People with 7200.11 hard drives from Seagate should be aware there's a current issue. The disks get locked into protection mode and then are 'dead'. There should be a firmware update to care of this issue before it appears. The faulty firmware is SD15. Until a fix is released, avoid powering up and down the drive, back up elsewhere. Centralize all the data about the working/non working drives.
A press realease from seagate is expected today. Gosh, I've got at least two three of them This post has been edited by lepetitmartien: Thu 12 Feb 2009, 03:50. Right now, this is how it is: - there's no working patches still, seagate trials were as bad if not worse than the original firmwares. remember, the drives are 'ok', the data is still here, it's only a software issue so it'll be fixed.
all 7200.11 and equivalents build until december 08 included are concerned - there's a way to unbrick the bricked ones rather geeky but for this, I advise to follow the threads on msfn.org (the forum seems down, it'll come back) Until there's a WORKING firmware Don't power down the drive if you can and back up! And there seems to be up and running at Seagate for ST3500320AS, ST3500620AS, ST3500820AS, ST3640330AS, ST3640530AS, ST3750330AS, ST3750630AS, ST31000340AS.
For other models like ES2, check Seagate website for the procedure (got to write to seagate). Check carefully the model and firmware version BEFORE applying, as it can brick your drive if applied on the wrong model! If you want to have the geeky inside story about what happened, it's on Note that I have not yet gone the full road so this is all the input I can give for now. The Firmware CD will work in intel desktop, provided it's burned the right way, the intel mac is intel and you can set the drive inside the computer on the internal SATA bus. One day, maybe Seagate and others will find out there's enclosures, people not running Windows or people not having a desktop computer but a laptop (I have G3 BW, PWM G5 and macbook here so screwed). The trouble is once it is bricked, either you have to send it to Seagate, which cares of the unbricking for free and send back on a new drive, or you have to unbrick the HD with a rs232 cable modified on a pc and it's a little geeky. Now, if your disk has been always and/or heavily used (like mine) there's almost no risk the issue appears as it's likely it passed the bug point of the 320th log entry.
Seagate 7200.11 Firmware
Seagate Driver For Mac
I'm still preparing my back ups, as I plan to install new systems on both the MacBook and the G5 (the G5 has the infamous disk as its system HD) as I have to tidy up thing anyway before flashing the disk. I hope to be able to do so net week at a member's wintel pc.