HP Computers with Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drives Locking up [ Edited ]

[kwalshx4]

I own a HP Pavilion Media Center m8530f PC with a 750Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 internal hard drive model #ST3750630AS.  The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives were shipped with faulty firmware through December 2008 and I can only assume since my HP has this drive, that there are thousands of other HP machines that also have the affected Barracuda drives installed in them.

The current firmware loaded on these drives has a bug, that upon startup, will lock the drive in a "busy" state and cause the drive to stop communicating with the PC.  The drive cannot be recognized by Bios and no amount of tinkering with cables or settings will wake it up.  The data is not affected by this issue.  The drive has just gone into a coma of sorts.  There are thousands of posts in the Seagate forums discussing this issue and for those yet to be affected by the bricking problem, Seagate has released new firmware.

The big problem is that if your drive has already stopped communicating with the PC, the new firmware is of no use.  For Seagate drives that were not purchased directly from Seagate, i.e., in an HP PC, Seagate will not fix the issue...They tell you to take it up with the OEM for the PC.

Has HP acknowledged this firmware problem with the Seagate drives and have they released new firmware to prevent this from occurring?  For users, there are no warning signs that the problem exists.  One day you power up the PC and the drive is no longer recognized. 

HP has yet to offer a better solution than replace the drive if still under warranty.  This solution is extreme since it means any non-backed up data is lost even though the data on the frozen drive is still there...the problem is not that the drive has "failed," you just can't get the PC to recognize the drive.  Seagate publicly acknowledged this problem nearly a month ago and has also offered free data recovery to those with drives that have already locked up.  Will HP offer the same or have Seagate extend this service to HP customers? 

The data recovery companies (Seagate's data recovery company included) are now running "specials" to fix the Barracuda problem and I'm sure have a major upswing in business.  The data recovery company that called me back today said they can unbrick the drive for $599! 

Has anyone else had this problem?  I would guess quite a few folks have already sent their drives in for replacement and lost their data, but didn't know that their data was not actually lost.  Both times I've spoken with HP Tech Support, they were not aware of the issue or were not acknowledging it.  All they could offer was ship the PC or drive to them and they would replace it.

Message Edited by kwalshx4 on 02-16-2009 08:45 AM

[RoyalSerpent]

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/other_downloads/cuda-fw

[kwalshx4]

Thanks, but the article you pointed to was for the Barracuda cache size problem some folks are also experiencing. 

The problem I and thousands of other users have is described in the following article:  http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

I wish it was as simple as the problem you pointed to. 

[RoyalSerpent]

Bottomline is that if you have an affected drive, then Seagate and/or HP will sen you a firmware update to address this problem.  Sure way to find out is to obtain the model and S/N of the drive.

[kwalshx4]

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RoyalSerpent wrote:
Bottomline is that if you have an affected drive, then Seagate and/or HP will sen you a firmware update to address this problem.  Sure way to find out is to obtain the model and S/N of the drive.

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Unfortunately that's not the bottom line and it's not that simple.  Per my original post: "The big problem is that if your drive has already stopped communicating with the PC, the new firmware is of no use."  I've been chasing a solution to this issue for 3 months and have verified the model and serial # as an affected drive through the Seagate online checker utility. 

Seagate will not help you if you have a drive in an OEM machine.  HP has not released new firmware for those not yet hit by the bug.  Please read the entire text of my original post.

[BC777]

Ironically I just posted a message asking for help but decided to search on the 7200.11 and tons of postings are showing up.

Yes, HP came up with a HP26 firmware from the HP24 firmware on my drive.  My new 3 day computer is having problems just locking up and I have done HP system recovery like 6 times. 

In my hours of asking for help, HP Support first said I didn't need to upgrade it if I didn't have problems ( this was before I started doing my own research ), that they have no idea how to help me flash the drive as the firmware requires the SATA controller mode to be set it IDE when my BIOS has no option. 

They said they never heard of the problem.

[RoyalSerpent]

If the drive is "dead", then your only solution is replacement.  If you bricked the drive with the first bad firmware, then you can still fix the problem by reloading the latest "good" firmware.

[BC777]

It was 2 hours on the phone as my new pc also had a dead TV capture card.  Basically on the hard drive, they cannot understand why there is no option in the bios of the mother board to change the SATA controller mode to IDE as the boot flash cd says to do.  But Tech support is not looking at a live machine on their end only I believe 'images' of what it should look like.

I'm having lockups after hours of use/installs as I setup my machine.  On some reboots, the drive is reporting in the black and white initial screen during reboots - no operating system found so the drive isn't responding it seems.

HP support is sending me a box to send the machine back.  The dead TV card they cannot fix as its a different ticket!!!!   So I'm sending the machine back and they are fixing ONE problem and leaving the other for me to do later.  They could not combine it and fix both problems while in shop.  My confidence is shot.  And I manage HP servers.

Message Edited by BC777 on 02-17-2009 01:14 PM

[ronss]

wow,,,,and seagate has sold a TON of the 7200.11 drives...i have two, 320gb and 500gb....so i have one that is on the hit list.. quess i better do some firmware upgrades, and thanks for the tip.

[kwalshx4]

Here is a duplicate of my post from the other thread related to this issue and some specifics related to the new HP26 firmware referenced above:

Just as a PSA for those HP owners yet to be affected by the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 "BSY" or bricking problem, HP has released new firmware for the hard drives (HP26).  The new firmware also addresses a hard disk slowdown issue that is unrelated to the "bricking" problem.

Resolves an issue where the hard disk drive may become inoperable after a power-on.

Resolves an issue where performance may be degraded for a period of time after heavy disk usage.

Go to:  http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericSoftwareDownloadIndex?cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&softwareitem=pv-6...

If you know you have one of the listed drives that is vulnerable (ST3320813AS, ST3500620AS, ST3750630AS, or ST31000340AS), I would recommend you follow HP's advise in the firmware update link.

 For those who have already been hit with the bug, good luck in getting your data back.  I am very interested in hearing from anyone who has received any resolution on this issue other than a replacement drive and complete data loss from the frozen "BSY" state drive.