2 TB Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS Firmware Issues


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YIKES...just saw this and realized I have 5 of these drives with CC32 and 1 drive with CC34.  I've had the drives about a year now with no issues (literally knocking on wood with one hand as I type this with the other!).  I checked Seagate's website but couldn't find a lot on the CC35 update.  All of my drives are in hot swappable bays so should I just connect them to my Win Vista x64 machine and update them one at a time with the Seagate utility?  I don't have anything but UnRAID running on my server currently.

 

EDIT:  Ok, found some interesting info here.  After doing a forced FW upgrade, does anybody recommend what is suggested here?  I only hear clicking on startup, spin down and shutdown.

 

http://stx.lithium.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-and/Clicking-on-ST32000542AS/m-p/69518#M21550

 

Is the error recovery timeout and power saving profile change really applicable in UnRAID as compared to RAID5.  My gut tells me that the latter would override one of the advantages of unstriped data in UnRAID but I'm by no means an expert!

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YIKES...just saw this and realized I have 5 of these drives with CC32 and 1 drive with CC34.  I've had the drives about a year now with no issues (literally knocking on wood with one hand as I type this with the other!).  I checked Seagate's website but couldn't find a lot on the CC35 update.  All of my drives are in hot swappable bays so should I just connect them to my Win Vista x64 machine and update them one at a time with the Seagate utility?  I don't have anything but UnRAID running on my server currently.

 

EDIT:  Ok, found some interesting info here.  After doing a forced FW upgrade, does anybody recommend what is suggested here?  I only hear clicking on startup, spin down and shutdown.

 

http://stx.lithium.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-and/Clicking-on-ST32000542AS/m-p/69518#M21550

 

Is the error recovery timeout and power saving profile change really applicable in UnRAID as compared to RAID5.  My gut tells me that the latter would override one of the advantages of unstriped data in UnRAID but I'm by no means an expert!

 

There are some others on the forum that claim to have drives with those two older firmware versions but still working fine.  I personally force updated my drives when I recieved them.  If you haven't had issues then it's up to you.  I would but I'd do them one at a time and observe for a few days before doing the next one - but that's just me and I'm cautious.  I have 5 new drives.  They do make an audible click when spinning down or up.  I heard a couple of other clicks the first couple days but now only when spinning up or down.  Seagate recommended the update and I give that a lot of weight.

 

The raid5 reference in the link you posted doesn't matter in unRAID. Raid5 is stripped across the drives so they all act as one big drive.  In unRAID the drives are not stripped.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I updated all 6 of my drives to CC35.  Only one that I had RMA'd and came back with CC34 had to be forced.  The other drives all had CC32.  I can report that clicking "seems" to have actually increased since the update.  I know there's a chance that I'm just more sensitive to it now but in the past, I don't remember hearing any clicks during file transfers.  It was only on spinups and spin downs.  I've been keeping a close eye on them though and will report back any issues.

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I just ran preclear twice on two of these seagate drives.  I checked the syslog and didnt see any reallocate event.  Should I upgrade the firmware from cc34 to cc35?  I read it's suppose to fix clicking noise.  What does this firmware fix other than clicking?  Is clicking bad?

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  • 3 weeks later...

My experience (a little long but I hope it'll help someone perform the upgrade)

 

I have a couple of these drives in my unRAID array.  The 'devices' tab on my unRAID admin screen showed me that in my system, my Seagates drives were sda and sdb.  I telnet'd into the server, ran the hdparm command that Joe L mentioned, and discovered that both of my drives had the CC34 firmware.  Time to upgrade them.

 

My other machine is a Macbook Pro and I initially tried to create a bootable Flash drive using the instructions here but I was unable to.  The image was written to the Flash drive but I was unable to boot from it when plugged into my unRAID server.  I tried for about an hour but then gave up and ordered the CD drive mentioned here for ~$12.

 

After receiving the CD drive in a couple days (Amazon Prime is pretty cool), I burned the iso image to a blank CD, and then inserted this into the CD drive which I then connected to my unRAID box.  After restarting the unRAID server, it booted from the CD (I went into the BIOS to check this but in my case it had defaulted to booting from the CD Drive first).  The Readme file was displayed; I then hit Esc.  Then I was presented with the Flash menu.  I tried hitting 'D' but it didn't work for me and the script then powered the system down.  My next thought was to force the upgrade like many others here had to do.  I restarted and this time when I was presented with the Flash menu, I hit Ctrl-C to get to the DOS prompt.  I then entered the command:

FDL486A -m Hepburn -f HECC358H.LOD -i ST32000542AS -s -x -b -v -a 20

 

Unfortunately, it didn't find the 2 Seagate drives (although it found about 6 of my other drives).  I then powered down, shuffled the drives so that the Seagates were now each in one of the 6 slots that were detected by this utility.  Now, when I ran the command, it found the Seagate drives, recognized they had the CC34 firmware, and upgraded them to CC35.  I powered down, placed the drives back in the original positions and restarted.  My array came up fine.  I checked the firmware on the drives using hdparm and saw that they both said CC35.  Success!

 

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Good summary Omkar.    Let me add the following two items which may help someone:

 

1) I used Xboot to create a bootable USB stick for the SeaTools firmware update ISO from Seagate: http://reboot.pro/13555/

2) There is a link on Niall's page for additional codes if you don't have the ST32000542AS.  Mine were both 542AS, but in case yours are not: http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HE-CC35.TXT

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  • 1 month later...

I successfully updated the firmware on my drives. Thanks for the walk threw . In the process of preclearing now.

 

Does it matter if I use the -A switch on these drives.  According to Seagate's website these are advanced format drives, however, they say that you don't have to do any extra steps to use them.  I'm in the process of preclearing them (4) and I used the -A switch.  Just wondering if that will cause me any problems down the road. ???

 

/root

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I successfully updated the firmware on my drives. Thanks for the walk threw . In the process of preclearing now.

 

Does it matter if I use the -A switch on these drives.  According to Seagate's website these are advanced format drives, however, they say that you don't have to do any extra steps to use them.  I'm in the process of preclearing them (4) and I used the -A switch.  Just wondering if that will cause me any problems down the road. ???

 

/root

 

your fine

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My friend just brought this thread to my attention.

 

I have a Seagate 2TB but the 64mb version running as a data drive in my unRAID box, running CC32:

 

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     ST2000DL003-9VT166
Serial Number:    5YD20NGP
Firmware Version: CC32
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes

 

Does this affect me? I do hear some clicking noises but I only started noticing them recently after I added another drive, so I thought it was that drive before my friend linked me to this thread. Should I be updating the firmware for this drive?

 

Thanks.

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I'm using 26 of these now between my unRAID server and my WHS. So far they have been fine. I have four or five that came with the CC95 firmware and the rest came with the CC34 firmware. I updated the ones with CC34 to CC35 before putting them into service.

 

I am curious how they will work in my unRAID over time since the unRAID server spins the drives up and down, while my WHS is constantly spinning the drives 24/7.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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