Seagate 7200.11 and 7200.12 problems
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7200.11 Overview:MjM Data Recovery Limited was one of the first companies in the world that are able to fix Seagate 7200.11 drives with Firmware problems. For drives with the specific problems we offer a low cost data-recovery service .Seagate are one of the largest hard disk drive manufacturers in the world and make top quality hard disk drives. But this range of drives has really hit Seagate. Their forums are filling up with complaints about the failures. All hard disks at some point will fail, and Seagate hard disks are not immune to failure. Each manufacturer seems to have failure modes that are unique and so in depth knowledge of the internal functions of how these hard disks work is vital if the drive has failed and the data needs recovering. |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Failures
This model drive was found to have a firmware issue with specific models and releases of the drive. The problem was a memory leak found in the cache memory. Seagate have issued a firmware update which can be downloaded from their support website.
We have noticed other failures starting around August 2008, this was confirmed by reports found on the Seagate Support Forums and trade data recovery forums. Our engineers were straight onto finding a solution and at the end of September 2008 we discovered methods of fixing the problems. Tests on good drives resulted with no data loss, tests on failed drives resulted with them fully repaired and the data recovered.
Initially it was thought the problems only affected the 500gb, 750gb, 1tb and 1.5tb drives however, Seagate updated this to include all drives using the 7200.11 firmware as indicated in this list from the Seagate Web site
New problems found with 7200.12 , 5400.6 and 7200.4 where drive will read a certain amount of sectors and then is unable to read further. Our analyses have discovered the cause of this problem and we have found a method of repairing these drives so the vast majority of the data can be recovered. A big problem that we have discovered is that the documented fix for the older 7200.11 series can actually make the problem worse for 7200.12, 5400.6 and 7400.4 series and can be difficult to circumvent if the translator repair for the 7200.11 series has been done on these drives.
News: 15 January 2010Problems with 7200.12 where drive stops reading and reports UNC errors. We sourced this problem to a secondary defect table inside the firmware zone of the drive. Once this is corrupt the drive will stop reading from a specific point. The solution is different to published solutions on the web and if the fix for 7200.11 is applied, it can permanently stop access to the data. Very little can be done to these drives once the fix is made but this is a work in progress for us.
Update: 15 July 2011
We have found a method of regaining access to some drives where the 7200.11 fix has been applied to 7200.11 and 7200.12 drives where data can not be read beyond a specific point.
Update We are also able to fix Seagate Laptop drives that exhibit the same problems.
News: 06 October 2009
We are now able to repair firmware problems on Seagate Laptop hard disks that use similar firmware to the 7200.11 series of drives.
The drives suffer with similar problems to the 7200.11 series of drives but it has been difficult to access the correct factory mode to repair the drive and recover the data. Again, Seagate use a different method to access the FW zone on these drives and again we have circumvented this. Using this method we have developed routines to repair the firmware on Seagate Laptop drives with ADxx, SDxx, SNxx, DExx, HPxx, CCxx and LCxx based firmware. In some cases the firmware may report as ZZ7L or some other strange code. The original problem was only thought to have affected AD14, SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19, SD81
| Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 | Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA | Maxtor DiamondMax 22 |
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ST31000340AS
ST31000640AS ST3750330AS ST3750630AS ST3640330AS ST3640630AS ST3500320AS ST3500620AS ST3500820AS ST31500341AS ST31000333AS ST3640323AS ST3640623AS ST3320613AS ST3320813AS ST3160813AS |
ST31000340NS
ST3750330NS ST3500320NS ST3250310NS |
STM31000340AS
STM31000640AS STM3750330AS STM3750630AS STM3500320AS STM3500620AS STM3500820AS STM31000334AS STM3320614AS STM3160813AS |
Reason for the Seagate 7200.11 Failure
This problem is caused by a firmware issue that sets the drive's "event
log" pointer to an invalid location.
This is detected by the drive during power-up initialisation, and the drive
switches to fail-safe mode to
prevent further corruption and loss of user data. Once the failure has occurred
user data becomes inaccessible.
During power up, if the Event Log count is at 320, or any multiple of (320 + Nx256), and if a particular fill pattern is present in the factory reserved area of the drive, the firmware will incorrectly allow the Event Log pointer to increment past the end of the data structure.
This error is detected during initialisation and returns an " Assert Failure ", which causes the drive to enter it's fail-safe mode. When the drive enters this mode further updates to the event log counter are impossible as the same results occur at each power-cycle.
The problem can only occur if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or a multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, the user will not be able to resolve/recover existing failed drives.
Update: Jan 2
nd
2009
Seagate have released a firmware fix - SD1A for the ailing 7200.11 series
of drives. Only one problem, it has made the issue worse on the 500 GB version
of the drive. The firmware fix was designed as a
preventive measure for drives that were potentially affected by the original
problem, however we have had customers contact us
saying that the firmware fix has 'bricked' their drives rendering them useless.
We are able to repair drives with this problem
and we recommend that owners of the 500 gb versions of the affected drives do
not update their firmware to the SD1A version.
Seagate have been made aware of the problem, however as of today's date the
firmware update is still on their website.
View the forum
here
.
Update: Jan 17
th
2009
Seagate finally remove the firmware update as their forums are bursting with
complaints. Many unsuspecting
Seagate owners have updated their firmware on working drive to find they no
longer work after the update.
Rumours are spreading that Seagate are going to offer free data recovery for
customers that have updated to firmware rev SD1A and bricked their drives.
Update: May 20 th 2009 It appears that Seagate have changed the methodology behind getting their newer drives into 'factory' mode. This is the mode that allows us to repair the drives that have been affected by the firmware problems. MjM Data Recovery have already found a way to circumvent the technique used and are able to get the drives into 'factory' mode and repair newer drives suffering with similar FW based problems.
Seagate 7200.11 : Symptoms of failure.
- The drive fails to initialize correctly and does not show up in the operating system or BIOS
- The drive shows up correctly in the operating system but reports as 0MB size.
We traced the problem to the Firmware zone of the hard disk and developed new code in order to repair the drives for long enough so that the data can be recovered. Normally > 99 percent of data is recovered from drives suffering with these problems
It should be noted that according to the Seagate website report, it is only a small percentage of Seagate hard disks that suffer from this specific problem.