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Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?
nosh:
Did some (rather frustrating) research on the issue - there's supposed to be a preventive firmware upgrade that's linked to on the newegg comments page (600+ posts there, IIRC)
The file's been linked to in an AVSforum thread but someone also mentioned in the same thread that the fix is for the ST31000340AS (1.5 TB) model, so exercise caution before applying any firmware updates!
The problem seems to mainly hit drives made in Thailand running the SD15 firmware and occurs at boot time.
AFAICT, there's no firmware update available for the 1 TB ST31000340AS model mentioned in mouser's original post, SD15 being the latest firmware version.
The reports of failure seem to be very mixed, I'd be suspicious about a malicious campaign were it not for established forum members posting negative feedback. There's one user who says he lost THREE of these drives overnight and another who says he's been running around twenty of them for over a year without a single one dying.
a_lunatic, I haven't experienced any BSODs on my system (other than the ones that sometimes occur at bootup, which have been attributed to Acronis - something I've learned to live with). I don't think there are any reports of random BSODs associated with these drives so your problem may lie elsewhere.
If anyone hears of an official fix from Seagate please update this thread, no matter when it happens. I've been backing everything up to other sources too and the drives come with a solid 5 year warranty but I'll sleep much better if I know I don't have a couple of time bombs ticking inside the box.
nosh:
I don't know about anyone else, but the length of the warranty is almost the only thing I consider when choosing a drive. I'll take a 5-year warranty over 3-year any time. Because I backup redundantly, I don't worry about data loss, I just want a new drive without a hassle.
-superboyac (January 13, 2009, 04:47 PM)
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I also give a lot of importance to the length of the warranty - it shows the level of confidence the manufacturer has in the product. The trouble with hard drive replacement is that I HATE the fact that all my "unusable" data is going into someone else's hands. I've thought about Truecrypting my entire system or atleast the data drives but that apparently delivers a substantial hit to performance. :(
PS: Maybe I should invest in a powerful electromagnet :P - seriously, would that work?
a_lunatic:
I think I may have pinned my problem down to v15.23 nforce driver as I started using it when I got the new drives & the problems started happening which is why I was thinking it was the drives.
I had a few bsod's on XP & a lot on vista x64 when using the v15.23 nforce drivers so now I am back to XP with v9.35 nforce drivers.
gpetrant:
Hang on ohmy I'm not actually storing any of my backups off-site! I've got about 6 external harddrives full of backups all lined up on a shelf. Not too bright...
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Darwin, if I may share an easy solution to your dilemma. Please be patient as I fumble for the right words, but this is what I do: I leave an external hard drive laying on the nightstand in my bed computer room. Whenever I entert...umm...share my love of computing with a computer geekess, they always ask about it when they see it for the first time (women have an insatiable curiosity). I give them my canned response 'it contains very sensitive material that could seriously damage my career, and so I keep it on my nightstand where I can see it at all times.' Now, as well as being insatiably curious, they love a challenge. The next morning, I break up with her terminate our mutually beneficial platonic friendship as I leave, and ask her to lock up before she goes. At that point, she's mad as hell and that external hard drive represents everything a woman could want for revenge purposes, so she takes it with her. To date, I have 6 external drives spread out across Canada, 5 in the US, and 1 in Mexico (I think. Is Tijuana in Mexico? Anybody?). All contain redundant backups using BLOWFISH encryption, and all are safely offsite as we speak. You're probably asking how I intend to get any of them back? See, that's the beauty of it: I don't know yet, but I have plenty of time to think of a way in the meantime. Like my mom used to always say: 'Einstein didn't come up with Relativity overnight. He slept on it first.' :huh:
(To any youngsters reading this: please do not try this at home. Timing is everything. I once shared this technique with a really close friend. Unfortunately, during the break-up phase, he lingered a little too long afterward. He...he was struck in the head by his own external hard drive. Poor bast guy hasn't been the same since.) :-[
mouser:
;D ;D ;D
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