Mass Seagate drive failures; Seagate posts info

[nk_e]

.....Major bummer...but so far I haven't had problems with the drives. Very disappointing that Seagate's web pages for this issue made no mention of Macs at all. I got the upgrade instructions during the chat.

Anything you can share?

[BobK]

This is what the Seagate agent told me, copied verbatim from the online chat. Remember, they told me the affected drive must be in an Intel Mac tower computer (or a Windows machine). It won't work with Intel Mac laptops or PPC Macs.

1. Download and burn the Firmware ISO that has been provided to you by Seagate for your drive/s
2. Burn the ISO to a CD (how to: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html ... /8729.html)
3. Insert the freshly burn CD back in to your Mac.
4. Reboot
5. After the Chime press and hold the Option key on the keyboard.
6. Once you see the Apple with the spinning gear beneath, release the Option Key.
7. At this point the system will come to a screen with pictures of hard drives and a CD, the CD should be named Seagate.
8. Click on the CD
9. Click on the arrow pointing to the right.
10. At this point FreeDOS will boot and the on screen instructions should be followed.

I'm curious whether this will erase the data on the drive. Forgot to ask them, but will ask tomorrow.

UPDATE Jan 27: Seagate has updated their info a lot since last week. Among the new additions are Mac-specific instructions and utilities for looking up drives based on model and serial number. The serial number search told me that only one of my drives is affected - good news. But still there are no PPC-compatible updaters.

[Shooshie]

So, these are new drives, right? It says affected drives were only made during December.

Anyway, I checked my drives, and none of my numbers matched the ones listed. I found my numbers in the System Profiler under Serial ATA drives. Not sure why some are reporting that they cannot, unless it's a difference in OS. In Leopard it is possible to see all drives' serial numbers in System Profiler.

[edit] Wups... Just checked again. It says THROUGH December 08, not IN December 08.
Shooshie

[billf]

So, these are new drives, right? It says affected drives were only made during December.

Anyway, I checked my drives, and none of my numbers matched the ones listed. I found my numbers in the System Profiler under Serial ATA drives. Not sure why some are reporting that they cannot, unless it's a difference in OS. In Leopard it is possible to see all drives' serial numbers in System Profiler.

[edit] Wups... Just checked again. It says THROUGH December 08, not IN December 08.
Shooshie

The drives could be made ANYTIME in 2008 Shooshie. The entire 7200.11 line is becoming suspect. Also, the firmware update Seagate released this week is bricking 500gb drives. If you have a Seagate drive with valuable data on it, get something to back it up immediately.

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/mes ... ad.id=4771

[nk_e]

...Anyway, I checked my drives, and none of my numbers matched the ones listed. I found my numbers in the System Profiler under Serial ATA drives. Not sure why some are reporting that they cannot, unless it's a difference in OS. In Leopard it is possible to see all drives' serial numbers in System Profiler....
Shooshie

Not external drives. I have a couple of FreeAgent Pros eSata and nothing has been able to tell me the info I need. I'll have to physically dissassmenble and inspect them.....

[monkey man]

I just got 2 1TB Seagates and almost sht when I saw this but I am ok.
I went to seagate and read what ones were affected I have one that is on the list a 100333 but I have firm ware update that has a CC in it so I should be fine.

I hope so, Twisted One. I seem to recall a certain monkey's recommending that you go WD. Then again, what would he know.

[Shooshie]

...Anyway, I checked my drives, and none of my numbers matched the ones listed. I found my numbers in the System Profiler under Serial ATA drives. Not sure why some are reporting that they cannot, unless it's a difference in OS. In Leopard it is possible to see all drives' serial numbers in System Profiler....
Shooshie

Not external drives. I have a couple of FreeAgent Pros eSata and nothing has been able to tell me the info I need. I'll have to physically dissassmenble and inspect them.....

Not sure. Maybe it's one way with some and another way with others, but all my Seagate externals -- including the ones I put inside enclosures myself -- show up with their ID number in the System Profiler. The ones that did not show up were not Seagates, as far as I can remember, but IBM DeskStars if I recall correctly. They had various brand names outside, but inside were IBM drives. Even those had a serial number, but it didn't look anything like the Seagates.
[edit] these are Firewire drives, not eSATA
Shoosh

[jroadrage]

Anyone here able to get the model # for a FreeAgent Pro on a USB or Firewire bus? All I see on the enclosure and in System Profiler are the serial and part #s. I emailed Seagate but I imagine they have a pretty long queue these days.

[nk_e]

Anyone here able to get the model # for a FreeAgent Pro on a USB or Firewire bus? All I see on the enclosure and in System Profiler are the serial and part #s. I emailed Seagate but I imagine they have a pretty long queue these days.

same problem with eSata. i've been investigating on line, downloaded some freeware/shareware/demo apps, nothing seems to work.

seagate has some stuff on its site for macs, but it doesn't seem to support the freeagent pro drives, just the newer versions (i thought these were pretty new btw). if i am wrong, somebody please let me know.

anyway, earlier in the thread someone suggested disassembling the enclosures to inspect the drives physically. was really hoping to NOT have to do that.....

[twistedtom]

Monkey man I have room for one more drive and the new WD Black is working and performing very well so I think that will be the one to go into that spot.

[chadd]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. My audio drive is on Seagate's naughty list (500GB ST3500320AS), so I think I'll try running the firmware updater.

[twistedtom]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. My audio drive is on Seagate's naughty list (500GB ST3500320AS), so I think I'll try running the firmware updater.

did you check the revision number of your drive in the profiler and at the seagate web site only some of the ones with the number may be affected ? Seagate says that if you run the firmware for the drives that are not the bad ones it may damage your drive. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT REVISION YOUR DRIVE IS. See posts above if you need to know how.

[chadd]

Thanks for the warning. The firmware revision on my drive is SD15, which is one of the bad ones.

[Jim]

Sorry guys, but I'm still having problems following threads in this new format. Has anybody posted a link to the Mac firmware updater?

Does anybody know if the firmware updater works on drives in a RAID 5? I have eight of these drives in a RAID enclosure.

I did run a Verify routine on my RAID after first reading this thread. It took about 8 hours, but passed verification.

This is what the Seagate agent told me, copied verbatim from the online chat. Remember, they told me the affected drive must be in an Intel Mac tower computer (or a Windows machine). It won't work with Intel Mac laptops or PPC Macs.

1. Download and burn the Firmware ISO that has been provided to you by Seagate for your drive/s
2. Burn the ISO to a CD (how to: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html ... /8729.html)
3. Insert the freshly burn CD back in to your Mac.
4. Reboot
5. After the Chime press and hold the Option key on the keyboard.
6. Once you see the Apple with the spinning gear beneath, release the Option Key.
7. At this point the system will come to a screen with pictures of hard drives and a CD, the CD should be named Seagate.
8. Click on the CD
9. Click on the arrow pointing to the right.
10. At this point FreeDOS will boot and the on screen instructions should be followed.

I'm curious whether this will erase the data on the drive. Forgot to ask them, but will ask tomorrow.

[BobK]

There is no Mac-specific firmware updater, at least not that I'm aware of (and I just completed my second online chat with Seagate support). I don't know about RAID enclosures specifically, but I'm pretty sure it won't work. I asked about doing the update to my drives via a Firewire enclosure, and they told me:

"They [the drives] have to be a direct connection to the motherboard for the update to be applied."

So, you need to have the drives mounted inside a desktop computer, and it must be an Intel Mac or a PC. I have one friend with a Mac Pro and one with a PC, so I'll try them (my other Mac-using friends have PPCs...).

If you need more info, your best bet is probably contacting Seagate directly. My wait for online chat was very short today.

Good luck!