Warning: Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drive multiple failures reported

Posted by Scout on January 17, 2009

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A word of caution for would-be buyers. Tom’s Hardware has just posted news on alarming Seagate hard drive failures for those with model number ST31000340AS, more popularly known as the 1TB Barracuda 7200.11. The issue has reached the Seagate support forums where it’s been gaining considerable attention.

As expected, news like this drove people into paranoia, and who came blame them? Hard drive manufacturers don’t have any legal responsibility for data loss. Sure, they’ll replace your drive if it’s still under warranty, but you’ll get a blank one for it. If you value what you have: back up, back up, back up. Today’s storage technology is sadly unreliable.

From the Tom’s Hardware report:

“The issue lies with faulty microcode in firmware version SD15, found on drives manufactured in Thailand. Generally, the drive will operate normally until the time of failure and at some point will lock up and prevent detection by the BIOS, rendering it completely unusable.

While Seagate has not publicly acknowledged the problem as of yet, they have reportedly updated the firmware on all newly manufactured drives, however the firmware cannot be update on drives that have already failed because the BIOS does not even detect them. This means that owners of affected drives require data recovery services to save their critical data.

No recall on unsold drives with the affected firmware has been issued.”



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Comments

4 Responses to “Warning: Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drive multiple failures reported”

  1. Pow on January 18th, 2009 5:41 pm

    That is the reason why I always back up most of the files I downloaded. Optical media is still more reliable form of storage esp. for long-term period=)

  2. Scout on January 21st, 2009 8:31 am

    True. Having no mechanical parts help, although they still degrade chemically over time. Hence, I will always be paranoid about these things.

  3. Pow on January 22nd, 2009 9:36 am

    Murphy’s law. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Hehe. I think the best solution to today’s storage problem is solid-state drive but its availability in market is limited and the price is prohibitive.

  4. Scout on January 22nd, 2009 10:44 am

    Bull’s eye. Murphy’s Law has always been my life assumption.

    I don’t worry about SSDs, though. Time is on our side, and I’m a very patient person. ;)

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