IBM firmware glitch puts brake on Seagate drives
Summary
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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 organizations 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.
This article was originally posted on ZDNet.co.uk.
Talkback Most Recent of 2 Talkback(s)
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How about...
How about posting a link to the announcement.
putty.master2nd Mar 2009 -
Experienced this issue first hand...
I bought three of the 1TB drives. Two wouldn't spin up after the first time they were shut down. I got two replacements and one of those wouldn't spin up out of the box. After that, I boxed all the drives back up and took them back to the vendor for a refund. A 60% failure rate is a good way of ensuring that a customer will drop your product and never look back.
jasonp@...2nd Mar 2009
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
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