Prevent possible Seagate hard drive crashes!

[RasterBlaster]

If your computer was purchased in 2008/beginning of 2009 and came with a Seagate hard drive, you should read the following support document from HP: 

Preventing Non-System Disk Errors on Computers with Seagate Drives

Basically, under certain conditions the drive firmware can crash. It may work well for a long time, but then crash later because certain conditions present themselves on the PC.

To prevent a possible crash, download and install SP40966 from HP.

Once opened, it will tell you if a drive needs the update.

If you have a drive that needs the updated firmware, it prompts you for a blank disc.

It then burns a disc that you leave in the drive and restart.

It updates the firmware automatically. On some PCs/versions you may have to go in and change from SATA to IDE in the BIOS - I didn't. I used the update on an IQ506 and the update went well.

[MrFixIt]

My original post about a problem with the sp40966 firmware update got filed in the Laptop forum (my bad!) instead of the Desktop forum where it should have been.

My thanks to GarenT for moving it to it's proper place today.

In looking in the forum I find that there are some other threads that seem to be linked to my problem.

One under http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=HardwareDPC&thread.id=4918

Another under http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=HardwareDPC&thread.id=4918

And my original post under http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=HardwareDPC&thread.id=4964

Any ideas?

[RasterBlaster]

You originally posted back in December. There have been several updates to the download since then. Have your tried creating another disc from the most recent version of sp40966?

[MrFixIt · Accepted solution]

My issue has been resolved. I downloaded the update yesterday and it installed without any problems. Closing the issue.

[Terry95841]

Could this explain why my HP replacement 750 GB drive, which arrived today to replace my crashed one, is not being recognized by My Computer?

A short history:  After 2 months of operation, my new HP Pavilion a6750f Desktop crashed, with the 750 GB drive failing all Smart tests. While the replacement was being mailed, I bought a 1.5GB Seagate and used the Recovery Software to get up and running yesterday. Today, the 750 Seagate drive arrived, so I installed it as a storage drive (to do backups to prevent another disaster.) The BIOS reports it as the 3rd drive, ST3750630AS and the SMART test passed.  But it doesn't show up on My Computer (so that I can format it, if necessary.)  When I installed Nero Backitup 4, it too can see the drive, but there are no partitions.

Questions:

1. How do I format or get this drive recoginized?
2. Can I install this firmware download on my 1.5 GB Seagate, my 1.0 GB Seagate (another storage drive) and the 750 GB Seagate? If so, when I reboot, can I select which drives to apply it to?

 Thanks!

[y2ken]

The drive must be 'partitioned' before it can be formatted.

Right Click 'My Computer', chose 'Manage', then 'Disk Management'.

From there go to this link and skip down to the "Creating a Partition" section.

How To Partition a Hard Drive

[Terry95841]

It doesn't show up there, either.  As soon as Vista SP1 finishes downloading, I will check the connectors. However, since it did show up in the BIOS and on Nero Backitup, but not in My Computer or Disk Management, it looks like a different problem...

[Closed]

Terry,

Try:  1.) Start/control panel/administrative tools/computer management/disk management/

If you can now see the drive, or an unidentified drive that might be the problem drive, 

then 2.) click on grey area where your drive ID number is located (to the left of the color bar of your problematic drive)

then 3.) right click in that same grey area and select "initialize". Formatting, partitioning, etc. should now be possible after "initializing" the drive.

This is not a very intuitive process and I only stumbled on it one time when I was experiencing similar problems with a new drive some time ago.

Good luck!

[Terry95841]

Thanks!  After checking SATA cables, moving to other SATA slots and rebooting several times (after Vista SP1 finished the DL and updating), I checked Disk Management and a notice appeared, saying something about unallocated drive ((or something similar). Then I found the drive, partitioned, formatted and assigned a drive letter.

[FredWampler]

I applied this firmware update to my m9550f (Affected Seagate) successfully.

My question:

Am I safe now? Lots of these Seagate drives have been dropping like flies. Even if I have to pay for my own drive replacement I had rather do that than have the current one crash due to a firmware update not fixing the problem. I do back up my drive, but still, I don't want a premature failure just because the firmware update wasn't the whole problem. I'll take my chance with random failures - but not with what has been hitting these Seagates.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. ( I realize yours may not be HP's thoughts).

Fred