2 yr old Seagate hard drive died, firmware issue?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited March 2011 in Hardware
I put a new 7200.11 500 GB boot drive in my computer when I built it in January '09. I had it set up with 60 and 405 GB partitions for the OS and for backup storage.

A few days ago, after a restart, the computer would no longer find the boot drive. I tried a bunch of different SATA cables and different connectors, CMOS resets, etc, but nothing worked. I put the drive in a different computer and it could not see the drive either. And boot up time was multiplied by about 3.

I did some online research, and it seems Seagate had a firmware issue with the version that I had, SD15, that would lock up the drive like it did to me. 2 years it ran fine, then suddenly it doesn't work at all.

So the drive is on its way to Seagate now for free data recovery and maybe replacement, we'll see what I get back.

I have always used Seagate drives, and this is the only failure ever, I was quite disappointed. Anyone else have this happen to them?:grumble:

Comments

  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    No.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    So no one else had ever had this problem?
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    I think it's less that no one has had this problem and more that no one really cares. It's a drive failure. You work with computers long enough and you're bound to have one. It's why any intelligent computer person keeps backups.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Kwitko wrote:
    No.

    Confirmed. No one has ever had a hard drive fail on them for any reason in history, ever


    Srsly? WTF are you looking for?

    You bought a consumer-grade Hard Drive and it failed after 2 years. Regardless of the reason, this is completely and utterly normal.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    There's something called MTTF- Mean time to failure. It means that on average a drive will fail after x hours. Some go sooner, some go later. Also, you answered your own question about the drive. That particular version of the firmware causes sudden lockups for no apparent reason. In other words, shit happens.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    I didn't lose anything, I keep backups of anything important on other hard drives and DVDs.

    But I've always run Seagate drives, and some have been 5-6 years old before I took them out of service. This one was 2 years old and as near as I can tell it was the firmware. I called the Seagate repair place in Chicago today, and they said they'll let me know what's up once they get it and check it out.

    What are NON-consumer grade drives? What brands or models?
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    It was a glitch in how the drive calculated some parameter. I have my Seagate drive do the same thing. I hacked it using a serial to usb dongle and used some machine code emulator terminal to reset the parameter enough to allow me to flash the firmware. Been working fine since.
  • RichDRichD Essex, UK
    edited March 2011
    Tim, your threads always cheer me up, and for that I thank you!
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Tim wrote:
    I didn't lose anything, I keep backups of anything important on other hard drives and DVDs.

    But I've always run Seagate drives, and some have been 5-6 years old before I took them out of service. This one was 2 years old and as near as I can tell it was the firmware. I called the Seagate repair place in Chicago today, and they said they'll let me know what's up once they get it and check it out.

    What are NON-consumer grade drives? What brands or models?

    Again, you're looking for additional answers where there are none to be had. You experienced a known bug with a known disastrous consequence (provided it was actually the firmware bug, of course).

    As for non-consumer-grade drives, every manufacturer makes them (Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, and WD), they're just not always available for regular purchase, and may not be on the interface you need. In my experience, most enterprise-grade drives are SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI), which would require a specialized drive controller that most consumer-grade motherboards will not carry due to their high additional expense.

    If you really want to increase drive reliability/availability without spending ridiculous amounts of money, start RAID-ing (not 0, of course).
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Seagate also makes the ES line of drives which are enterprise grade SATA drives. They're way more expensive than normal SATA drives and are supposed to be more reliable. Really though, it's not worth the extra money for a home user. Just back your effing data up and realize that drives fail.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited March 2011
    Just a note, Enterprise drives can fail just as easy as consumer drives. Backups are paramount.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Got a call from the Seagate repair place today. Flashing the firmware fixed it and they are sending it back. Should have it in about 5-6 days.
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    BINGO... They did what I did. Mine was OEM and out of warranty (HP) so it was going to be $200 so I flashed it myself. Congrats for getting it free!
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    foolkiller wrote:
    Just a note, Enterprise drives can fail just as easy as consumer drives. Backups are paramount.

    Don't I know it. We got a bad batch of them from Seagate at work. Had to replace about 4 of them out of the case of 24 (I think) within weeks of installing them. Pain in the ass.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Had drives fail right out of the box. It happens.
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