On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 09:28:34PM +0000, Dieter wrote: > Recovering from Seagate's problematic 7200.11 firmware. > > Most of you have read about the problems with Seagate's > 7200.11 disks. For those of you that haven't, the firmware > on many of these drives is buggy, and can "brick" the drive > when powering up or rebooting the system. Thus far,
How can I know if I have a suspicious drive? E.g# smartctl -i -d ata /dev/rwd1c smartctl version 5.33 [i386-unknown-openbsd4.1] Copyright (C) 2002-4 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: ST3808110AS Serial Number: 5LRA2E2J Firmware Version: 3.AJJ User Capacity: 80,026,361,856 bytes Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall] ATA Version is: 7 ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated Local Time is: Mon Jan 26 15:31:45 2009 CET SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled Google for ST3808110AS gives me "Barracuda 7200.9 SATA 80-GB Hard Drive", so I guess this one is not suspicious, but I have more disks, in other servers. What if i find a 7200.10, 7200.11, ES or ES.2, is that enough for me to suspect it? > Seagate's response has been less than wonderful. We need > a FLOSS solution. > > Goals: > > 1) Ability to read the number of log entries. > > 2) Ability to change the number of log entries. > > 3) Ability to install new firmware from Unix. > > We need for this to work with any flavor of Unix, > on any CPU arch, without reboot or power cycle. > We need for this to work on one drive without affecting > other drives. > > I don't expect to be able to write FLOSS firmware for the drives, so > this isn't listed as a goal. If you think you can, please feel free. > > The problem: > > "IF the drive is powered down when there are 320 entries in this journal > or log, then when it is powered back up, the drive errors out on init and > won't boot properly - to the point that it won't even report it's > information to the BIOS." > > Maxtorman, slashdot discussion [2] > > If Maxtorman is correct, then once the drive has been operating awhile, > we have a 1 in 320 chance that the circular log is at entry 320. We want > to be able to find out how many log entries the disk currently has, and > we want to be able to change the number of log entries away from 320, > while we wait for Seagate to get its act together and release firmware > that works properly. Since Seagate's solution will require attaching > the drive to an x86 system and booting a FreeDOS ISO from CD, if the log > is at 320 that boot will brick the drive. > > There are other firmware problems with the 7200.11 series, but this is > the biggie. > > Once Seagate releases working firmware, we want to be able to install > it from Unix, on any CPU arch. Seagate's release can only install > on x86 using FreeDOS. > > *ATA Commands that may be useful: > > command name command code in hex page [1] pdf page [1] > Read Log Ext 0x2F 27 33 > S.M.A.R.T. Read Log Sector 0xB0 / 0xD5 28,34 34,40 > S.M.A.R.T. Write Log Sector 0xB0 / 0xD6 28,34 34.40 > Write Log Extended 0x3F 28 34 > Download Microcode 0x92 27 33 > > Questions: > > Is Maxtorman correct about the 320 log entries? > > Are the commands listed above the ones we need? > What is the difference between the "Log Extended" > and the S.M.A.R.T. Log Sector? > Is "Microcode" the same as "firmware"? (Seagate uses > the term firmware elsewhere in the manual, but I don't > find any sort of "write firmware" command.) > > Where can we get more detailed info about these > commands and how to use them? > > References: > > [1] Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Serial ATA Product Manual rev C August 2008 > http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.11/100507013c.pdf > > [2] http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/21/0052236 -- / Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB
