Mass Seagate drive failures; Seagate posts info

[Tonio]

[quote="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?


quote]


You need to go here : http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... cId=207931

to see if your model and revision is listed. They should have a firmware updated posted or not. I think they just posted anew one last night-at least for my ST35000320AS rev SD15 that I have.

If you check out the forum, it appears that it will not work for a RAID config. But do not take my word on it, and check for yourself-I do not have a RAID config.

Boy , and I used tout Seagte Baracuda's

T

[Tonio]

FYI, the firmware update is not MAC specific, but per BOBk's chat w/ Seagate seems that is the MFR's instructions. I would take that with a grain of salt.
MACWorld had a posting that the update is not MAC specific.

Anyone try it??

T

[nk_e]

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!

Cripes! If true that is really nasty. They sell these drives in all types of enclosures to the mass public and they expect folks to disassemble them and mount them into machines and run some updater? That is beyond the capabilities of most "regular" folks I know and frankly is a PIA.

Has anyone else been told this also? It's not that I doubt your info BobK, it's just the answers folks are getting from Seagate seem to be inconsistent so I'm searching for an additional affirmative data point.

Thx.

[chadd]

Last night I ran the SD1A firmware installer on the ST3500320AS drive in my Mac Pro, and it worked. I followed the instructions that BobK posted, but there were a few discrepancies. Even though the CD is named 'Seagate' in the OS X finder, it shows up as 'Windows' when booting with the option key held. Also, there was no arrow to the right after clicking the CD icon - clicking the icon (or the upward facing arrow underneath it) took me straight to FreeDOS. Lastly, the instructions in the installer tell you to remove all of the drives except the one being updated, which I did. The Mac Pro design sure makes that a lot easier that it used to be!

The updated drive seems to be working fine. The data is still there, and the firmware version is shown as being SD1A in the 'About this Mac' info.

[BobK]

chadd - Thanks so much for the info. It's the first truly helpful report I've seen.

nk_e, I'm not aware of inconsistencies from Seagate; info at other sites has been incomplete and/or vague, but the info I got from chats with two Seagate techs on two different days was consistent. Of course, there is a chance they were both missing some critical info for Mac users, so I hope people will keep after them and report anything new here. But so far, it does look like the whole thing is a big PITA, particularly if you don't have an Intel Mac tower or Windows PC.

I bought another drive to back up my backups before doing the firmware update, and this time I went with Hitachi instead of Seagate. I'm sure there are folks with Hitachi nightmare stories - every hard drive dies eventually - but I decided to give them a try.

[mesaken]

This is the latest info I could put together and includes some info already posted:

Seagate SATA Drive Firmware Updates In Mac Pro

( 1/22/2009)
"Seagate has posted yet another firmware updater revision. This time there are two different images for different drive models (rather than a single update for all models).
For ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS and ST31000340AS:
MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB.ISO
For ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS and ST3500820AS:
MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO
Initial reports from Seagate's forums indicate that the updaters are working correctly and people are able to successfully flash their drives - with working drives and no data loss after. There are also some reports of the updated firmware flash image repairing the 500GB that were bricked by the previous updater. The reports also say that no data was lost.
There are no indications whether the firmware has changed or only the updater. The firmware is still listed as SD1A so there's no indication as to whether drives that had previously been successfully updated should be re-flashed.

Update Instructions

1. Download the matching firmware update file. (sometimes in the past Seagate support has sent links/codes to download updates)

2. Burn a CD-ROM from that ISO image with Toast or the Finder. If you don't know how, look here (Seagate Kbase doc): How to burn an .iso image onto a CD [201431]

3. Shut down the MacPro with the CD-ROM inside the tray.

4. Remove all drives and move the drive you want to update in bay one (the nearest to the CD-ROM Drive) (FYI - the lone drive/bay 1 note is a common tip from the past - but I had one Mac Pro owner say using the latest SD1 updater he updated several installed drives. But if in doubt, follow the older rules.)

5. Press the on/off button and press C on the keyboard.

6. After awhile your mac boots from the CD and the display looks like a DOS machine. (Command line/text) First read the info shown on the display. It is the same as in the read me text file.

7. After reading the info, you have to hit any key and the updater moves to the next screen.

8. Now you have to select the update option. For the matching type of hard drive, you have to select a letter. (In my case "C" for updating the ST311000340AS.)

9. After sending the binaries (updated firmware) to the drive, there should be a successful response. If not refer, to the troubleshooting section in the read me.

10. After successful update is noted, Press any key and the MacPro shuts down.

11. On the first powerup after the update, hold down the mouse button to eject the updater CD-ROM.

12. After OS X boots, check Apple System Profiler to ensure that everything is ok and that the updated drive's "revision" shows the updated firmware revision.

(In my case "SD1A") - Nico

[nk_e]

I think this may be repeating the above instructions, but all sorts of good info is available here:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/sea ... html#guide

[Tonio]

I sent Seagate an email last week 1/19?). They replied on friday the 23rd. They sent me a link to check the model and serial #'s.
Apparently serial # can be traced to where it was manunfactured etc. Any my previously thought to be effected, is supposedly not?

hmm, some how I do not trust it. Getting WD or Hitachi to be safe.

T

[Bill O'C]

I just escaped this one by a hair. I have three internal Seagate drives. The one model that was on the list just happened to be my 1 TB audio drive. Went to their serial number database, and it was O.K.

Whew.

[p.pan]

I Have 4x HD Segate Barracuda 500Gb ST3500320AS 7200 32Mb Cache Sata II
I buy it November 2008.
I instal on my Macpro 2x3G Intel Quad Core.
With Leoard X.5.5 and that all.

For this moment I dont use it.
My HDrives looks Ok.

On the Seagate site I check my serial number if the HD are corupt and he say no.....
But I dont trust completly....

Do you think I can Update the Firmware to: MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO??????

[Bill O'C]

I Have 4x HD Segate Barracuda 500Gb ST3500320AS 7200 32Mb Cache Sata II
I buy it November 2008.
I instal on my Macpro 2x3G Intel Quad Core.
With Leoard X.5.5 and that all.

For this moment I dont use it.
My HDrives looks Ok.

On the Seagate site I check my serial number if the HD are corupt and he say no.....
But I dont trust completly....

Do you think I can Update the Firmware to: MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO??????

If you are sure that is the exact firmware update, I suppose you could try it.

I thought about updating my firmware anyway, but decided to back up on another drive even more often and see how it goes. My experience with Seagate has been always been very positive, so I have no reason to distrust them.

Also, the programs I saw for upgrading the firmware were for Windows (although I may have just looked in the wrong place for the Mac updaters).

Regards,
Bill

[BobK]

the programs I saw for upgrading the firmware were for Windows (although I may have just looked in the wrong place for the Mac updaters).

This is all covered earlier in this thread. Check it out!

[Bill O'C]

the programs I saw for upgrading the firmware were for Windows (although I may have just looked in the wrong place for the Mac updaters).

This is all covered earlier in this thread. Check it out!

Thanks, I just saw it. And it looks like several of you went to some trouble to post it (including mesekan's detailed instructions).

My bad.

[BobK]

Since my original post, Seagate has updated their info considerably. Now there's a utility on their site where you can enter serial numbers to see if your drive is affected - this wasn't there last week, nor was the Mac-specific update info. Better late than never. Based on the info they provided last week, I thought I had two drives that needed updating, but now, according to the serial number check, only one of them is affected. I just hope they're right about this.

[billf]

Since my original post, Seagate has updated their info considerably. Now there's a utility on their site where you can enter serial numbers to see if your drive is affected - this wasn't there last week, nor was the Mac-specific update info. Better late than never. Based on the info they provided last week, I thought I had two drives that needed updating, but now, according to the serial number check, only one of them is affected. I just hope they're right about this.

BobK, thanks for the update. I just checked and my serial number is not one of the affected, or perhaps I should say, afflicted. That said, my drives have the problematic firmware, but were not made in Thailand, which is where most of the problem drives are purported to have originated. It makes me wonder if there is something deeper going on. I mean if it is indeed a firmware problem, shouldn't all drives with the same firmware be at risk?