IBM firmware glitch puts brake on Seagate drives

IBM has found that some of the Seagate Sata drives in its xSeries and BladeCentre servers are coming to a halt because of an issue with IBM's firmware.

The 250GB, 500GB, 750GB or 1TB Barracuda ES.2 drives will occasionally not start up when power is switched on, IBM said. This could cause serious issues for organisations as, according to Seagate, the drives are considered to be suitable for use in Tier-2, business-critical sites.

In a warning about the issue on its website, IBM said: "After a power cycle, the Sata drive is no longer available and becomes unresponsive." The data on the drive also becomes inaccessible because of this lack of response, it added.

"This rare condition is caused by a hard-drive firmware issue that allows the drive's 'event log' pointer to be set to an invalid location", IBM said in its note.

There is currently no complete fix for the issue, but IBM said it will make fix it in a future release of firmware, available by the end of March. IBM's website suggests that users can limit their exposure to this issue by limiting or avoiding the number of power cycles performed.

The model numbers of the affected Sata drives are: ST31000340NS, ST3250310NS, ST3500320NS and ST3750330NS. To be affected, they also need to have firmware level BB10 installed.

The problem with the firmware will only be apparent when the user starts up a system, said IBM. It should not occur while the system is running in normal use.