Larry Stotler wrote:
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 10:27 PM, David C. Rankin
Just a general FYI for seagate Barracuda drives 500G-1000G. Check your firmware version to see if your firmware version is:
I got bit by this and had to send my drive to i365(which is owned by Seagate). I got an email saying they were able to fix the drive and all my data is there. I was unable to even get my system's BIOS to see the drive. Hopefully, when I get the drive back in a couple of days, everything will be ok.
Larry, I bought a pair of 750G Seagate (white label -- refurbs $57) which I have never had a problem with in the past. The first I sent back to Seagate because the read/write head was doing the "cha --click, cha --click" thing far too often. I went ahead and did the advanced RMA where they ship you a new drive along with the return shipping label. I received the replacement drive in 2-days flat. On the second, I didn't clue in to the buffered disk reads issue until I got the new drive from Seagate and compared the two with hdparm. Noticing the difference in buffered disk reads, I didn't want to have to send that drive in as well, so I just searched for any other possible solution and the firmware update was found. After the dramatic improvement the new firmware provided, I'd be willing to bet there is a 50% chance it would have fixed the first drive as well. This was the first time I have ever had to mess with drive firmware before, but it was no different than any bios update. The software associated with the update is 1.6M, just barely too large to fit on a floppy. Hopefully you will find your in good shape when you get it back with the data in hand. I was lucky, I didn't have anything on the drives when the problems occurred. I usually to a 10 day -> 2 week burn in on drives before I put them into use, so in this case, I had put them in my son's box in a raid1 configuration with software raid just to make sure I would have no problems. Glad I did. Now after 2 weeks, one drive rma to Seagate and a firmware update on the other, I am ready to put the drives in service. I sure do miss the old days when you bought a drive and could be very confident that you could just put it into a box and have it work! My first 120M hard drive still works fine (yes that is a "M" not a "G") And... it used to hold all my software with 110M free;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org