Urgent Firmware Update Required For Some Seagate Hard Drive Models

Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on their product platform*, manufactured through December 2008. In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on. Retail products potentially affected include the Seagate FreeAgent® Desk and Maxtor OneTouch® 4 storage solutions. 

As part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, we are offering a free firmware upgrade to those with affected products. To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931.

Support is also available through Seagate’s call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283) 

Customers can expedite assistance by sending an email to Seagate (discsupport@seagate.com). Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial number and current firmware revision. We will respond, promptly, to your email request with appropriate instructions.

For a list of international telephone numbers to Seagate Support and alternative methods of contact, please access http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/

*There is no safety issue with these products.

An issue exists that may cause some Seagate hard drives to become inoperable immediately after a power-on operation. Once this condition has occurred, the drive cannot be restored to normal operation without intervention from Seagate. Data on the drive will be unaffected and can be accessed once normal drive operation has been restored. This is caused by a firmware issue associated with a specific aspect of Seagate’s manufacturing test process.

This condition is caused by a firmware bug that allows the drive’s “event log” pointer to be set to an invalid location. This condition is detected by the drive during power up, and the drive goes in to failsafe mode to prevent inadvertent corruption to or loss of user data. As a result, once the failure has occurred user data becomes inaccessible.

During power up, if the Event Log counter is at entry 320, or a multiple of (320 + x*256), and if a particular data fill pattern (dependent on the type of tester used during the drive manufacturing test process) had been present in the reserved-area system tracks when the drive’s reserved-area file system was created during manufacturing (note this is not the Operating System’s file system, but is instead an area reserved outside the drive’s logical block address space that is used for drive operating data structures and storage), firmware will incorrectly allow the Event Log pointer to increment past the end of the Event Log data structure. This error is detected and results in an “Assert Failure”, which causes the drive to hang as a failsafe measure. When the drive enters failsafe further updates to the counter become impossible and the condition will persist through all subsequent power cycles.

The problem can only occur if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or some multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, an end user will not be able to resolve/recover existing failed drives. Recovery of failed drive requires Seagate technical intervention. However, the problem can be prevented by updating drive firmware to a newer version if available and/or by keeping the drive powered on until a newer firmware version is available. Note that in order for a drive to be susceptible to this issue, it must have both the firmware revision that contains the issue, have been tested through the specific manufacturing process, and be power cycled.

Seagate has implemented a containment action in to ensure that all manufacturing test processes write a “benign” data fill pattern that does not trigger the error condition. This change is already a permanent part of the test process. All drives with a date of manufacture January 12, 2009 and later are not affected by this issue as they have been manufactured with this corrected test process. In addition, Seagate is releasing updated firmware that will make a drive immune to this failure regardless of the date of manufacture.

Seagate strongly encourages customers to update all effected drives to the latest available firmware as soon as possible (contact Seagate or visit the Seagate customer support web site to determine if a firmware update is available now). If a firmware update cannot be performed (or is not yet available), Seagate recommends that drive power cycling be minimized or avoided outright if at all possible, until such time as a FW update can be performed. 

If you have already experienced a problem and have a drive exhibiting this failure, please contact your appropriate Seagate representative for support in recovering your data - Seagate will be providing data recovery services at no charge to users impacted by this problem.

Seagate will also work with larger install-base customers to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.