Watch out for Seagate Barracuda 7200-11 500GB - Firmware Problems = Known Issue

I upgraded my PC about a month ago, and was shocked to reboot on Monday morning and find the hard drive crash. I have had bad sectors and complete HD crashes before, but really didn't expect it from a brand new system. What was different this time is that the PC would not even enter Bios settings or register the drive. After doing some research, I discovered it is a known problem affecting thousands of irate users of the Seagate Barracuda 7200-11 500GB hard drive.

"SEAGATE'S FLAGSHIP desktop Barracuda 7200.11 drives are failing at an alarming rate and prompting outrage from their faithful customers. A new self-bricking feature apparently resides in faulty firmware microcode which will rear its ugly head sometime at boot detection. Essentially the drive will be working as normal for a while, then - out of the blue - it'll brick itself to death. The next time you reboot your computer the drive will simply lock itself up as a failsafe and won't be detected by the BIOS. In other words, there's power, spin-up, but no detection to enable booting.... No official stats are available, but at least one RMA middleman has told us there's about 30-40% failure rates."

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1050374/seagate-barracudas-7200-11-failing

Also see:

• http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/17/0115207
• http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/2009/01/22/seagate-barracuda-7200-11-hard-drive-recovery/
• http://techblips.dailyradar.com/story/seagate_technology_barracuda_7200_11_sata_models_with/

"The only major issue with this drive is the prevalence of batches still being sold which have faulty firmware. If you search for ' 7200.11 firmware' you'll find lots of information about this issue. Basically, the firmware shipped with earlier batches of this drive has a fault that can cause the device to 'brick' - basically the drive/data is OK but the controller refuses to talk to your BIOS, making it completely inaccessible. Once the drive has bricked firmware updates will not resolve it and you have to return it to Seagate for replacement."

Source: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R296S6C8FE0VX7

The hard disk crash means that the users have to:

1. buy a replacement or submit the issue under warranty to the sales company,
2. physically install the new drive, re-install the OS, and all of the additional programs,
3. transfer all the archived data to rebuild the desktop environment.

In my instance, this is a multi-day process, so the loss of work as a full-time web designer is significant. What is worse is that it is a known issue, and I should have researched all aspects of the assembled system before purchasing... or, more importantly, it should not have been sold by Seagate / dealers at all.

More Links:

• http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=3283
• http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288
• http://storagesecrets.org/2009/01/seagate-boot-death-class-action-lawsuit/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/18/barracuda_firmware_upgrade_and_recovery/
  
• http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/01/21/seagate_firmware_fix_breaks_barracudas/

Solution, Repair, & Data Recovery:

Here is the only link I could find on how to fix the problem with the hard drive and recover the data:

• http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html