Story behind Seagate's firmware issues

[Spaceman-Spiff]

As told by one Seagate employee on Slashdot comment: Seagate Firmware Update Bricks 500GB Barracudas

The good news is, the chance of your drive simply not spinning up one day is very low. And for those of you who flashed the wrong firmware - be patient. It's not bricked, just unable to write data to the platters properly. When they have a *GOOD* firmware out, a new flash should un-brick the drives. If not, flashing it back to SD15 should make it work again.

PS: keep scrolling down the page to read more comments from the same guy.

[thenewguy001]

It's good to know the cause of the problem is software and not mechanical. However, their sleaziness with regards to trying to cover up the mess by moderating posts on their support forums has made me swear off their products forever.

[AkG]

Keep reading newguy001, SOME of the problems is firmware. SOME is incompetence and the rest is down right scary. He glosses over how the "stuttering issue" is not only a 1.5TB drive but effects the whole farking line including their ES line. This is bad. Very bad. Its not (just) a QA problem like we all thought. They screwed up in the 7200.11 design somewhere and when they tried to fix it via firmware...it caused bricking of drives AND didn't fix the problem. Have to wonder if this is the reason the .11 line has always been slower than the competition by such a wide margin (seagate usually are slower but not this much).

I truly hope they can turn things around but this is IBM Deathstar level of bad PR.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by AkG

Keep reading newguy001, SOME of the problems is firmware. SOME is incompetence and the rest is down right scary. He glosses over how the "stuttering issue" is not only a 1.5TB drive but effects the whole farking line including their ES line. This is bad. Very bad. Its not a (just) a QA problem like we all thought. They screwed up in the 7200.11 desing somewhere and when they tried to fix it via firmware...it caused bricking of drives AND didn't fix the problem. Have to wonder if this is the reason the .11 line has always been slower than the compeition by such a wide margin (seagate usualy are slower but not this much).

I truly hope they can turn things around but this is IBM Deathstar level of bad PR.

I strongly agree with the above - I was very surprised to see this issue affect the ES line of drive - Drives that are said to have higher quality standards. And the problem being that the drive's internal logging points to a wrong address, is a stupid mistake - this is something they could have EASILY tested for - their excuse is that in their facilities, the drives are testing IN OPERATION ! Again, incomplete, improper QA - They should cycle the drive a few times to test for proper spinup, motor, etc... Mind you I'm happy with my seagates and this should not affect my decision on buying Seagates, unless something major like that happens quite often. From what I read somewhere, there seemst o be problems with other brands as well with the 1TB, didn't read much into it but saw a headline...... :0