Hard drive firmware

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AMmayhem

AMmayhem

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Nov 3, 2001
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My hard drive has apparently crapped out on me. Though after talking to someone, they mentioned that Seagate had some faulty hard drives a few years ago, which they solved with a firmware update. Well I have a Seagate 7200 which is a couple years old so while checking for firmware, the updates depend on the serial number. My serial number is a ST3500630AS, but the closest firmware I can find is for a ST3500620AS. Would it be wise decision to use this firmware even though it's not the exact same serial number? Or is that going to mess things up?
 
IronMonkey

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AMmayhem said:
My hard drive has apparently crapped out on me. Though after talking to someone, they mentioned that Seagate had some faulty hard drives a few years ago, which they solved with a firmware update. Well I have a Seagate 7200 which is a couple years old so while checking for firmware, the updates depend on the serial number. My serial number is a ST3500630AS, but the closest firmware I can find is for a ST3500620AS. Would it be wise decision to use this firmware even though it's not the exact same serial number? Or is that going to mess things up?
Click to expand...
If you mean the SD15 firmware issue then there is a checker referenced on this page. Follow its advice:

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

NRG

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Their "Drive Detect" software doesn't seem very good, it doesn't even find my Seagate Drive. I can't find ST3500630AS on their website either. But, if the drive is bricked or is close to it, what is there to lose?
 
B

Benfica

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Feb 6, 2006
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AMmayhem said:
My hard drive has apparently crapped out on me.
Click to expand...
I have exactly the same drive as you, a 500GB 7200.10 series. What is happening with your drive? Does it power up, is detected by the BIOS and so on?
Though after talking to someone, they mentioned that Seagate had some faulty hard drives a few years ago, which they solved with a firmware update. Well I have a Seagate 7200 which is a couple years old so while checking for firmware, the updates depend on the serial number. My serial number is a ST3500630AS, but the closest firmware I can find is for a ST3500620AS. Would it be wise decision to use this firmware even though it's not the exact same serial number? Or is that going to mess things up?
Click to expand...
The faulty ones are from the 7200.11, which has a pretty different firmware not appropriate for our drives. A firmware update was never a typical recommendation to fix problems of the 7200.10
 
AMmayhem

AMmayhem

Mayhem is everywhere
Nov 3, 2001
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Benfica said:
I have exactly the same drive as you, a 500GB 7200.10 series. What is happening with your drive? Does it power up, is detected by the BIOS and so on?
Click to expand...

My computer would start up fine. Windows would load, and I'd start doing whatever, browsing internet, moving files, anything really. Then the hard drive would go into a constant running state. Bogging everything you tried to do because it was doing whatever. Shutting down the computer would take forever, so I had to kill the power. Upon restart, before Windows loaded, I got the message "Disk read error press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart."

That's about all there was to it. Sometimes after setting off for a while it would start up fine, passed that message. But soon it would go back to the constant running state. It wasn't a RAM issue as that's the first thing I replaced to no fix. Nor do I think it was disk thrashing, though it might be, as I don't fully understand what thrashing is.

Didn't try the firmware, went ahead and bought a new hard drive (Western Digital 1 TB). Installed Windows and everything is going good since. In some good news, I was able to hook up the Seagate as a "slave" drive and pull everything I needed off it. Didn't have any problems with it constant running then, though I'm not going to trust it for just storage.
 
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B

Benfica

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Feb 6, 2006
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AMmayhem said:
My computer would start up fine. Windows would load, and I'd start doing whatever, browsing internet, moving files, anything really. Then the hard drive would go into a constant running state. Bogging everything you tried to do because it was doing whatever.
Click to expand...
Probably trying to recover bad sectors or hard to read (doing multiple passes). You should check it for filesystem errors and bad sectors.
In some good news, I was able to hook up the Seagate as a "slave" drive and pull everything I needed off it. Didn't have any problems with it constant running then, though I'm not going to trust it for just storage.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's unreliable. Use it for temp folder, swap file, a 2nd installation of Windows, ISOs of your games and whatever else that you don't mind to lose.
 
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