Firmware glitch freezes Seagate hard disks

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 19 Jan 2009 at 15:41

Seagate has revealed a firmware error on certain models of its hard disks is barring users from their data.

Reports of high failure rates on Seagate drives have been circulating for days online. Now the company admits that faulty firmware is to blame for the reports.

The fault is occurring on the company's Barracuda 7200.11 and "related drive families" manufactured in December 2008.

"In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on," Seagate claims in a statement.

The company has issued a firmware upgrade and insists that "there is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive".

Yet, the company also states that "if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services".

The firm is urging affected customers to visit its support website.