I've just gotten my locked drive fixed by Seagate - FOC.
You know.. I’ve never really bothered what firmware my hard disk was running. Well, that is, up till a few weeks ago when my drive suddenly went dead. One day, it was working all fine and dandy and the next, I couldn’t get it to boot-up and the hard disk was not detected by my BIOS.
I performed some basic troubleshooting steps: checked SATA cables, tried to access via an external HDD enclosure,
This was not good! Not good at all!!
There was a lot of data on that 500GB drive. Needless to say, I went BERSERK upon realising that ALL my MP3’s, movies and some photos were gone.
I scoured the net for clues… anything that could explain what had happened and came across the “SD15 firmware bug” which affected Seagate’s ST3500320AS barracuda drives. There were also 750GB and 1TB drives which were shipped with the SD15 firmware – they were time bombs waiting to go off as well.
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807
Long explanation made short - This bug causes hard drives to lock up and unable to be detected by the computer (which was what happened in my case) or report the drive capacity as 0GB. A home-remedy is available, but it would require loads of guts and electronic know-how to pull it off successfully.
I decided to do a bit more research and found that Seagate was offering to fix the faulty drives for FREE. However, all documented accounts of this FREE fix was in the USA. I truly doubted that a company like Seagate would care about consumers here in Malaysia.
A friend urged me to try contacting them for the FREE recovery anyway. I’m now glad that I did. I was pleasantly surprised to get a response from their tech support and eventually a fixed drive! For others who may be in the same boat, here’s a rundown of my experience:
Step 1
Log your case on the Seagate support website.
a) Go to: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us
b) Click on "Technical Support > Email"
c) Assuming you don't already have a user account with Seagate, you will be asked to create one.
d) Give a detailed description of your problem in the email (drive is not detected in BIOS, drive reports 0GB capacity, etc.) and mention your firmware and model number. I used the title "Free data recovery for SD15 firmware issue in Malaysia?" as the subject heading for my message.
Step 2
In a day or two, you should receive a reply from Seagate's tech support. They will ask you some questions to determine if it's an issue with the SD15 firmware. Reply this email and allow another day for them to process it.
Step 3
The next email that you'll get will be to arrange for the FREE pickup and data recovery of your drive. You'll need to print, sign and scan a release form and email it back to them for them to arrange for the pickup service of your hard disk.
Step 4
The next day, you will get an auto-generated email from a UPS.com address which will contain 3 copies of “customs Invoice” documents and a “label” to be afixed onto your package.
This reply from seagate will also contain instructions on how to package your HDD for delivery to Seagate for repairs - put HDD into an anti-static bag, wrap with some packaging foam and find a box which will fit it snugly. You do not want the HDD to be rattling about in the box during transport. What i did was buy the packing foam from a local Popular Bookstore, reused the anti-static bag that came with my HDD, wrapped it in several layers of foam and packed it into an empty DVD-ROM drive box. The DVD-ROM box has some Styrofoam holders which was able to keep the HDD from rattling in the box.
Step 5
The email will point you to a list of UPS offices across Malaysia. Call the branch closest to you to arrange for a pickup.
Now, this is the part that got frustrating. UPS kept insisting on an "Account Number" to bill the charges to. I basically read out every.single.field on the UPS documents I had, but NONE were what they were looking for. My pickup request kept getting escalated to the next level.
I lost count of the number of times I had to explain my situation to them. They suggested that I email Seagate to get this elusive “Account Number”. I did so… but of course, this NOT being support-related, Seagate did not respond.
I kept calling UPS back to ask if they could help me out. Finally, my case reached the manager . After re-explaining my situation to her, she finally agreed to go ahead with the pickup and delivery. To paraphrase her words, “Seagate’s a big company, I don’t think they’d default on payment” ;) So, on a rainy Friday evening, a brown UPS van came by and picked up my package. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d see the contents on that HDD again.
Step 6
According to Seagate, the repair process would take between 10-20 days. You can imagine my surprise then when I got my HDD back the following Thursday! Only a week! WOW! I popped the drive back into my CPU, powered it on and took a deeeeeep breath.
-the drive was detected during the BIOS initialization!-
*beep*
-Windows startup screen appeared-
-Windows loaded!-
My HDD was REVIVED and everything on it was in tact! The first thing I did was to copy EVERYTHING off that drive. At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll be using it at all, perhaps I’ll only run the OS on it. Reinstalling windows isn’t that big a deal, but loosing precious data is!
After this fiasco, would you blame me if I went around and chanted: "Say NO to Seagate!!"?
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