Seagate Firmware Update Causing Drives To Fail

Seagate Firmware Update Causing Drives To Fail

The updated firmware

Seagate issued to solve 1TB Barracuda drive faults is causing 500GB Barracuda drives to fail.
The origianl Issue.
Barracuda 7200.11 drives made in Thailand (ref: ST31000340AS with firmware level SD15) are failing at boot time with a firmware error that is said to lock the drive up and render it inoperable.

Seagate recently reduced its bare drive warranty period, raising some doubts about product quality standards.

A mail sent by Seagate to a North American reseller said:
Seagate Updates Warranty Terms on Select Bare Drives
Starting in 2009, Seagate will be making some important changes to its limited warranty terms for selected bare drive products.
For products purchased on or after January 3, 2009, the limited warranty period for consumer electronics, notebook and personal storage bare drives sold to Seagate Authorized Distributors will be changed from 5 to 3 years. Seagate believes that the new warranty period and terms better reflect current industry standards.
Seagate enterprise drives and Seagate and Maxtor external retail products that have 5-year warranty periods will not be affected by this change.

Seagate is very aware of this issue, has taken down the update and is investigating it currently. And I’m quite certain a fix for it will be posted in short order.

source:

http://www.pcrepairzone.com/services/seagate-firmware-update-causing-drives-to-fail.html