March 25, 200917 yr I have a number of drives in my UnRaid that match the affected models and MAY need a firmware upgrade. However, before taking any action I wanted to ask a few questions: 1) Is there a way to determine the firmware version on the drives in my UnRaid server without stopping it? I saw a post by Erikatcuse that said: To check the firmware telnet in and run & hdparm -I /dev/sdX | grep Firmware where X is the drive Unfortunately I've never used Telnet before and would really appreciate some "handholding" here. Is anyone willing to help? 2) Once the drives have been successfully updated to the new firmware version, are they reliable? 3) In your opinion, is it "safe" to continue buying Seagate drives (obviously after ensuring they're running an approved firmware version) or is it better to investigate the Western Digital drives - I'm just interested in opinions here. I'm grateful for whatever guidance you can provide. Cheers Ross
March 25, 200917 yr I have a number of drives in my UnRaid that match the affected models and MAY need a firmware upgrade. However, before taking any action I wanted to ask a few questions: 1) Is there a way to determine the firmware version on the drives in my UnRaid server without stopping it? Yes, if you look at the main unRAID status page you will see the drives all have very long names, the last part of these is the serial number of each drive. Just go to this Seagate page: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931 and follow the link there to the "serial number check utility", this allows you to enter some drive serial numbers and they will check to see what firmware the drives were shipped with. 2) Once the drives have been successfully updated to the new firmware version, are they reliable? I've done this on 4 drives and all have been running fine since. 3) In your opinion, is it "safe" to continue buying Seagate drives (obviously after ensuring they're running an approved firmware version) or is it better to investigate the Western Digital drives - I'm just interested in opinions here. Probably safe, though the last drive I bought was a Western Digital and I bought that because I needed to replace one of the Seagates that got bricked by the firmware bug before I could flash it (I have unbricked it since and have reflashed it and it appears to be running fine). Regards, Stephen
March 25, 200917 yr I have a number of drives in my UnRaid that match the affected models and MAY need a firmware upgrade. However, before taking any action I wanted to ask a few questions: 1) Is there a way to determine the firmware version on the drives in my UnRaid server without stopping it? I saw a post by Erikatcuse that said: To check the firmware telnet in and run & hdparm -I /dev/sdX | grep Firmware where X is the drive Unfortunately I've never used Telnet before and would really appreciate some "handholding" here. Is anyone willing to help? 2) Once the drives have been successfully updated to the new firmware version, are they reliable? 3) In your opinion, is it "safe" to continue buying Seagate drives (obviously after ensuring they're running an approved firmware version) or is it better to investigate the Western Digital drives - I'm just interested in opinions here. I'm grateful for whatever guidance you can provide. Cheers Ross Unless the drives are acting up and causing problems I would not touch them. To even upgrade the firmware you will have to pull the drive out of the server and add it to a windows box OR have a CD-ROM drive installed in the server and boot from it to install the firmware.
March 25, 200917 yr Author Unless the drives are acting up and causing problems I would not touch them. To even upgrade the firmware you will have to pull the drive out of the server and add it to a windows box OR have a CD-ROM drive installed in the server and boot from it to install the firmware. Although this is true, if I want to upgrade ANY of the drives at ANY point in the future, I'm going to have to stop the array - thereby creating a situation that could cause a drive to brick anyway. At least dealing with it now allows me the opportunity to be at least SLIGHTLY prepared for it. Stephen - so it's possible to "unbrick" a drive once it's "bricked"? Well, that's SOMETHING positive I guess. Yes, I have been to the Seagate site and, with the little checking I did, I have at least 3 drives where the model number and serial numbers match the faulty batch - I was only checking the 1Tb drives - I've got a number of 500Mb drives and 1 750Mb drive to check as well. This situation must've put a serious dent in Seagate's credibility.
March 26, 200917 yr Author Oops! A couple more questions... 1) Is it possible to stop the array, remove a drive with a known firmware issue, upgrade the firmware and slip the drive back into the server without causing any problems for UnRaid? 2) If so, would that be the best approach to take to remedy the problem? I.e. first, identify all problem drives, download the firmware for each of the different drives so that's ready to go. Stop the array, and upgrade the firmware for all of the problem drives, one by one, slot them back into the server and then fire it up. Is that the best way to go? Again, I'm grateful for any advice/opinions!
March 26, 200917 yr Oops! A couple more questions... 1) Is it possible to stop the array, remove a drive with a known firmware issue, upgrade the firmware and slip the drive back into the server without causing any problems for UnRaid? 2) If so, would that be the best approach to take to remedy the problem? I.e. first, identify all problem drives, download the firmware for each of the different drives so that's ready to go. Stop the array, and upgrade the firmware for all of the problem drives, one by one, slot them back into the server and then fire it up. Is that the best way to go? Again, I'm grateful for any advice/opinions! I stopped my array and powered down the unRAID server, took my 1T drive out, put it in my HTPC. Updated the firmware via CD, put the drive back in the unRAID server, powered it back up and was good to go. No parity checks.... nothing.
March 27, 200917 yr Oops! A couple more questions... 1) Is it possible to stop the array, remove a drive with a known firmware issue, upgrade the firmware and slip the drive back into the server without causing any problems for UnRaid? 2) If so, would that be the best approach to take to remedy the problem? I.e. first, identify all problem drives, download the firmware for each of the different drives so that's ready to go. Stop the array, and upgrade the firmware for all of the problem drives, one by one, slot them back into the server and then fire it up. Is that the best way to go? Again, I'm grateful for any advice/opinions! I stopped my array and powered down the unRAID server, took my 1T drive out, put it in my HTPC. Updated the firmware via CD, put the drive back in the unRAID server, powered it back up and was good to go. No parity checks.... nothing. I did the same thing, except after shutting down my unraid box I disconnected all the drives I did not want to risk flashing and then connected a CDROM drive to the motherboard IDE, removed the unraid USB flash drive and then booted the seagate firmware from the CDROM. I did a parity check before doing this. After flashing the one drive I removed the CDROM, reattached all the other drives, plugged the USB flash drive back in and booted the machine back into unRAID duty without any problems. I repeated this about a month later after unbricking my second seagate drive.
March 27, 200917 yr Stephen - so it's possible to "unbrick" a drive once it's "bricked"? Well, that's SOMETHING positive I guess. This situation must've put a serious dent in Seagate's credibility. Yes, its possible to unbrick, you need a signal level adapter (that costs about $10-20 to make or buy) and then some guts to follow the rather cryptic procedures. I reported my experience on another thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3142.0 And it certainly was a black eye for Seagate.
March 31, 200917 yr Author Thanks for the info vca. Hopefully I won't need to do this, but it's nice to know someone has successfully done it before me! I'm probably going to get started on this this weekend. Cheers Ross
April 15, 200917 yr Author Just wanted to post back to say it all went well. I had to stop the array and upgrade the firmware of each of my 3 affected drives, but it all went well. The only hitch I found was that the firmware upgrade program didn't like it when the drive to be updated was attached via USB, so I had to open the side of my office PC, connect power and a SATA cable - and do it that way. Thanks to everyone's help!
October 2, 201015 yr Just wanted to report the both of my 2T seagate drives, one is a few months old and one is new, had CC34 firmware. I upgraded them both to CC35 (forcing one). They now run silently.
October 3, 201015 yr Forgive my ignorance, but as I have 11 of these drives - ST32000542AS - I'm wondering why the firmware upgrade is needed? What's been the issue with these? And does the issue relate to recent drives or older ones? (9 of mine are 12 months old, the other 2 are new. Cheers Matt
October 3, 201015 yr And does the issue relate to recent drives or older ones? (9 of mine are 12 months old, the other 2 are new. you can checkout Seagate web site with serial number to find out if you need to apply new firmware. http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931&NewLang=en http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=213915
October 5, 201015 yr Thanks, but what does the firmware actually do? Avoid the drives to brick prematurely,
October 5, 201015 yr That serious? Yes, some people describes the problem as "click noise of death", I love this kind of humor an imagination. The drivers with c34 and previous firmwares start to make noises with its heads, like clicks, and this behavior led to a prematurely fail. http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=213915&NewLang=en
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