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laplace

Member

From: West Germany

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 22

seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

A number of Seagate hard drives from the following families may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on:

Barracuda 7200.11
DiamondMax 22
Barracuda ES.2 SATA

Once a drive has become affected the data becomes inaccessible to users but the data is not deleted.  Seagate has isolated this issue to a firmware bug affecting drives from these families manufactured in December 2008.

Source:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … NewLang=en

I got 2 affected harddrives and of course running linux
Seagate provides their tools just for windows, so how do i find out my firmware version?
and if i will get a firmware update, how do i apply it?

pointone

Wiki Admin

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2008-02-21

Posts: 379

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

If your drive is affected, why do you need to know the current firmware version? You will want to upgrade regardless!

Once you have the firmware, you will probably be able to use a DOS boot disk to update: http://www.bootdisk.com/

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M*cr*s*ft: Who needs quality when you have marketing?

laplace

Member

From: West Germany

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 22

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

If your drive is affected, why do you need to know the current firmware version?

therefore:

Please verify your drive model number, serial number, and firmware revision using the Drive Detect software.

* 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.

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,223

Website

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

European legislation says you can drop your disks of at your vendor's place and make it his problem.

You have 2 years of warranty on any product, and if the problems arise (and you tell your vendor about it) within 6 months of the purchase, they have to prove it's not their fault (burden of proof is on them instead of on you).

Zl.

slumslayer

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 66

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

You can use smartctl -i /dev/sdX (install smartmontools)

sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdc 
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     ST31000333AS
Serial Number:    9TE03W8S
Firmware Version: SD15
User Capacity:    1.000.204.886.016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is:    Mon Jan 19 18:42:05 2009 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

pointone

Wiki Admin

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2008-02-21

Posts: 379

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

Oh! I assumed that when you said "I got 2 affected harddrives and of course running linux" that you had run Seagate's applet that allows you to enter a serial number and then tells you whether your drive is affected or not.

I think hdparm can provide you with all the required information, but I don't know the exact command.

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M*cr*s*ft: Who needs quality when you have marketing?

laplace

Member

From: West Germany

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 22

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

thanks a lot slumslayer

can I use a usbstick instead of a bootdisk to apply the firmware update?

Last edited by laplace (2009-01-19 17:49:55)

slumslayer

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 66

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

Maybe if you mount the iso and copy the files on a freedos usbstick then use the right command...

Anyway, it seems there is a problem with the update ...
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/mes … ad.id=5133

Last edited by slumslayer (2009-01-19 18:02:57)

laplace

Member

From: West Germany

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 22

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

i just updated the firmware with this update successfully
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … cId=207957

before
Device Model:     ST31000333AS
Firmware Version: SD15

after
Device Model:     ST31000333AS
Firmware Version: SD1B

works fine!

thx for your help

slumslayer

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 66

Re: seagate firmware bug: hard drives may become inaccessible

I did it too, it seems the update is working now