Not as big a problem as it seems

After chatting to a Seagate engineer, the deal is that this only happens when an event log on the drive itself reaches an exact figure. However if you reach this figure then the drive is probably fubar anyway. I recall that if the event log goes above this figure you're also safe - it's only if you cycle the power at that exact point you have an issue.

I am *not* a Seagate engineer, and the conversation was a couple of weeks ago, so I may have some details wrong, don't take as gospel, blah blah arse cover.

What is odd though that BB10 isn't a Seagate firmware code for those drives. Seagate firmwares start SN0x (SN06 is the latest).

Same as earlier Seagate flaw

The affected drives have the same model numbers as drives already known to be affected, and IBM's description is basically the same as what we already knew about the issue: if the drive is powered on with exactly 320 entries in an event log, it will corrupt the drive's SMART list and the list of bad sectors discovered since the drive left the factory.

A little bit more about the problem can be found at http://x704.net/knowledge/2009/01/faulty-seagate-firmware.html

(DISCLAIMER: It's not shamelessly pimping my own blog post if I feel a twinge of shame about it.)

...and lots of other places on the 'net, thanks to Google.

The new bit in this story appears to be that IBM is alerting customers that some of the drives it shipped in some of its servers are affected, which is probably a nice thing to know if you happen to have some of those servers.

HP seagate drives??

Same problem, acording to seagate's serial number checker...

Not acknoledged on HP's website, unless anyone can advise me otherwise?

HP's name for the October 08 firmware on the drive in question is HPG6

A title really?

I know that this article is specifically about the "enterprise" version of the drives, but the "consumer" range affected was far bigger than just the 1TB and 500GB models. It was that entire line of drives (see: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951) as well as some disks from another range (see: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931).

It would therefore make sense (and in light of the enterprise disks) that drives made by Seagate using the same tech and based on the same firmware might be affected. So I for one, wouldn't be surprised if there was yet another annoucement that more drives *might* suffer the same issue.

IBM computers

Just cant stick any drives in them. They have to be formated with IBM special code, well at least for the lap tops. Seen a Seagate boot up fine in a Dell and it craps out on IBM laptop . Now this Seagate is the same model number in other IBM laptops but it does not have that stupid code on it so it wont boot..

The crazy thing I've every seen is an IBM cock up with the bios on the system board .I replaced 3 SATA HD on an IBM desktop. I would load the OS off the recovery CD. Every thing appeared t o work fine, then I tried to boot up in to XP and blue screen. Later found out do to an bios bug you cant boot off a SATA in the particular line of IBM desktops .

A little more data

The original Barracuda drive firmware failures were concerned with ST31000340AS drives and then ST3500320AS ones, Barracuda 7200.11 desktop drives.

This IBM story involves ST31000340NS, ST3250310NS, ST3500320NS and ST3750330NS drives - high-capacity, business-critical Tier 2 enterprise drives, Barracuda ES.2 enterprise drives. There was no suggestion originally as I recall that enterprise Barracudas were affected.

Also, the IBM note says "IBM strongly recommends applying the firmware update to prevent data loss" suggesting that data loss can occur - IBM did not say apply the firmware update to prevent data unavailability but to prevent data loss.

Chris.

More garbage hardware

Expect to see more of this as corporations erode their quality standards.

Apple used to ship fairly strong hardware. Now it's chinese junk.

Re: IBM computers

Model numbers?

I have personally replaced drives in IBM Thinkpads of a variety of vintages using off-the-shelf parts from a variety of manufacturers (otherwise known as "whatever's cheapest right now") with no problems at all.

No "special formatting" required in my experience.

Re: IBM computers

Well Tell that to the techs that I worked with T22-t43 were the ones I had the most experience with. I'm no talking about Sata for the lap tops . Of course my problem might of been the fact that that it was really lenvo with the IBM brand name .

@Chris

The original Barracuda firmware problems did include the enterprise drives. In fact, the non-enterprise drives were fixed first and enterprise customers were made to wait 2-3 more weeks before the firmware was available. The kicker is the enterprise firmware won't apply to OEM drives, so these IBM customers can't just go to Seagate's site and get the firmware updates. IBM will have to provide them unless Seagate removes the restriction from their installer.