Dead drive?

Well, I bought and built gear for a new computer, and all seemed well. For details, see the last few posts of this thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1346074

Anyway, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive that I had bought as a boot drive (1TB) will not work. BIOS won't even recognize it.

Other than initial installation, it had never been touched, and was working very well. It was mounted in the Cooler Master Stacker 810 behind a filtered 120mm fan and was subject to rather light use. However, it was at a point where around 50-100GB space was unused, the rest full.

I tried removing the drive and putting in an old PATA WD 250 gig drive, and was able to install Vista and run the computer ok. Attempting to install the drive in question with the WD 250 caused the computer to hang at the Gigabyte motherboard screen, or on other attempts, it goes to bios but still doesn't recognize the 1TB Seagate.

Although most of the data on it is backed up, about a month's worth is not, and it's rather important stuff. Quotes for an in-lab data recovery service have been around $400-$600 to start, or up to $3500 if it's something complicated.

Any suggestions on how to handle this issue?

There are know issues with the firmware on some 7200.11 drives ... go to the Seagate Website and check to see if you drive is effected ... if so, you can attempt to contact Seagate to see if they will "fix your bricked drive" (IOW, recover your data).

As a last resort, you might take try ... The Solution for Seagate 7200.11 HDDs (final and revised version)

The description of the problem might be what I'm facing. The procedure is a bit more technical than I think I could handle, so I'm hoping that Seagate will handle it for me, for free as mentioned on the quote included above your linked procedure. Their technical support has been closed since my first post of this thread, so maybe when I call them tomorrow (Monday, February 23, 2009) they'll agree to fix the drive and/or recover the data for free. I'll keep the thread updated as to how things turn out.

Agree ... Seagate should recover the data for you ... the link was a last resort.

There must be loads of cases of this problem, as the tech support person said that's all he's been dealing with all day.

Unfortunately, I called from work, and after waiting 30-40 minutes on hold, I was told that although it looked like the problem described, I couldn't get service unless I could give the serial number (HDD was at home), so I have to call back when I get the serial number. At least there's a good chance for data recovery. Should I ask people at this forum if I can fix the thread title so that others with the problem can more easily search for this thread? Or, has this already been covered?

There's a couple threads that discuss this lightly, generally with a lot of Seagate fanatics coming to Seagate's immediate defense.

I'm still waiting on my drive to get back. Here's how the process works:
1) You get your service number. They will e-mail you a shipping label. They say they'll pay overnight shipping to and from. That's nice, except they give NO information (like a barcode for UPS to scan) for you to actually be able to ship the drive out. All they give is their address on that label. So you'll have to pay your own shipping, or find out where the hell they hid that crucial bit of info. Good luck finding it. I had to get to work and travel the next morning, so I had no time to search around for this mystical code for UPS and I wanted to get it shipped that day (since, again, I was traveling). FYI, through UPS it would've cost me about $50 overnight, or $8 second day air. Guess which one I chose.

2) They'll get the drive and do the analysis, once they're done with that (for our simple problem it'll likely take only a day), they will CALL you, not E-MAIL, about how the analysis went. YOU MUST ANSWER THIS CALL. They have to confirm that you actually want your hard drive to be fixed, because, you know, some people send their hard drives in to not be fixed. If you are not able to answer their call, they will wait an entire day to call you again, no e-mail. They WILL NOT touch your drive until you are there to talk to their rep when they call. They will only try to contact you once a day. I e-mailed them back (as calling would've required a 2348349038434 minute wait again). They did not ever reply to it, they simply waited the next day to call.

3) After your drive is repaired (this will take minutes), they'll pack it up and send it out via overnight air UPS again. The process of packing and shipping however will take longer than the actual recovery. It took a day for them to pack mine. It was done at 1:59 the following afternoon (they give you a temp account to track your drive's progress). Over the course of the next three hours they could not walk it down to the mail room and ship it out. They then closed the offices down for the day and my package sat there, to be sent the following afternoon (ironically, the time UPS picked up the package was late afternoon, well past 2pm).

4) UPS flies it back to you, supposedly next day air. Mine was supposed to be here today, but I got a CALL (again, a call, not an e-mail, which was a fucking pain in the ass to take down an 18 alphanumeric tracking code over the phone during busy working hours) from UPS stating my package is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, meaning i365/Seagate lied and my package was NOT shipped on Friday, but Monday. Also, make sure you're there to receive the item, as the phone call said the package will require a signature unless you fill out that release slip that no one ever does, like Fedex. This time frame is also completely contrary to what the i365 rep said to me. I specifically asked when I could expect the drive back. She said most likely Friday, at the latest Monday, which was considerably later than the 3-5 day turnaround that the first rep told me.

All in all, my case has taken about two weeks (assuming I get it tomorrow). Had Seagate/i365 just been up front and told me it would take considerably longer than 3-5 business days, I would've just bought another drive and used my backup data.

And before any of you are all "BLAH BLAH BLAH FREE HD RECOVER," yeah, whatever. I buy a drive and expect it to work, and if it doesn't, I expect to have my drive back when the company says it'll have it back to me. Like I said previously, had Seagate told me that it would not get the drive back to me for a while, I would've just bought a new drive and used my backup data and continued working, however due to them beating around the bush and pussyfooting me, I've lost a lot of time, money, and patience.

Anyway, have fun. Hopefully you'll have more luck than I did. Their handling of the situation sounds good, very good. Far better and faster than say... MS and the RROD fiasco (although the fix is much, much simpler and less costly), however in my case, the reality of how it worked out is terrible.

Well I finally got my hard drive back. It was packed very well, better than any of the popular online retailers that those of us here tend to buy from.

What can I say about it? It works, all my data is there, and it took far longer to get back than was estimated. It took 12 days total (or nine business days). President's Day actually counted as a business day as both their offices were open and UPS was delivering at that time.

Anyway, just follow my tips above and hopefully you'll get yours back significantly sooner.

Thank you for the advice. Just hearing from someone with the problem and finding out the data was recovered is an enormous relief (Like I said, I had backup for most but not all of the data). The bullshit will be a pain, but I'm willing to deal with it, and I'll take your advice to reduce it as much as possible.

I too could not get the free UPS shipping - the web site went to an error message when it linked to directions on how to print the UPS label, and clicking the back button only went to an "expired" page. My shipping was $10.60 at UPS for 3-day service sent Monday evening - they said it would be received Thursday, at which point your listed delays will begin.

I'll be able to stall and work-around enough to be without the drive for around 2 weeks, but after that things could get really bad. Hopefully they won't give me much more foot-dragging than they gave you.

The calls and shipment will be a royal pain in the ass - both my wife and I work (teacher and counselor) at a school where we can't answer phone calls right away. Perhaps I should find a way to contact them ahead of time to tell them to return it to my place of work instead of home.

My wait time with them on hold when initially calling them was around 35-40 minutes. Far too long in my opinion, so I agree with you on that, although it was still worth it to get this data back.

This is what I get for only backing shit up once a month (and not backing some other stuff since September...). I'm learning a big lesson.

So, just to make this already long post longer, I need more drives, two 1.5 TB or three 1TB drives. Should I just stay away from the 7200.11's, Seagate altogether, or do you have decent trust in the firmware update enough to keep buying the 7200.11 drives?

I can't say with any sort of real credibility, but I'm inclined to say yes, the new firmware seems solid. I only have experience with two 7200.11 firmware SD11 drives, one of them is mine and the other is my girlfriend's whose I updated to SD1A. Reports on failures on hard drives with the new firmware is non-existent though, but again, it's still early to be calling it a day. I probably wouldn't mind buying Seagate again right now if it weren't for one outstanding issue: one of the confirmed affected drives, drives with the SD35 firmware, does not have an update yet, as far as I know. THe SD3B firmware is still cooking in QA I believe, but they're saying it'll be pretty soon (it's been there a while now).

So if it were me buying more drives, I would probably just not risk getting an SD35 drive and go with some other brand, unless you have a specific need for a drive that actually benefits from AHCI+NCQ instead of taking a substantial overhead hit on a consumer level (rumor is these days it's more so AHCI in general rather than NCQ specifically). I'm not sure Seagates have the monopoly on consumer drives in that department these days anyway, but I haven't kept up as I haven't had to buy another drive (yet).

If timeframe allows and you don't need to buy hard drives until the SD3B is released, then it's up in the air again. It is, in my memory, the first time Seagate has messed up on a wide scale so I can't just shoot them down so quickly over it.

They found me on the phone this morning. I was lucky to be home when the phone rang. They had updated the firmware and found the data to be intact. They stated that the drive would arrive Monday morning (March 2). If that holds true the whole ordeal, shipping included, would be 7 days (5 business days). I'm guessing it won't be that fast, but it's nice to know that someone claims to have made the drive readable and data recovered.

They said they'll keep an entire copy of my data for two weeks just in case something happens in shipping or the drive fails again, which is reassuring. I'll be sure to post again if and when the drive arrives in good shape with data intact.

The drive was returned this morning. I have checked it out, and it seems ok and back to normal. As stated before, 7 days, or 5 business days. For the most part I am happy with their service.

Thanks for all the help in getting me through this.

Through SeaTools I found my returned 1TB drive and my new pair of 1.5TB drives to be running with SD1A firmware. Does this mean I now have the more stable firmware? Should I take any action at this point, or should is this what I want.

The guy at i365 told me that he had installed the updated firmware, so perhaps I'm good to go, but it would be nice to hear it from someone here.

Just an update for those people using this for reference...

Sorry about the bad grammar in the last post, but anyway, the drive has been used every day for several hours each day since being returned to me over the past 3 months, and it is 100% trouble free. The two newer 1.5TB drives (with the SD1A firmware) in the same machine are also still in perfect shape.