Seagate has released a software fix that should prevent hard drives from becoming 3.5″ bricks. (look at our previous post).
Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some unique circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on. While we believe that the vast majority of customers will not experience any disruption related to this issue, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16. We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers.
While most drive owners have not experienced any issues, some did and here’s what Seagate has to say:
For owners of hard drives that are bricked due to the previous firmware, Seagate assures customers that the data still resides on the drive, there is no data loss associated with this issue, and the company is working with customers to expedite a remedy.
Download URL. Seagate’s support center at 1-800-Seagate (1-800-732-4283)
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