version.

Clicking on the model number of your drive will take you another page that will let you download an ISO image file, which is the firmware update. You can use the Apple Disc Utility to burn a CD of this image. If you are doing this on a Mac Pro, it would be a good idea to slide all the drives out that are not going to be updated. In my case, I had a Western Digital and a Maxtor drive that were not going to be updated, so I removed them.

You then start up your Mac holding the 'C' key down and you should boot from the firmware disc. It will look a lot like DOS (since it is), and you follow the prompts to scan for the drive that needs the update. Then apply the update, making sure you are matching the correct model number on screen to what you have. After a short time you'll be told to exit and shut down. When you are shut down you can restart your Mac, holding the option key down so you can elect to start up on your now updated internal drive. If by chance, the drive you have updated is not a startup drive, then before powering up the Mac go ahead and replace the other hard drives you had taken out.

Once you are at the Mac desktop run System Profiler and check to see if your firmware is updated. On my Barracuda drive I went from SD15 to SD1A which is the newer, repaired firmware.

A couple of caveats: I had a morning full of pain because I could not get my keyboard to recognize the 'option' key being held down so I could choose the startup disk after the update. That was because my keyboard was plugged into my Apple 30" monitor, which acts like a hub. When I moved the keyboard to the front panel USB port all was well again. I'm also told that some of the Apple aluminum keyboards have a similar problem, even when plugged in directly, so you might want to have an old standby keyboard available.

I can't really recommend people try this unless they are very confident, but it is working for many people. Seagate really needs to get better Mac support, and they are going to have to do something about non-Intel Macs. Remember that this fix will not help you if you have an external drive with one of these bad Seagate disks. Seagate is just going to have to come out with a better solution. Finally, and once again, back up any drives you are going to try this update on. Inhale deeply. Cross fingers.

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Source: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/news.jsp?D…

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Peripherals Troubleshooting Mac Pro

When we last left this running soap opera of some Seagate hard drives failing, the drive manufacturer had issued some firmware fixes, then...

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mr kitty

I successfully updated 20 Seagate 750 GBs with this firmware in 5 batches of 4 on a new 8-core mac pro (silly me just ordered time machine drives for the entire office).

My counterpart in LA updated the two 1.5TB Barracudas we have in the Xserve there. The firmware updates ran fine and the drives reflect the new revision versions (SD1A & SD1B respectively).

Unfortunately tho, this patch STILL didn't fix the caching problem on the 1.5TBs. They still drop offline intermittently, killing the AFP share points when they do.

February 03 2009 at 11:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Macintosh Lou

We're at the 1st stage having issues.

Can't seem to find the downloadable firmware update for the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drives on the knowledge base.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207963

Can anyone shed some light? We're getting zero response from Seagate.

Curses!

January 27 2009 at 8:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Danny

I have an iMac Intel 2008 with 1.5 TB Seagate in it and I've upgraded my HDD firmware from SD17 to SD1B - hence I confirm the bootable ISO file I've downloaded from Seagate's support web site WORKS on iMacs too!

Danny

January 25 2009 at 11:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

kenny

i have 4 of these in my drobo and 4 for my mac pro (early 2008). but i can't get them to update, it gets an error everytime. I removed all the hard drives and tried to update the firmware one by one booting off the disc I made with the iso files but I kept getting an error.

"Scanning for controllers...
Scanning for devices...
Scanning for devices on Generic PCI ATA...
Found 2 Devices
Scanning for devices on Generic PCI ATA...
Found 0 Devices
Scan complete, 2 Controllers and 2 devices detected
Exit With Code 2
***********
Error: Specific model not found. ST31500341AS expected.
***********

the hard drive in it was exactly that model and i have no idea whats going on and what to do next.

talked to seagate and they're just sending the same generic response to everyone. I'm thinking its the apple raid card thats causing the problem but i'm not keen on removing it.

so i guess my question is can we send them into seagate even though they haven't failed yet and they send us ones with updated firmware back.

January 24 2009 at 7:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Optimus Rhyme

Just to add to the reports:

I have a 2.8ghz Octo Xeon with bays 3 and 4 both having affected 1tb drives installed. Checked the serials through system profiler, downloaded the iso as instructed and burned to disc.

The drives were not recognised until I moved them to bays 1 and 2.

After that the firmware updated both drives one after the other. Luckily they were brand new drives (3 days old!) and had not been used yet so no data to risk.

After the firmware had updated I plugged in the other drives and restarted.

Everything was a success and they are now in a mirrored Raid and hopefully won't die to soon!

This is the first time I have had t update hard drive firmware and the first time I've seen my Mac running DOS! Painless though. Well done Seagate for sorting this out.

January 24 2009 at 9:41 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

RHenley

I tend to think that TUAW is making a bigger issue of this than it actually is. And then Seagate is having a bit of a problem keeping up with communicating all the relevant data.

I have at least 12 Seagate drives here, of which 7 qualify by looking at the Seagate web page. So really Seagate isn't helping with this as well as they could have, because so far three of the drives either have a different firmware (from what's documented on their web pages) OR the serial number of the drive is not in the affected range (and that's not documented on the web pages) - you have to run the firmware updated to discern the serial number range.

Since my remaining apparently affected four drives are sitting in my raid, I've not yet gotten to hauling them out to check if I should update them or not. They have always been working just fine.

Oh, and you can't boot the Seagate firmware when AHCI is enabled in BIOS for the drives, because the updater uses DOS...

January 24 2009 at 1:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Antonio

So, basically, if we have only Power PC machines, we're frakked? What are we supposed to do, beg to some Intel owners if we can rip their HDs out of their computers so we can flash the firmware of these bogus HDs!?

I have 2 brand new drives which I haven't yet installed which are on the affected list. Should I just trhow them away and buy new ones?

How frakked is this!?

January 24 2009 at 1:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

max

I've had the same experience where holding 'c' on an aluminum apple keyboard won't boot from a cd. Strange.. Off to go find an old keyboard.

January 24 2009 at 12:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Eric

For those with Drobos - just pull an afflicted Seagate drive out of the Drobo and update the firmware on a machine with an SATA connection. When the drive has been updated with the new firmware, plug it back in the Drobo and continue on to the next drive in the Drobo array.

That's the beauty of the Drobo, isn't it? You CAN pull any ONE drive at a time.

Eric

January 23 2009 at 11:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Eric's comment

You are correct. I was rushed in my thinking when I wrote my earlier post, but that doesn't solve the fact that Drobo users without an intel Mac Pro or PC machine with sata connections can't update the firmware. Also, if from this post and from other's stories that the firmware update process is bricking some hard drives, I'm not sure that I want my Drobo to not be redundant for that long of a period while I wait for a new drive to arrive in the mail. Hence why I need to buy a second drobo anyways.

Seagate could learn a few things about customer service and also need to make a more compatible way for Mac users to update the firmware for those that don't have an intel mac pro. It's a big enough market share now imho to be doing this already as a huge hard drive manufacturer who also sells drives standard with some apple machines.

January 24 2009 at 2:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mike

I e-mailed the address in their KB article regarding my FreeAgent Xtreme 1TB I just bought a week ago.

My e-mail:
---------------------
I recently bought:

FreeAgent Xtreme 1TB ST310005FPA2E3-RK
Serial: 2DELETED
Revision: 4115

The Drive Detect program does not tell me what model drive is inside the case.

Do I need to update the firmware for the recent issues?
---------------------

The e-mail I receive back is completely worthless, as follows:

---------------------
Thank you for contacting Seagate Support.

A firmware issue has been identified that affects a small number of
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive models which may result in data
becoming inaccessible after a power-off/on operation. The affected
products are Barracuda 7200.11, Barracuda ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22.
Based on the low risk as determined by an analysis of actual field return
data, Seagate believes that the affected drives can be used as is.
However, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is
offering a free firmware upgrade.

Please follow this link
(http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931)
to enter the Knowledge Base article(s) detailing the steps to update your
drive.

In the unlikely event your drive is affected and you cannot access your
data, the data still resides on the drive and there is no data loss
associated with this issue. If your drive is no longer accessible, contact
us directly for further assistance at
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/.

NOTE: If you have contacted Seagate Support regarding a separate issue or
about another product, please visit
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/ to submit an email.
Thank you.

Seagate Support
---------------------

They could AT LEAST read the e-mail I sent with the serial, revision, etc. that THEY REQUESTED and provide a response for the model I mentioned, not just a generic cut-and-paste I already saw on the damned KB article!!!

So, I'm sitting here wondering, still, if my FreeAgent 1TB needs an update...