I finally figured out what was crashing the servers here at dvorak.org. Bad firmware on the new Seagate 1.5T Barracuda drives. Everyone makes mistakes but in this case there is no firmware to download. You have to email them and then wait till they reply. And to email them you have to fill out a long form to create an account and agree to their terms, and when you do it creates an account – but the account doesn’t work. Seagate used to be a good company but I am not as impressed as I used to be. In the mean time the drive has been moved to a less critical server.
Also – updates need to run under either DOS or LINUX. Not running WINDOWS on this server.
Comment deleted – please do not impersonate other bloggers.
Ed.
#21
Yeah, and I’m a bender robot!
For me this is just another example of how M$’s stanglehold on this industry is screwing anybody who isn’t buying what they’re selling.
sorry about that last post – I took my meds, I feel better now…
#16 – Seagate did not buy WD. Seagate did, however, buy Maxtor, who previously bought Quantum.
Guys, I had the EXACT same issue with my 4 Seagate 1.5 TB drives. All arrived with FW level SD17, and they all had the same issue. I submitted my request to them on their website, and within the same day, I had the link to the SD1A firmware update. My guess is that Seagate wants to verify that you have an affected drive before you start upgrading any firmware.
Once I got the SD1A firmware installed onto the drives, I haven’t had any issues since. It’s been a month and a half, and the drives are operating as they should.
I was a little dismayed over the fact that you MUST have a PC in order to do the firmware update. If you’re running a Power-PC based Mac (such as a Power Mac G5 or iMac G5), you’re SOL.
Oh, and for those who say they’re switching back to WD…
I bought a 160GB WD drive in July of ’07 (18 months ago). Last week, I discovered the SMART status was failing. I spoke with a consultant friend of mine, and he has a similar distaste for WD. Apparently, their quality has gone downhill. A shame, because I used to consider them to be the top of the game.
Oh, and by the way. The Seagate drives I mentioned are currently being used in our Drobo. The Drobo handles our backups at our company, so the drives are being used in a production environment without issue.
I hope that gives a little reassurance. We were just as pissed once we got bitten by this issue, but we’re over it now.
How many operating systems and servers are there? Not that many, really.
It’s pathetic that you have to research firmware before selecting a hard drive for a well known OS.
Guess I’ve been lucky, I haven’t purchased any HDDs but Fujitsu in 2 years. May the force be with me (crossing fingers).
Marc:
Thank you SO much for the warning.
I’m in the process of scouting drives to expand the capacity of the RAID array on my main server. We run freeBSD so that prolly makes it eve worse. Sad when a once-reliable company crashes as fast as their drives.
NO SEAGATE. NO SEAGATE.NO SEAGATE.
[Eds.]:
#21 is posting falsely under my screen name. Please blacklist whoever it is from dvorak dot org slash blog.
This sort of juvenile online dishonesty is a disgrace.
[Ed. Let us know if this continues]
I’ve had 2 250g Seagates fail in the last six months. They fail as un-readable/bootable. They have sent me refurbished drives but I hate to use them now….Pay the bucks and start using Flash?
I have over one year, bought 4 of these drives:
Seagate 146GB Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drive, 68pin, 15K RPM, 1″ Height, ST3146854LW, OEM, Recertified
Price Ea: $115.00
With only one bad one, that gives me this message:
Drive on 29320A at slot 0301:08:00 scsi ID2 has exceeded Failure Prediction Threshold. Make backup
I’ve been using WD exclusively for at least five years. My problems seem to be mostly MBs burning out or the power frying everything. I’ve seen very few drive problems, especially considering how mechanically intensive they are.
The last HD I found bad was a Maxtor in a friend’s computer. Geeze, it sounded like a snow plow on a gravel road! My WDs? No problem so far.
*
Marc, I’m glad you seem to have isolated the problem. I wish you the best.
17, Oops, its maxtor..
#19 I didn’t know Uncle Patso & #25 lived in Kuzcoland, ‘cuase is the same experience I have. Since then I only buy Seagate.
#22 How Segate’s screwups are MS’ fault? Man, Mustard, you missed your reply to me with the wrong person. You should’ve replied #22.
#23 Ah, ok. Better.
#30 said : “This sort of juvenile online dishonesty is a disgrace.”
Like what, telling posters to STFU?
It is a colossal failure of QA. They basically skipped QA for the firmware. Or they loaded the wrong firmware for all the automated tests.
You would think they would fix it ASAP.
For anything that looks like a drive failure, and isn’t a total hardware disaster like Marc’s bad flash, I recommend Steve Gibson’s Spinrite. It’s saved me countless hours of grief. What can it hurt to try and recover your data with the best recovery software available?
http://grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
My three 1.5TBs are slow. Screw this, I’m going back to my Microscience RLL drive.
I stopped buying Seagate about 2 years ago when I had support problems. I bought a brand new drive. When I opened the box, it was a refurb. Never again.
Marc I feel your pain and I referred the pre-sales Seagate tech support person I am working with to this post for comment.
I am getting ready to buy 2 1TB versions of this drive for a computer but will obviously wait a bit and do some more investigating first. Their support person said they “had a problem but it’s fixed.” As Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but verify.” I have to do something because I am running out of space.
I recently had a fairly new 500GB WD My Book external from Costco start the clicking sound of death and lost about 8 months of all my pictures including several that were used by CNN and all of the raw files for my newspaper for the same period. I know it was my fault for not having a backup but every time I look at that drive I want to cry.
For $1,500 bucks a clean room might be able to fix it…..
Total PITA but Seagate is not alone.