Prevent possible Seagate hard drive crashes!

[Terry95841]

I am in the same boat as you: waiting to see if I sink or swim. I am, at this moment, doing a Norton Ghost 14 backup on a WD drive and copied my important docs to another Seagate (which could also fail.)  My question: how to apply the fix to slave drives? Or test if the slaves need the fix? The fix would not install on my primary drive, but I don't know if that means my others are OK...

[MrFixIt]

I checked with Seagate and it only applies to the primary/boot HDD, not to slave drives.

[m_archer92]

Well. I had this error happen to me this morning. I didn't think it would be so critical, as I have had the error occassionally, but a reboot seems to make it go away.

Now I can not access Windows, Windows (Safe Mode), or Windows Repair. As in, anything that is on that entire Seagate hard disk is unaccessible through boot.

Is there any way to apply this patch without being able to access the operating system through the crashed drive?

--I downloaded the executable on my other Windows XP PC and tried to make a bootable disc, but it won't let me run the upgrade on a non-Vista PC.

Any help I could get on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[RasterBlaster]

If you want to create the boot disc from another PC, you should be able to burn the iso from another PC...

1) Download the file sp40966.

2) Double-click the download.

3) Click Next.

4) Accept the EULA and click Next.

5) After extracting error 9998 pops up. Leave the error open. Don't click close.

6) Open your temp folder - click Start run and enter %temp%

7) Look for a pft folder containing sp40966.iso.

8) Burn the ISO using your disc burning software. There are rtf instructions for Roxio and Sonic apps in this folder as well.

9) Once you create the disc you can use the disc on another PC.

[m_archer92]

Wow, thank you.

That worked. I am not getting any more errors with the update applied now.

However... I am still having problems with Windows booting. It just gets hung-up at the booting sequence. The green bar just goes around forever. 

Edit: I get the same problem when booting from Safe Mode or Windows Repair. I am going to try to boot from the recovery partition and see if I can get any success out of that.

Message Edited by m_archer92 on 04-16-2009 09:07 PM

Message Edited by m_archer92 on 04-16-2009 09:07 PM

[FredWampler]

My HP printer caused a similar problem on a previous system. It had to do with legacy USB support either being set or not set in the bios. Since it was a usb printer I usually just unplugged it while booting and that worked. External USB drives or maybe other usb accesseries might cause similar problems. Seems like my external drive did the same when I didn't disconnect it correctly.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[RasterBlaster]

m_archers92,

Thank you very much for following up and letting us know that it fixed the errors.

You are probably past this point, but I'd like to know if you can get any data off the drive from a command prompt or startup disc - before doing a recovery. It looks like you would be able to if the Windows load sequence started.

[m_archer92]

Hi. I am happy to say, that yes the firmware update did fix the error I was getting. However, I believe that the crashed firmware caused damage to the disk.

I can not boot Windows, Windows Safe Mode, Windows Recovery Mode, or HP Restore mode.

I called HP regarding this incident and they were going to dispatch a new hard drive. I am also going to order some HP recovery discs from the HP Support website. (HP couldn't authorize my credit card, so I can't yet provide collateral to get the new drive from them.)

I had wished I could have fixed this issue without the need for a new drive. Perhaps just the Windows parts of the disk are messed up and a clean format would fix the problem. HP said they would ship me out a new disk (blank, of course) and could provide system restore discs. [I am hoping these restore discs they provide would establish the hard drive to be just like it was when I first got the computer, with all of the pre-installed software.]

Maybe if I get the HP restore discs (from the website), I can restore the computer with a clean drive format and everything will work fine.

I'm not sure.

Also, thank you for the suggestion about the printer (and other USB devices), I actually have another 2006 HP Pavilion and had an issue, and unplugging the printer worked for it a while back when I had a boot issue with it. I had hoped it would have worked with my current case, but it didn't.

I tried booting off of Linux to retrieve my downloads for backup, but Linux will not mount the hard drive if it was not cleanly removed during a Windows session. And I can't cleanly remove the hard drive if I can't get on Windows. So there's another catch-22.

And what is even worse is that I can not even use the recovery partition to restore the computer, because the entire disk is damaged. 

[thayes1878]

My HP 9515y hard drive crashed on 4/30/2009. I purchased it on 2/3/09 & returned it on 2/4/09 because the hd was no good. Now just short of 90 days this hard drive failed. 3rd HP in 90 days, luckily I brought it back to Best Buy & Geek Squad is fixing it under warranty. It takes 3-5 days to run "tests" and 1 day to install the Hard Drive. So you pay $1,400.00 for a new PC, bring it back after 1 day, & then bring it back again after 90 days & wait a week for it to be fixed. Way to go HP!!!!! You Suck

[m_archer92]

Update:

Well, after my Seagate firmware crash and my ordeal with HP Support... After 3 days on the phone, I got a new hard drive from them.

(I was able to back my stuff up by plugging the disk into another PC and backing up.)

The new disk came with updated firmware already.

I am guessing that the Seagate firmware failure caused damage to the boot sector of the disk. Because I was able to update the firmware using a CD, and then it was just having problems booting Windows, no error message anymore.

But it's fixed now, with a new drive.