Seagate hard drives suffering mass data loss

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Alex Kidman21 January 2009, 9:26 PM

Now you see your data... now you don't. You can't even see the firmware upgrades to fix the problem, either.


Any seasoned IT professional knows that hard drives are prone to failure -- it's essentially just a matter of when, not if they're going to fail. What do you do, though, with a hard drive that forgets what's actually on the drive, but is otherwise healthy? That's the status of a number of models of Seagate hard drives based around the Barracuda platform which contain a firmware error that effectively renders the drives non-functional.

The first sign you'll get that your drive is faulty? When you power it on, the drive reports that there's no data on the drive. We'd call that panic time, but your experience may vary.

Seagate goes to some pains on its official support page to point out that the faulty drives don't actually delete any data per se; they're just unable to see that data that's actually there. Or to quote them directly in the only communication they're entering into on the matter:

"There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive.  But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services.  Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business."

The problem potentially affects the following drives, according to Seagate:

Barracuda 7200.11 Drives with Serials: ST31000340AS, ST3750330AS, ST3640330AS, ST3500320AS, ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS

Barracuda ES.2 SATA Drives with Serials: ST31000340NS, ST3750330NS, ST3500320NS, ST3250310NS

DiamondMax 22 Drives with Serials: STM31000340AS, STM3750330AS, STM3500320AS, STM31000334AS, STM3320614AS, STM3160813AS

Windows users can download an executable to identify all their Seagate drives for them, while Mac OS X and Linux users will have to tinker a little more to find the pertinent details.

Seagate's offering firmware downloads for affected drives, although we noticed two potential problems when checking through a few sample firmware pages. Firstly, they note that "The software and information in this article could be data destructive and/or render your hard drive inoperable if not followed carefully. It is always recommended to keep a backup of critical data."

Quite how you backup data on a drive that can't see its own data isn't addressed.

There's a larger problem, however, as every single firmware upgrade listed in Seagate's technical support document is (a the time of writing) currently unavailable as they're "in validation". Presumably for firmware errors that might render your data invisible and inaccessible, but we're just guessing there.

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FostWare (User):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1098793&cid=26542735

The drives don't lose data, they refuse to spin up. Basically, "bricked"...
The warnings are boilerplate to stop Seagate being sued.
There's a *tested* patch due at the end of this week.
The rushed patch was forced out by management, thus it's unsafe and was pulled before it did more damage.
The 'data recovery' is usually just a low-level firmware re-flash.
The rumors of data loss were so last week...

22 January 2009, 1:19 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Alex Kidman (User):

I'm not sure where the article says that data is lost anywhere... just that it can't be accessed.

A "bricked" drive, though, would be exactly that -- a brick. Not recoverable. If (and it's a big if) Seagate can turn around a fix for the drive, then they're not bricked. Although the amount of trust people put in their drives might just be bricked.

22 January 2009, 8:22 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

CBR1100XX (Cornerstone member):

Quoting Alex Kidman:
I'm not sure where the article says that data is lost anywhere

"Seagate hard drives suffering mass data loss" - APC title of thread




22 January 2009, 11:04 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Raindog (Senior Forumologist):

Quoting FostWare:
The drives don't lose data, they refuse to spin up. Basically, "bricked"...

Which from a user point of view is data loss.



Quoting FostWare:
The 'data recovery' is usually just a low-level firmware re-flash.
There's a *tested* patch due at the end of this week.

Now there is something you want Joe Public having a go at. Looks like plenty of data will become lost before the issue is resolved.



Quoting FostWare:
The rumors of data loss were so last week...

What is a comment like that supposed to achieve? You see it as old news big deal, click to the next page. The issue is far from resolved so the article can hardly be considered stale.


22 January 2009, 11:21 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Alex Kidman (User):

For what it's worth (with my best Maxwell Smart hat on), would you believe that I didn't write the headline?

I can see how it's interpreted as such.

22 January 2009, 11:23 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Raindog (Senior Forumologist):

Quoting Alex Kidman:
I can see how it's interpreted as such.

Perhaps, but for all practical purposes the headline is accurate.
Who buys a drive expecting to one day have to run patches or seek out a IT professional's services just to continue reading the data they had previously saved?


22 January 2009, 11:30 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

FostWare (User):

Quoting Alex Kidman:
For what it's worth (with my best Maxwell Smart hat on), would you believe that I didn't write the headline?

I can see how it's interpreted as such.


I'll let you off :P



22 January 2009, 2:00 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

FostWare (User):

Quoting Raindog:
Quoting FostWare:
The rumors of data loss were so last week...

What is a comment like that supposed to achieve? You see it as old news big deal, click to the next page. The issue is far from resolved so the article can hardly be considered stale.

Sure, the issue isn't over until the drives spin up properly, but using data loss as a headline is not true except for a very few situations according to Seagate and other forums with peoples' experiences.




22 January 2009, 2:14 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Raindog (Senior Forumologist):

Quoting FostWare:
but using data loss as a headline is not true

For the end user the data is lost, the headline is entirely accurate.

I am not disputing that external measures are possible to recover the data and reactivate the drive, and you are quite correct i stating this.

Possible recovery methods will hardly not always be comfort for someone with a bricked drive. While in this case lost may not always be lost forever there is a very real chance it can be. The warning is quite appropriate.


22 January 2009, 2:41 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

TV Bis (User):

Let's not get too pedantic about this data loss title. If the data is inaccessible to the user either by the disk drive not spinning up or by some other problem with reading etc., then the data is lost to that user. It is lost until such time the data becomes retrievable again if at all.

22 January 2009, 2:49 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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