If you own a Seagate drive that is fairly new, you might want to check if it is ticking data time bomb.

I thought I was safe until I realized a recently replaced 500G drive was replaced with one of their newer / quieter / cooler drives that is on their “potential” failure list.

In theory, even if the drive firmware does die, your data in theory is all there, but would have to send it back to Seagate to get it fixed and hopefully get your data back.

So for those Seagate users, head over to their site and see if you have a possible issue:

Firmware Recommendations for Seagate Drives [KB 207931]

I was able to use their Seagate Drive Detect tool (patience here, since it almost acted like it crashed the first time I used it).

It will report what drive Model, Serial and Firmware you have like this:

This way you will be able to see what Model and Firmware version you have.

As of this afternoon, their Firmware update page was scrambled (lack of better words) and could not provide the much needed information.

Next came contacting their discsupport@seagate.com email address.  Got a quick replay, that said they were working on it (once again, I think.. not really clear if they referred to the page or the firmware).  Had to send a reply and ask if the drive I was emailing them about (sent Model, Serial and Firmware version) actually needed an update since it fell between the two firmware version I heard are the issue.

Waiting on the official reply now, will update soon.

UPDATE: 2009-01-24:

Well finally got an email back from seagate support:

Thank you for contacting Seagate Support.

A firmware issue has been identified that affects a small  number of
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive models  which may result in data
becoming inaccessible after a power-off/on operation.  The affected
products are Barracuda 7200.11, Barracuda ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22.
Based on the low risk as determined by an analysis of actual field return
data, Seagate believes that the affected drives can be used as is.
However, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is
offering a free firmware upgrade.

Please follow this link
(http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931)
to enter the Knowledge Base article(s) detailing the steps to update your
drive.

In the unlikely event your drive is affected and you cannot access your
data, the data still resides on the drive and there is no data loss
associated with this issue. If your drive is no longer accessible, contact
us directly for further assistance at
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/.

NOTE:  If you have contacted Seagate Support regarding a separate issue or
about another product, please visit
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/ to submit an email.
Thank you.

Seagate Support

So once I downloaded the correct ISO for my drive in question (Model: ST3640323AS) and went to try and apply it in the actual machine it was in, got nothing but sector read errors like 5 times and then the whole image boot failed.  That was not very reassuring that this was going to work.   Downloaded the ISO again to just make sure it was not a failed iso or burn.  Same results.

Figured I would take the drive out and put it on my test bench skeleton machine and see if I get the same error.  Nope… worked as expected.  FreeDOS boot loader started right up.  Saw their instruction readme.txt file show up.  Then prompted with a screen to upload firmware, scan drives on machine or quit basically.  I tried the SeagateEnum (scan) first to verify that it saw my Seagate drive fine (remember it is just the CD and single Seagate drive on the chain).  It saw it, saw the firmware version everything looked good.

Uploaded the new firmware binary to the drive (after some really funky fairly load clicking… I assume parking of the heads or something), took about 30 seconds.  Then it said it uploaded fine and that I had to POWER CYCLE the machine (no 3 finger salute here).  Did that, heard some extra (not normally heard) noise from the drive and but it spun up fine.  Booted to the CD again and verified via the SeagateEnum drive chain scanner to see that indeed the drive was reporting new firmware.  Yep, it was now at version: SD1B.

Everything seems to be working fine, since I am typing this update on the machine with the flashed drive in it.  Not that I had problems before with the drive, but since the problem appears when you power off and back on.  The drives never come back online.  Thankfully that did not happen and hopefully will not happen now!