Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing

Our company does a lot of Apple service, so I cannot say I am surprised. I have always used Western Digital, and I have never had a single drive fail, but I have always considered Seagate to be a very close second. These days, however, after seeing the incredibly high failure rates on the Seagate drives that commonly appear in the Mac systems, even in machines that are only weeks old, I can honestly say I wouldn't trust a Seagate in any of my machines anymore. Which is a shame. Maybe buying Maxtor wasn't such a great idea.

This built in faillure does explain why the warranty was cut from 5 years to 1.

It is true. Seagate 7200.11 drives have been dropping like flies the past 3 months.

After complaining and starting a search toward a homemade solution at the official seagate forum, our posts were altered or even deleted by seagate moderators. So we decided so set up a new topic at msfn forums!

Please visit our this topic fore more information:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128092

And please share the life history data of your 7200.11 drive over here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128514

so that we can gather evidence against seagate corporate practices.

Update: We also provide a world map, displaying the countries where this problem has been reported.

What do CEO's, CTO's and the lot care anyway ?
Their reputation may be more shattered if they admit the company has a quality issue than to not come out at all or lie about it. And the long-term reputation of a company really isn't their main worry, now is it.

I own few Seagate 1TB hard drives, and I already had 1 complete failure (lost 1TB of data) and two were giving errors so barely managed to save my data before RMA.

What is worst, at least one of the RMA hard drives which came from Seagate, IS BAD.

All my 1TB are 6 months or less

I have just RMA one NEW unit of the China drives. The replacement was a SD15 Thailand unit. The problem is similar to the reported issues: working properly and suddenly fail to detect SMART and when you have the SEAGATE software running, it crashes or hang.

I also have another SD15 Thailand unit that was working fine. But it is a troubling news that the Thailand drives were also having similar problems reported.

WD units are also similar. I just have a new 80G SATA drive RMA for my friend.

Alcohol use has de-evolved man. People are increasingly critically challenged, unable to tell the difference between a bag(or BIOS) that holds water and one that won't. It's all so confusing. Would a loving God make us eat broccoli?

Sad to hear though. Seagate deserves some credit for that perpendicular recording technology. There are good people with strong character and creativity in just about every company(INQ....), even ya vole(a janitor?).

Be real, be sober, be in business next year.

Glad to see this after I just purchased 3 7200.11 1TB Drives. No wonder they were on sale. I bought these after my 7200.11 500 Gig drive failed (it was about 2 weeks old when it did it). At least now I know why it failed. Now I get to look forward to these failing as well. I knew I should have dumped Seagate. Next time I will be looking elsewhere.

I had one of these 1 TB drives expire with no warning after six weeks. I lost all my data, and instead of a new drive, Seagate sent me a second hand refurb.

I've opened trouble tickets on their fault system since Christmas, but despite the autoresponder that promises a reply within 24 hours, Seagate just ignore you if you are asking about the 7200.11 boot-of-death problem. Their support is worse than useless, and their forums mods just spend all their time close threads and deleting posts asking for help on this issue.

I just want a firmware fix so that my drives don't die again. If Seagate can't do that, they should replace the drives with new ones free of charge.

I don't see why I have to spend 15 percent of the cost of the new drive to send it back to Seagate in Holland, just so they can send me back a refurb that is just as likely to fail a few days/weeks/months down the line.

Poor products, poor support, and I'll be voting with my wallet and buying drives elsewhere in the future.

Seagate have been getting worse for years now. After my poor user experience with the 7200.9 & 7200.10 I sold them & now have an all WD setup which work flawlessly.

Thanks to Inq for bringing this to the public eye. I had a nightmare early last year with two 500GB 7200.11 drives I had purchased. Within a few months both had gone bad (failed Seagate's own testing tool) and both REPLACEMENT drives failed in short order. Seagate then tried to fight replacing any more drives, even though I had paid for advance exchanges in both cases. Their phone techs were condescending and accusatory. This company needs to own up to their problem with this drive series and accept any short-term losses it may incur. If they don't, the perception that they make bad hardware and don't care about the people that buy said hardware will kill them in the long-term.

Since when did anybody expect anything other than data loss from a Seagate drive? Everybody I know has steered well clear of Seagate ever since oh around 2001. Their kit is garbage and as far as I know, always has been. Every single seagate drive that I've ever crossed paths with, without exception, is on the rubbish heap. By comparison I have a old 40gb Maxtor drive (huge for it's day!) from 1999 that is still humming along.

That Seagate are still in business is actually surprising to me. Have you seen their latest TV ad for their new fangled personal data storage device for storing "precious moments"? My wife and I laughed out foolish heads off!

To say that this company has been failing for some time is not accurate. Nearly every Dell our local public school has ordered in the last few years have all been Seagate (that is 500+ computers that have them) and the failure rate is very, very low. I have used nothing but seagate (probably 30 drives now) in multiple rigs without any issues (except one, which was my own fault, dropped drive and knocked a bunch of resistors off the board on a 320GB).

This is sad to hear, though. I was just looking into some large drives for a HTPC, too. I might wait and see what comes out of this, or just use another brand for this latest build.

Note to Vai,

Did you know Seagate now own Maxtor?!

David - yeah, I know... that was a sad turn of events eh.

Im owner of one of these drives (st3500320AS, Thailand, 500GB, SD15), it is still working but who knows maybe tomorrow i will not be able to turn my pc without error. Maybe now Seagate will do something about those failures.

(Hales) You're just going to have to get Nick Booth out of Retirement and hiding from Microsoft, in order to hack some flufffle for the INQ. Hear it 2009, and everyone is down because their Seagates is petered. Cor Save us, everyone.

I read this article at work. I thought I was using this drive in my PC, so I went home during lunch and powered on, thinking I would at least start a back-up. The drive did not recognize at POST and does not recognize at all. Oh, it spins up, but that's it. I just got back from the post office. I hope they dont mail me another SD15!

Its really a shame when companies don't directly respond to technical issues directed towards their products. At most Seagate could issue a statement confirming or denying that there are issues with the 7200.11 1TB and 1.5TB drives. Its really no problem for me, for after speaking with one of their online technicians I have decided to tell Seagate what I think of them with my wallet. I will replace every drive I have with a WD or Samsung.

As the now-nervous owner of two 1.5 GB 7200.11 SD17 drives and a recently failed Nvidia GPU, I have to say I'm amazed at both the apparently cavalier attitude towards both product testing and customer service that both companies have shown.

A product appears to be failing with significant potential impact on your customers? GET YOUR BEST PEOPLE ON A PRIORITY FIX! As more than one poster has mentioned, a company can destroy a long-term reputation with one bad product and a cover-up.

I have 4 of these drives in my DROBO, is the issue on all Seagates 1TB or only the model mentioned in the article?

Seagate failure rantings are all the web and have been there for months; couple of years maybe.

This is NOT news, this is just one turn of a death spiral Seagate happily thrust themselves into.

Stoopid is as stoopid does.

RE:"We'll just refer them to that longstanding truth that good names are built over years and shattered in seconds."

Or as we plainer spoken will say:

1 "Ah shit" wipes out 1,000 "Atta boys"

I would also like to know if this effects the ST31000333AS model as badly as it does the ST3100340AS model.

I emailed charlie about this story, and many others and yet he refuses to write about anything else but nvidia what an ass.

It is simple, just cool your drives properly. If you can't, read the SMART figures on temperatures and draw your very own conclusions.

Side note 1 -- I don't expect high-end drives to fail miserably on such easily manageable problem as temperature. But it happens.

Side note 2 -- I have 6 .11 1TB drives at home server, they're not powered down form the very first time they appeared in my local distributor.

Side note 3 -- I had at least 3 7200.2 ES baracudas failed without any reason during one or two weeks of purchase and with ongoing reliability tests. They were replaced promplty without questions asked and replacements work without any problems. Unfortunately I didn't record the batches and firmware versions of failed ones.

Replaced 2x 500GB and 1x 250GB with three 1.5TB Drives. Nothing but problems. My machine locks up, even with updates. They perform horribly as well. I have two of them in my DNS-323 and I get poor performance compared to my 500GB drives that they replaced.

Seagate, if you are listening. Recall the drives and get this problem fixed. I would have a lot of respect for that instead of putting my data at great risk.

Thank you Inquirer,

you are one of the only sites that does not hesitate to confront the big and powerfull companies with their failures.

You can't but fword hate those companies for being so outride rude in totally ignoring customers rightfull complaints and censoring their forums.

I have 5 ST31500341AS, four with firmware version LC1A, one is firmware version CC1G. I haven't seen any stalling, crashes or other anomalities.

In fact I have total 10TB Seagate drives here. All working perfectly fine...

It's not a problem until it becomes a problem, wish this article was posted 2 days ago, then I wouldn't have powered down my PC and just let it be in sleep mode, buy a USB HD to back up my stuff... but sigh, such is life, now I have a 1TB perma locked in busy mode 7200.11... I was happy with the 1TB until last night I went home and it wouldn't recognize HD in BIOS. Posting this with my mac laptop, gonna go home and stick in the old 300GB 7200.7 HD for now.

First, those of you too young to remember the early PC circa mid-1980s, during this period Seagate Technology was the gold standard of HD quality and technology. A lot of the features you take for granted were initially popularized in Seagate Technology's products. At that time Seagate Technology products were extremely expensive and reliable. However, times change and not always for the better. In one instance during 2007, I purchased two Seagate Technology HD's, one for myself and one as a gift for my sister. On installation both appeared to be DOA. I returned the drives for replacement, but, again the second pair of drives through up numerous errors. I've been building PCs since the late 1980s, and have seen a lot of strange non-conformant behavior from PC components, but, I still considered that the problem could be with me or the PCs into which I was installing the drives. As it turns out, that was not the case, the four Seagate drive were all DOA which should not have happened on four different NEW drives. The third pair of replacement Seagate drives have worked fine thus far. I feel it is disappointing to watch the apparent drop in Quality Control that was once the hallmark of Seagate Technology just a couple of decades ago. Just my two cents.

Cheers Inq. Useful article, written by an actual grownup, so approaching believable.

(Are you watching, Charlie Dinnerjacket? Not foaming at the mouth and pulling "facts" out of your bum still gets readers).

Anyway, gonna make bloody sure my machines are backed up ASAP, cheers again.

"According to data recovery experts Seagate has diagnosed the problem and issued a new firmware to address it. However, drives that have already been affected can't have the firmware applied to them due to their locked-down status."

so where is it?

Does this apply to enterprise storage version of Barracuda 7200.11, the Barracuda ES.2 ? They have't released 1.5 TB version so far and considering the rumored trouble 1.5 TB 7200.11 has, this might make some sense.

Alright, I called Seagate (on hold for about 15 minutes) and got some "clarification". It actually makes some sense. Apparently, 1tb drives originally shipped with SD05 firmware. 1.5tb drives shipped with SD15. There is an update from SD15 for the 1.5tb drives (you have to call Seagate, give them the s/n, and they can help) but the SD15 on the 1tb and the SD15 on the 1.5tb is different. Not sure why they are different, but that is what I was told. It was verified with a supervisor.

I had this problem way back in September. Same solution offered: have the data recovered by a recovery company. Problem is, I had a striped set with close to 1TB of data on a 1.8Tb striped set.

I have both drives on my shelf, waiting for another pair to swap the PCB boards out on, just so I can recover the data.

I AM NEVER BUYING SEAGATE AGAIN.

One of my 500gb 7200.11's just failed in a RAID0, byebye 1tb of data.

FSCK!$!@#

I was about to buy one of this 7200.11 (great performance told by Tom's Hardware).

Ty The Inquirer

im extremely nervous as i have 6 of these running in raid 5. my brother just had a replacement 500 gig die less than 2 months of using it. the drive prior to that was suffering from click of death syndrome couldnt even install windows vista after 32 hours past by. this sounds like those deathstar drives all over again.

Though Seagate may be putting newer firmware on their faulty drives, there has definitely not been any kind of firmware fix been made available to customers. I know because loads of us have been begging for new firmware to fix this issue before more drives die on us.

There was a firmware update for the 1.5 terrabyte ES (business class) drive to fix it's stalling/stuttering issue, but that's something different from the general "boot of death" of the whole 7200.11 series.

I've had a 7200.11 750GB unit - SD15 firmware, WXUISG origin begin to fail. Not as bad as above, I started getting read/write errors in Linux a few days back. To recover the data I have had to power cycle every time an I/O error appears as the drive simply 'disappears' when an error happens.

Meanwhile a four year old WD160GB IDE drive in the same server is still going strong 24/7 :(

Seagate drives have been failing like mad in the past 2-3 months, I mean rates higher than 50 percent are what we're seeing. Catastrophic, no wonder Seagate won't own up. Almost every single death I've seen has been from the "BSY" firmware lockup where BIOS no longer detects, and I've seen a lot.

See here Seagate fanboys, you can yap all about your 5 year warranty but WD fanboys simply don't have to invoke their shorter 3 year warranty on bricked drives! :)

Seagate products (especially the 7200.11) have lately been completely over-rated. Time to pay.

I guess Seagate execs are having those "should we sell" meetings for a while, because 50% failure rate or anything near that for a few months is a deathwish.

And if they crawl out of it, which is doable, they'll be like some startup business with an added hate label...

I have one of these drives but it seems to be behaving itself. I only ever buy Seagate drives (bad experience with Western Digital, including one shipped with busted firmware) and have never been disappointed. I will follow this story closely but my experience has lead me to prefer Seagate over Western Digital and the issue is meant to have been fixed now.

NEway, better get backing up my data to be safe (it was only media files anyway).

Can you imagine buying a new pc with a Seagate hard drive, that'd be like buying a pc with an Nvidia gpu.

Seagate has been on my black list since my first computer, that's back in 199x...

Same to Maxtor recently, as a couples of Maxtor drive I have start failing in the similar way, + they have tighten their warrenty regluations. Since then I have ever never have an other Maxtor anymore...

This happened to two of my 500gb drives, I lost everything ;(

Ill simply never use Seagate again...

people grew accustomed to having great Seagate products. End-users in particular, the kind that don't backup data, felt so safe about it (me included) that now that these consumer drives are failing, it all feels like a huge shock.

This explains the 500gb i just RMA'd. I lost a lot of important data on that drive, and the replacement just got here but now I'm afraid to use it for anything in case it's also from the same batch of faulty drives.

We need a way to find out if our drives are susceptible and have a way to fix it. Seagate, the ball is in your court.

Hello just bought this drive and arrived yesterday:
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(30602)Seagate-1TB-1000-GB-Barracuda-SATA-II-300.aspx
Seagate 1TB ( 1000 GB ) Barracuda SATA II 300 32MB cache 7200rpm
Manufacturers Code: ST310005N1D1AS
Are these in the same boat!!!!?????

My SECOND replacement 750GB just started to behave badly (stuttering sounds). I hit the refresh button in my browser and bah - I saw this article :)

Here's an idea. Stop trying to 'out-bit' everyone else and just give us a GD drive that has a guaranteed 5+ year lifespan. I would pay DOUBLE for a RELIABLE drive at HALF the space.

It's clearly an untapped market space - but a damn good one. Enterprise drives are supposed to have this sort of reliability but... Yeah, right.

Seagate have been on my black list ever since they bought out Maxtor.
As far as I'm concerned, the following makers are not up to scratch:
- Maxtor (Seagate)
- Fujitsu
- Hitachi (IBM)
- Quantum
- Excelstor

I've had nothing but problems with Fujitsu, Maxtor, Hitachi and Quantum, and even though I've had 2 Excelstor drives, they've both failed within 10 months.

On the plus side, I personally have in excess of 20 Western Digital drives, ranging from 60Gb Caviars, to the mighty 1Tb WD Caviar Black...None of which have caused me any problems in their almost 8 years of use.
Always go for the ones with the longest warranty though...Even if the HD screws up and you lose your data (Your fault for not backing it up!), but at least you can get another HD as a replacement whilst you're cursing away re-installing windows on an 80Gb IDE drive you have laying around :)

I have been a bit careless with my See+gates hard drives..
Can anyone confirm the list of models affected ?

I have lost my sleep after reading this.

I bought a Seagate 500GB usb disk yesterday and backed up my computer last night (also a Seagate). Great.

Seagate used to have such a good reputation and are still used widely by companies making high end SAN stuff, but then again high end stuff is designed for hot swapping out dead drives so it shouldnt matter what disk manufacturer they use...

Western Digital 8 years ago used to be playing catch up, looks like the did that and now are reaping the benefits due to Seagate muppets shooting themselves in their collective executive feet

Most likely they offshored the hell out of their manufacturing and R&D and then started penny pinching and going for cheap parts.

Almost all the Hard Drive manufacturers I know that have been in business for 15+ years have had some kind of scandalous run of drive failure. Quantum had the 1.2GB "BigFoot" drives, IBM had the "Deathstar", WD had the 1GB-1.6GB Caviars that failed in droves. Seagate had high failures in the first 10k RPM drives. All of these folks can and have made quality drives.* Our only choice is to overlook the past on some of them and choose to look at the present.

As such, I'm in the market for a 1+TB hard drive, after seeing this article and the user comments, will go WD this time.

*I'm not aware of Samsung having and hard drive scandals yet, but they are quite a bit younger of an operation. I've had good luck with their drives in the past.

As to the two people who asked about the ST31000333AS...I recently purchased two ST31000333AS 1TB drives. While I haven't read of any failures like many of the other 7200.11 drives (like the ST31000340AS that we're hearing horror stories about) the drive label does say the firmware revision is SD15 which looks to be a very bad sign. There's always a chance that the firmware bug got fixed somehow, but the lack of failures might be chalked up to the fact that the newer model hasn't been out long at all.

Ok, they screw up. Everyone screws up, the measure is how they deal with it. At Seagate's website they state that they don't make available the firmware to upgrade their drives. So, what to do now?

I did not stop buying Seagate drive after my 15K SCSI drive did a head crash without warning. But when my two new 7200.10 drives failed in succession, I stopped buying Seagate. Never had failure on Western Digital ever since...

I have four 750GB, all them are SD15 firmwares. And two them died yesterday, exactly as related on this page, another one died today, so I have now 3 deads SD15 out of four. If they aren't recognized by BIOS anymore, forget it, your drive is DEAD for good, you'll need to RMA them !

DO NOT trust on SD15, its have exactly the same issue too !!

period.

I bought a Seagate 500GB unit (7200.10 or 7200.11) in October 2008 and after only two months of use it exhibited a problem similar to what's reported here. The BIOS just couldn't detect the drive anymore. When I went back to the store to have it replaced there's this guy who has the EXACT same model who's returning the drive with EXACTLY the same problem as I'm having. All the data is lost. I'm lately very inclined to get a 1TB Seagate unit but after reading this article about 1TB drives failing too, I think I'll go with WD. Note that I'm using a hard disk cooler with my 500GB unit and it never gets hot.

Seagate quality is down the drain. Then again, Seagate has never been a performance/reliability leader. First to market, maybe, but better wait for WD or Hitachi to release their competing products instead.

We use these new 1TB drives, and we're putting them into machines. There are problems, but not sure of the failure rate. My coworker had 2 of 2 drives fail on him.

Seagate, what did you do to upset the God?

Doesn't matter; they fail; end of story.

The shock you have, the shock was on my side with 4 IBM drives 2001/2002. no backups. i then switched to seagates cuda 4 drives with 80 Gb, flawless, slow , no Raid Stripeset but reliable and quite. With the upcoming Samsung SP1614 i thought: lets give them a try. 5 out of 6 SP1614 disks went crap with sectorerrors or click of deaths exactly like the IBMs within 7 months.

Switched to Seagate again and never had one SINGLE problem.

The problem with Seagate is the Handling, it seems it is as bad as IBMs back those days. Maybe they will sell it to... huh? Samsung?

On the other hand i am very lucky that its "only" software-related...

hello seagate?! please tell me:
there is no possibility to help those victims with a FW update tool?

shame on you, you are dumb as *diots!
that will cost you a *whole* lot of customers and "fans" like myself.
you know, history tells it.
learn it fast as possible!

So, I bought one of these 1TB drives around 02/2008, should I be worried? I haven't had any issues as of yet.. *Knocks on wood.*

The worst part of this story is that those drives seem to fall without any simptom.

I have 4 7200.11/SD15 drives. Two of them are dead. They worked fast and nice, I monitored SMART as well as temps everyday. Then one morning I booted up my computer and boom, game over, no bios recognition.

So I can't trust the other two as I don't feel safe keeping my data on them. They may work forever, but they may also leave me on the next reboot.

It's some kind of lottery (or better, chinese roulette) and I don't want to play it anymore.

Thanks d, though that does imply that me not having SD15 is a GOOD thing. ;) I most likely either have SD04 or SD14 on mine, I'll have to check when I get home.

The Seagate HDD are not failing at any rate but to have a firmware issue at hand and is being fixed. I had a 7200.11 drive that I thought was failing but it was a firmware which Seagate gave me and did fix the issue. Their is a SD1A and a CC1H firmware available. Also all their new internal drives have 5 year warranty.

Yes, it sucks that Seagate released a bad batch of drives. But all disks fail eventually. To those on thif forum complaining about "Expensive data recovery services" I have to ask: WERE THE HELL WERE YOUR BACKUPS? Note that RAID is NOT a substitute for off-site backups!

Related?
Seagate board has ousted Bill Watkins as President and CEO

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/01/12/seagate-ousts-watkins-names-luczo-ceo-sets-10-layoff/

damn this thing.i was using them as raid 0 and my whole data fried up.
also the worse thing is warranty service sent back me to the hdd and write out of warranty.
i am almost mad atm.
now i have 2 left working hdd but gonna sell them as soon as possible.
and i will never buy segate again.

Remember back with the IBM Deskstars that dropped like flies? Doesn't this kinda sound like it? Well since Hitachi bought IBM's HDD division, none of that ever happened again. My main drive is a Hitachi and it's performing flawlessly (hopefully, it'll be like that forever).

a) Most Seagate drives, except the ES series have gone down to 3 years.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/warranty_&_returns_assistance/product_warranty_matrix/

b) wtf, man?! "The Seagate drives are not failing at any rate"? I have a bud at Seagate support and he says one-in-three calls is 7200.11-related.

... and I guess all the people on the forums are liars too? Here's one that shows everything in a graph: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128092&st=460

See for yourself and stfu, you're just tooting the corporate horn and it's more than likely you're an employee recycling the same ol' seagate manure.

Just had a friend of mine call me telling me his 500GB drive crashed and he went on-line to chat with Seagate techs. No-one was available to chat... are they too busy? Or has Seagate fired all their techies?

Both of them are still working.
The full one has been fine, and the half full one has been 'juddery' in its transfers, so I now expect this drive to fail sometime.
I use an external hard drive dock, on the usb bus.
The drives are only in one at a time, so it might last longer....

Will be buying WD from now on, have had troubles with Samsung drives, and Maxtors, and now seagates....
There aren't many left....wont touch hitatchi since they bought Deskstar world...

I have had no problems with my 1TB Barracudas. They are in the external enlosures though (FreeAgent) so not sure if these are the batch with problems.
But I have used Seagate drives for years, and never had a single failure. Anyone who slags Seagate as a crappy brand of HD clearly does not know his facts. Seagate and Hitachi are the two best manufacturers, and have been for a long time.
Also, on the same note, with all manufacturers it is best to avoid OEM drives though if possible, and always buy retail box. From what I know, OEM drives dont pass the same tests and qualifications that retail products are required to do.

Almost 2 years ago Seagate was going crazy with new features & they are good. NCQ is best & many of failed drives may lack that feature or wern't set up with MAXBlast disc. My Clone saved day year ago. Yet, that was 160, 200 250 Gb world & expensive. then BIG Stuff hit & Seagate Cut numbers of Technology BACK to 7200.11. I believe problem is Not Having Most Up To Date Technology installed on Larger Drives that being: 7200.22. Seagate made thousands of: 7200.20 7200.21 & 7200.22, in 2006/7 yet No More than few thousands. TS Drashek

Similar issue happened to me. My 3 month old Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1TB hdd suddenly up and died for no reason after about 3 months of use. about 600GB of photos, scans, documents and movies stuck in limbo.

Called Seagate and had a huge row about getting the drive fixed, so that I could retrieve my data. To no avail - they said willing to replace the drive but no go for updating firmware/or repair.

No choice but to send in my drive for data recovery - been quote close to SG$2000 to recover the data. Man! I can buy about 12 new harddisks for the amount. I am thinking of suing the company for the amount I am spending for data recovery.

I've just had a 1TB Seagate drive fail on me.
I've sent it back and Seagate is going to send me a (gulp) refurbished drive.
Not too happy about that.
I've built many systems over the years, and Seagate was usually my first choice. Had no problems with them.
But with what's been going on lately, I think I'll be looking Western Digital for my next build.

Seagate has just made an announcement on this issue. a href="http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931" Please see here. /a

Thanks!

-AlanM
a href="http://forums.seagate.com/stx/profile?user.id=14" Seagate Forum Moderator /a

anyway for more links on forums..
here are some

http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-discussion-support/153186-seagate-barracuda-7200-11-hd-owners-must-read-2.html

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r21737309-AVOID-seagate-ST31000340ASSD15-drives

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128514

Let's all go out and buy a couple so we won't feel left out.
Besides seagate will need the money after this.

Just gotta say thanks in advance here.
Just ordered one of the 7200.11 500GB online but luckily it was backordered and hadn't shipped yet so I was able to call and replace it with a western digital before becoming another unhappy
seagate statistic.

good learn for me . always duplicate data with other HDD with an other marks . I ve just order new hdd samsung spinpoint different than my seagate 7200.11 to backup data . I prefer this solution than raid (im not a pro ) cause Some people with raid with similar hdd seagate 7200.11 have lost too much ...

I found this page that gives some info on the problem and an action plan. Note that the fix should be applied BEFORE the drive fails.
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931&Hilite=

This is why I'm loyal to Western Digital.

Yes, Seagate put up a web page, (including a serial checker that doesn't work and was removed), but guess what - it doesn't work!

The web page tells you to install firmware SD1A, that was a fix from weeks back for the 1.5 TB drives stuttering. It doesn't fix the bricking/boot-of-death issue with the 7200.11 series as a whole. In fact, if you try to install it, the flasher will crash and not recognise your drive. This is probably a good thing, as those that have used an older Seagate flasher have just bricked their drives with this firmware.

So what's the point of telling people to install the wrong firmware, that doesn't fix the issue, and doesn't even install in the first place? It's the usual Seagate incompetence.

Why should anyone pay money to get a faulty product, and then "enjoy" this poor level of support? No one should, we should all spend our money elsewhere.

The first sda1 firmware wasnt working, seagate then posted an updated one same name SDA1 but it bricked my functionnal
ST3500320AS SD15 hd !!
It seems all the 500gb ones are impacted since they've removed the 2nd SDA1
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=5625&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

I can attest to the failure rate of the 500 GiB 7200.11s. I ordered one from NewEgg. DoA.... RMA'd for a replacement... worked for precisely three days before it SMARTed off and failed. I doubt it was firmware, either.

What the devil is going on at Seagate? They used to be the best, but these latest Barracudas of theirs have been extremely failure-prone.

Barracuda 7200.11
ST31000340AS
ST3750330AS
ST3640330AS
ST3500320AS
ST31500341AS
ST31000333AS
ST3640323AS
ST3640623AS
ST3320613AS
ST3320813AS
ST3160813AS

Barracuda ES.2 SATA
ST31000340NS
ST3750330NS
ST3500320NS
ST3250310NS

DiamondMax 22
STM31000340AS
STM3750330AS
STM3500320AS
STM31000334AS
STM3320614AS
STM3160813AS

I have a few of the 7200.10's and have no problems with those. I have a few 1tb 7200.11's that have no problems either. I write and delete from them regularly using them in a htpc recording OTA HD tv, which creates very large file sizes and file deletions. I just bought a few 1.5tb seagates and after reading all of this I decided to shelve them for now until the smoke clears on the firmware updates. One is model SD17 and the other is Model CC1G, both which have the bricking issue reported. From what I've read, the stuttering firmware fix caused the drives to brick if you happened to power down while the drive log had written its 320th entry and none further. So when you rebooted with the drive at log entry 320, the drive would brick. They are apparently working on a newer firmware to resolve this issue. I'll think twice about segate next time around, but how this resolves and how long it takes may adjust my opinion.

This link has someone who supposedly works as a seagate tech's explanation of the issues.

h**p://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1098793&cid=26542735

Had 8*500GB w SD15 connected to my 3Ware 9550 for 8month wo any problem at all.
The less funny thing is that my brother got almost the same setup but a 9650 card istead and he's suffering from the problems allthough a rescan of drives on the 3ware controller redetect the disks.

When you have 200+ VPs in a company doing nothing more than playing politics, what do you expect? This problem as we witnessed today is bound to happen. In fact, I found this aspect of good to bad transition via political games is in root of the business culture of this country. What you see today is just another turn of events that have been going for a long long time in many many companies. Sadly, this time it is Seagate's turn.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

Purchased 750gb on 12/13/08 and had Staples install, it failed on 1/16/09. Just 3 days past the 30 day money back guarantee from Staples - choices were send drive back to Seagate for replacement and wait or buy another one and still return 750gb for replacement. Nice choices! Anyway I purchased a 500gb on 1/17/09 and returned faulty one for replacement. Picked up computer on 1/19/09 at 5:00 at night. Following morning booted up - nothing. Dead again. Returned that drive to Staples and threw my computer in the corner. Then I find out these drives are failing when I thought it was my computer. I lost a lot including installation fees etc. at Staples and I am really upset about it. Now I know I will receive a refurb back that will probably fail again. Not worth it! There should be a lawsuit against this company!

My ST31000340AS made in Singapore bought in Feb 08, 1TB drive just died, fortunately I plugged it into another machine as a USB device and was able to delete it's 20GB system parition, take off all the 911GB of data on it's second parition and then try reusing it again, it kept bricking after subsequent attempts to install windows and reuse it. Now at the point where I am going to return it. I don't believe the firmware fix is for this issue - it's for the 30 sec pause fix on the 1.5TB drives.

2 x 500 GB drives died in a duration to 2 days.. SD15 firmware...

i curse the day when i bought seagate because WD was out of stock for atleast 3 days and i told myself "how bad can it be? let's just buy seagate."

Screw You, Seagate.

Segate is now putting 7200.11 models in 7200.9 boxes and relabeling them. Retail box kits say st3500641as-rk and drive in box is st3500320rs. One thing to have a defect and not admit it but relabeling boxes!!!!! Its at best buy stores

I recently purchased a ST31000340AS 1gb 32mb 7200rpm drive. Before I even formatted it I had problems, clicking, hanging, so I returned it for an exchange. The next drive is hanging, and also causing my virus scanner to hang for 30 seconds during start-up. I will be calling the store I bought it from and seeing if I can still exchange this drive for a Western Digital. By the way, both drives came with the firmware update, thanks a lot seagate, I will avoid you products for some time.

I purchase a Seagate hard drive 500gb in March 2008. I used it for backups only. I had everything on their my portfolio, schoolwork, pictures, and other important documents. Recently it failed and I hardly used it. Of course those were my only copies and now I'm pissed. Now I know not to buy from that company ever again and to keep backups of my backups.

A lot of Iomega external drives have these affected drives in and are failing as well, Iomega are still denying there is a problem and they have heard nothing about it.

Aurora Data recovery have 24 years experience of data recovery. Not suprisingly, with that many years know-how, we have written own programs that can extract data from failing Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives.

You may care to look at http://www.aurora.se

We hope that this info will assist users that require the data rather than an exchange unit.

Sandro

This is truly an outrage, in the past 6 months, I've lost 2 Seagate drives to this mess. One was 3 years old (200GB model), and the other, only 6 months old, a 320GB model. It's a disgrace to see Seagate react to this situation so badly, as once they were one of the best in the business. I'll be taking my business to Western Digital or Samsung in future.

I had been looking at a very tempting sale at my local FRYS. The 1TB Seagate Barracuda ST1000340AS-RK for $99.00. I don't know whether this is a new model or what, but I only found a handful of custommer reviews online, which happened to be very positive. However, they are from people who have had these drives for an average of 1 month or so. Then there was another issue: when I get to Frys it turned out that the model number in the retail boxes themselves was different! It was ST310005N1A1AS-RK. Despite the unbelievable low price, they had a truckload of these drives stocked on the floors and shelves; they obviously are not selling.
The only reason that had given me confidence was the fact that the model number ST1000340AS-RK was not in the "affected models" list, but all the discrepancies mentoned above make me doubt and distrust this company. I have now decided to buy the Western Digital WD10000CSRTL
instead (for $40.00 more).

Yesterday my Seagate 500GB drive started making a clicking sound and then failed. Surprisingly enough just prior to that I had been on the Seagate website looking at all this stuff since I saw a magazine story on the failed drives. My drive, according to Seagate, was not affected. Well from day one this drive sounded like an old jalopy. Like the drives from the past. Performance was poor at best. I had always been a Maxtor guy so I stayed with Seagate when they bought out Maxtor. My has Seagate fallen. I bought a Western Digital 320GB and its like night and day. Quiet, fast and economical. I have never had drive fail that was only 8 months old. I have old Maxtor drives that are easily 15 years old that are still running. I am done with Seagate. The "Edsel" of drive makers. This is what happens when you take your business and customers for granted.

Lost all of my important data!
Drive clicks , spins up and then is not recognised in bios or xp.
IS THERE ANY FIXES FOR BRICKED DRIVES or not, I dont want more advice on how to flash a non bricked drive! I NEED SOME ADVICE ON HOW TO get my bricked drive recogniosed in bios. Board swaps, force flashing any thing but not more gripes from owners of bricked drives, I am well peaved at SEAGATE and they are still selling Self BRICKING DRIVES!!!!!!!!!! Where the heck are trading standards!!!! I A M N O T A HAPPY B U N N Y !!!!!! AAAAaaaaaghhhh!

I have a CC1H Firmware and it is bricked also.

have 42 units in each of 2 SATABeast array cabinets...

42 units in 100 degree wiring closet in San Francisco running constant enterprise random access workload and had 3 failures in the last 12 months

42 units in 50 degree data center in Marina del Rey running sequential workload of daily mirror from primary unit in SF and have had 1 disk failure in 12 months.

I'd say these failure rates are par for the course for consumer grade SATA hard disks.

Mine has just bricked, no bios detection 6 months old was running in a popcorn hour tunred it on to find it disapperared.

Tried it im computer running KNOPPIX cant see it there cant see it in bios so guess it bricked.

Really unhappy and have lost a bit confidence in seagate. No a lot

I've had 2 seperate 750GB Seagate 7200.11 disks die and are now stuck with a 1.5TB disk where I do not feel very comfortable saving any kind of data to it.... my last purchase from Seagate ever!

9QK15686
ST3750630AS
9BX146-621
HP24
09072
No Detect BIOS

I just did this for a BUSY problem (disk light stays on): http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807&st=0&start=0 , and it actually works!, brings back memories of soldering class in 1'st year Uni, studying for my EE, those were the days... anyway, as mentioned somewhere else on the intertubes you only need to wedge a creditcard between the motor powerpins and the PWB, you don't need to completely remove the PWB, just loosen the screws, wedge plastic, follow instructions... when it's back online run the *correct* F/W upgrader from seagates page... that worked for me :D

I picked up the 500gb version back when they first came out. I am on RMA #3, and it just crapped out as well. The original and all RMA replacements have been Thailand SD15's. I dont know if I want to spend yet another few bucks for yet another RMA or just chuck it in the trash. Most of me just doesnt want to deal with it anymore, but part of me keeps going only a few bucks to replace vs buying a new one, and maybe I'll luck out and get a 7200.12 since they are out now or maybe they at least will have a new revision of the .11's to send. Either way, Seagate will not be in the cards for new drive purchases. I'll stick to WD and Samsungs which I have never had a single issue with. As far as people mentioning temps...yes, high temps are bad, no, that is not the issue with these drives. Mine for example only reach high 20's MAX, yet 3 of these drives have all failed.

I got a 500gb 7200.11 and just like everyone else I started my computer and it was unable to detect my hard drive. verry frustrating

My 7200.11 is 4 months old. Seemed to work fine, now it's Bricked.

This is essential for my business (2x cheetah 15K drives as primary and the Bricked 1TB drive for work files) and I sent the drive back to Seagate for data recovery - I was told it would be a 'critical priority' job - however 1 week later and they still haven't even evaluated it.

I wish they would offer some form of compensation as I have lost work due to this and I am running at a limited workflow due to the missing files. I had backups, but they were just under a week old (it gets backed up once a week).

And the best thing is that Seagate will sell to businesses but not cover commercial use in their warranties.!!!

I won't be buyng a Seagate ever again and I will warn all my clients about them.

Hi all, very interesting article.
I want to add a failed 1TB disk, precisely an ST31000333AS, firmware SD35, Date Code 09156 Site code SU, which was sold in a Maxtor usb enclosure.
The product was bought some two to four months ago (don't remember exactly).
It was working fine, then suddenly it stopped being recognized by the pc.
I opened the enclosure and connected the sata drive directly to a controller, but to no avail.
At powerup, the drive produces a very strange noise, it's not a click, it sounds more like the motor tries to start up but can't reach full speed, so it stops and tries again...
I feel like only a data recovery firm could take the data out now... :-(

Replacement Dead" July 12th, Firmware SD35, date code 09217

I had a 7200.11 SD15 fail at the beginning of the year (2009). I got an RMA and spent (no joke) over ten phone calls to support to get my data recovered.

Now, the replacement drive has failed too. With this return, I will have spent about half the cost on return shipping.

If I had cash, I'd short Seagate stock.

ST3500820AS 500GB 7200.11 not recognized by the BIOS. What I don't see is anyone saying they got there data off. Did anyone ever?

I'm getting a replacement drive. I sure hope it has the fixes in it.

Well add my 500gb w/SD15 firmware to the pile of garbage drives, nice little scam they have going, send out garbage drives with bad firmware and tell the customer it will cost 772.00 to retrieve the data. I guess Seagate doesn't believe in ensuring their firmware department writes good code and properly runs burn in tests and failure analysis or they would have found the problem and the fact they are still selling this product knowing of the massive failure rate constitutes fraud in my book. I would really like to speak with their firmware coders. No one should buy anything this company makes

What about ST31000333AS - SeaGate 1T (1000GB) SATA, Do we have any Error on this Disk

I bought my Seagate 7200.11 in December 2008. Tonight, the BIOS doesn't see the drive at all. This was the Vista partition on a dual boot computer so I overwrote my MBR and booted to XP. Data recovery doesn't seem to be an option as even a SATA to USB converter doesn't see the drive. I'll be notifying Seagate of it tomorrow. Looking at this drive, it was made in Thailand and the Firmware code = SD15. I expect Seagate will replace it, but how can I convince them to send me a drive that'll work for at least a year....preferrably more? Have they fixed the issue yet?

Another Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 died in less than 5 months on a HP Pavilion Elite d5000t desktop.....so not only is the Seagate company losing their worthiness, but they are taking down HP for relying on them to supply the drives. I counted on HP to provide a quality product......won't buy another HP or Seagate because of both their boondoggles.....BIG problem with both of them.....

http://groups.google.com/group/datarecoverycertification/browse_thread/thread/93d8aede182bf413/a85360db027816aa?hl=en&q=

Just spoke with Tech support - so far 3 of my drives have failed and the fourth one just did so last night.

The tech support is horrible and all three times I paid 19.9$ for shipping.

If you don't want to pay 19.99 - you do have two options -
1. Pay 15 $ to talk to tech support so that they determine that your drive is the problem and hope that they don't charger you another 20 $ to change the drive
2. Wait for 4-6 weeks to get the label - and then send your drive in!

I am NEVER EVER buying seagate again. I would rather go for a shorter warranty than getting something like this !

how do you actualy fix the drives if they arnt even detected in bios!!!

My drive failed about 6 weeks ago. I contacted seagate support and they refused to fix it, stating the serial number didn't match up to drives that would have the firmware issue. I actually fixed the drive myself using the terminal fix using a Nokia DKU-5 data cable. I refuse to buy any additional seagate products since they won't recognize this is as a much larger issue.

In those 7 months I filled the whole damn drive. The drive worked well (while it worked), but it gave no heads up whatsoever and thus from one day to the next it just decided to not boot and is now dead and shut. I lost some 250 GBs of data (I had backed up the other 150 or so Gigs a long time before). Thanks for nothing Seagate, just cost me a shitload of time and effort in the data lost. No drive is supposed to die for any matter, under a year (that´s why I hadn´t backed the rest of the info, I was sure that it wasn´t going to be at risk situation in less than a year). I´m staying clear of Seagate forever, going with WD and Samsung now (which is the brand of most of my drives).

There´s a couple of webpages I found that give a step by step guide on how to fix the SHUT 7200.11 drives.
The error fixes the problem where the drive is no longer seen by the BIOS, can´t be booted or even accessed as a slave drive.
It un-shuts the drive, allowing you to get in, in order to get your data out to another drive.
The method works and is not that hard to do if you follow instructions. You just need to buy a cable and adapter if you don´t have one of those already.

Take advantage of the help/info provided by these guys and get your data back!

After that, dump the junk Seagate drive and give the company what they deserve, purchase a drive from another company like Western Digital or Samsung.

I´m not getting any more Seagates ever!

FIX YOUR LOCKED SEAGATE DRIVE AND GET YOUR DATA BACK.
FIX YOUR LOCKED SEAGATE DRIVE AND GET YOUR DATA BACK.
FIX YOUR LOCKED SEAGATE DRIVE AND GET YOUR DATA BACK.

http://groups.google.com/group/datarecoverycertification/browse_thread/thread/93d8aede182bf413/a85360db027816aa?hl=en&q=

http://groups.google.com/group/datarecoverycertification/browse_thread/thread/93d8aede182bf413/a85360db027816aa?hl=en&q=

http://groups.google.com/group/datarecoverycertification/browse_thread/thread/93d8aede182bf413/a85360db027816aa?hl=en&q=

http://groups.google.com/group/datarecoverycertification/browse_thread/thread/93d8aede182bf413/a85360db027816aa?hl=en&q=

AND ALSO HERE ANOTHER WAY OF DOING SO

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate-7200-11-hdds-t128807.html

hope people see this and is able to get their info back

ps: I forgot to mention and tell you guys that if you have the above problem where the drive locks up and is not seen by the BIOS, etc. That the info in it, all info in it is still there in perfect condition. There is no loss of data, the drive is just locked and inaccessible and thus the previous post solution, unlocks it for you and you can get ALL the data out.

cheers

YRB,

"It un-shuts the drive, allowing you to get in, in order to get your data out to another drive".

By un-shutting/un-locking - do you mean, it will boot back into windows. My drive is no longer seen by the bios all of a sudden after working fine for about a year, so I guess it is locked now and once the updated firware is applied it will get unlocked and boot back into windows.

Please let me know, is that what you are trying to say?

My letter to Seagate (begging if you like) for replacement drives for the replacement ST3500320AS's (Firmware SD1A), and they are slowing down my system chronically, and loads of other problems.

Hi,
After two identical products were returned to you via the RMA process, on the UPS account for Derby UK, I recieved two certified repaired return refirbished drives identical to the failed products (from the Netherlands).
The Models in question are 500GB ST3500320AS Series 11 SATA2 drives.
I have since had countless problems such as system freezes (despite unchecking write cache in WIndows Vista / and Windows 7), and raid dropouts on an Intel ICH10R. reported with both drives, and have tried two alternative Seagate products , whos performance with the system was unfailing.
The drives (model) I tried as a substitute were the 500GB ST3500410SV model, and these functioned far better, and crucially (for me) worked in a Raid array.
I work as a Systems Integrator for a OEM in the UK , and we have a good return channel to you (and normally deal exclusively with Seagate drives), and as I simply cannot use your product to meet my storage needs reliably, was wondering if I could return the defective ST3500320AS's and be returned two ST3500410SV's instead, this would certainly fix my problem, and you would go straight to the top of my "top customer service " list.
I will of course pay any extra costs as required, my existing drives are within warranty until 2012 (November).

Wonder if i'll get anywhere ???

Well add another 7200.11 to the list. 500Gb 7200.11 firmware: SD15 ST3500320AS.
I hear it spin but can't see it in BIOS. I bought a new 750Gb 7200.12 HD 2 weeks ago so I moved all my data from old to new drive and was planning to install a second OS on the 7200.11. I am really lucky I guess. I was a Seagate fan, but I consider myself undecided now. I can't believe this list of Seagate problems. Sigh...

My 2TB external Maxtor (Seagate) failed
last month, after 6 months of rare backup use. I have WD drives that work flawlessly that are 6 years old. One of them fell three feet onto carpet!

Flood the BBB with massive complaints!

Visit Seagate in Scotts Valley, Calif.
(and be creative here, Seagate really
needs more upfront opinions! :-)

Corporations will f%$# over the little
people because they have no fear.

Methinks they could use some humility!

Let me help you. Look me up under "daskinkaid wayman" I have performed this fix for couple of dozen drives in the country. Thanks for looking.

I was one of the fools who trusted seagate's 7200.11 , I did upgraded the firmware, and for a little, it was nice... and now, less than a year after, the disk start to fail a lot and all diagnostic programs return problems...

So even a healed seagate 7200.11 dies that soon...

What can I say, my older hitachi drive still works fine after 16.000 hours, and the damn new seagate crap, failed twice?

What is wrong with the hardware companies? So all we buy is Chinese crap in the end?
A shame, I will never entrust my valuables files on seagate.

Just had a Seagate 500Gb drive brick. Only 1 sector on the whole drive didn't error out using Seagate's SeaTool.

Don't buy Seagate products anymore. They are a total loss.

a week or so ago, my 500Gb 7200.11 bricked, with all of my digital photos on which i'd kept telling myself i needed to get around to backing up...(i know, i know...). My first enquiries on the web filled me with dread, and i was looking at data recovery companies when i fell over a post that said Seagate had at last accepted that these drives have a firmware problem and agreed to do something about it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/16/barracuda_failure_plague/

I called them and now, 48 hours later, my drive has been picked up from an address of my convenience by TNT, shipped to the i365 service centre and diagnosed. It is indeed the firmware fault, so they are going to flash it with stable firmware, back up my data for 30 days, and courier the drive back to me to arrive on the day i get back from holidays. All of this free of charge, and handled by a really helpful, friendly and professional case manager from start to finish.

If your 7200.11 bricks, call Seagate. Hope they sort you out as well as they have me.

my only question is.. what's the privacy policy? how secure is your data from prying eyes?

just do this:
http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/
after do firmware update.

regarding data recovery privacy Davey asks about, the work was carried out by i365 - you can read their privacy policy below:

http://www.i365.com/privacy-policy.html

Have just got back from holiday and true to their word, i365 had shipped the drive back to be waiting for me with reinstalled firmware, all free of charge. plugged it in and all of my data was accessible.

I think I've been around owning drive from pretty much every manufacturer that I've come across, but Western Digital and Seagate have always been near the top of my list.

I've also experience many drive failures (I run file servers) in my life. I've always been able to retrieve some files from a failured drive using a variety of data recovery software.

That being said, I recently have a 1.5 TB Seagate 7200.11 that failed on me. The drive completely failed and it took my DNS 323 with it. One morning I thought my DNS 323 smelled funny. It turn was powered down, which it isn't suppose to be. After numerous attempt to restart the DNS 323, I decided to take out the drives and test them on an external enclosure. The seagate just made a grinding sound, while the 1.5 TB western digital Green boot up just fine.

I called Seagate support, and was put on hold for a good hour before I speak to their support staff.

I have to paid $20 for shipment cost, which sort of make me think, does a replacement drive that is just as likely to fail worth $20?

Since I hate them so much now, I would take the replacement drive just so they would suffer.

Also, the two 1.5TB drive were in raid 1, so they were mirrored. Even after the DNS 323 and the seagate both goes down, my Western Digital Green is still spinning.

Guys, please take my advance and avoid Seagate at all cost.

I did the same as above.
Send it from Portugal to i365 (in the Netherlands) January the 6h 2010 and today January 11th 2010 i received my drive with all my data intact. All they did was a firmware update and data verification. They also saved all my data for 14 days in case anything goes wrong. All this free of charge. Their services where amazing. I forgive Seagate for this firmware issue. We all make mistakes as long as we are willing to correct them... They did.
I will continue buying their drives in the future.
Hope this helps anyone with the same problem.

Wow. Seagate completely refused to help me out and denied any responsibility. I purchased Seagate 500GB 7200.11 ST3500620AS hard drive, the drive “bricked” 4 months after the purchase - the BOIS stopped seeing the hard drive, all the same symptoms as described by other posters. Seagate’s free data recovery only offers free diagnostics with no guarantee that your data will be retrieved or even that the drive will be returned to you intact. Various “data recovery” rip-off outfits quoted $400-$700 only to recover your data, but not to repair your drive (and they specifically advertize data recovery for Seagate 7200.11).
I read about Wayman Ng on several forums. I emailed him and he responded within an hour. I send him my drive with prepaid shipping back and got it back with all data recovered and in perfectly working condition – all for less than $100! He unbricked it, updated the firmware – and voila, the problem solved! Wayman is very professional, cordial and responsive. You can reach him at daskinkaid@gmail.com, or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/daskinkaid, or look him up on Google under Wayman and DASKinkaid. Thank you, Wayman! You are a good man and great professional! Anna

Hi, Just adding myself to the list of affected persons. SATA, 3.5", Barracuda 7200.11, 1000 Gbytes. Firmware SD35, made in Thailand.

I read a lot of the comments on these and am not suprised that my hard drive took a dump after about 90 days use and then they want to charge between $700 & $1200 dollars to retrieve the info if they can. I didn't pay that much for the computer new.