SATA drive above 128/137 GB

[koala15]

I tried to connect a 320Gb seagate SATA drive to 2 different PC's, both have bios's dated 2005, in both cases the drives were not recognized by the BIOS and the POST hung, not allowing the machine to boot up.

One PC is an Abit KV_85 and the other an Asus K8S-LA.

I have read the sticky post entitled "HDD above 128/137 GB, general Information", however these 2 PC's just will not boot because the POST is hanging.

I took the drive to a friend with a very new PC and the drive works perfectly.

Would you wise folk recommend me updating the BIOS of both PC's or is that a wasted effort.

BTW: the drive needs to be bootable.

Thanks for your assistance.

[Denniss]

Should not be a problem of the HDD size. Most probably it's a problem with SATA-II HDD not properly recognized by earlier SATA controllers. Your Seagate HDD should have a jumper to limit the drive to SATA (instead of using the SATA-II protocol).

[koala15]

Thanks Denniss,

Following your reply I visited the Seagate web site, and after a short bit of detective work I came across a major firmware issue with seagate 7200.11 model drives of various capacities (including mine), see the "firmware" posts in this link:
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board?board.id=ata_drives

There seems to be many many folks VERY upset with seagate both for the firmware error itself (turns a drive into a paper weight) and the way that corporate Seagate has handled to issue - dismally!!!!

I would suggest: if you have a seagate 7200.11 drive manufactured before mid December 2008 then appraise yourself of the issue completely (before you carry out any seagate sponsored firmware upgades) as some folks are reporting that the update turns the drive into a "brick".

Which begs the question: when have you performed your last complete backup - today hopefully.

[edwin]

That looks like a major "ouch" for Seagate this time. You can bet if they take an update offline after a few days that it has been rushed because they have a major issue on their hands and are trying to save their reputation. If they then manage to put out a flawed update that causes more problems than it cures, the sh*t starts flying after hitting the fan. Let's see them get out of this mudhole without too many damage, it would be a pity to see another harddisk manufacturer go offline permanently...

[koala15]

As a consequence, today I purchased a Hitachi drive - works perfectly and much much faster. UMMMM......

[edwin]

Western Digital and Samsung here. Staying away from Hitachi drives due to their IBM inheritance, they will have to prove themselves again. Same for Fujitsu... Not touching them for a while...

[koala15]

This may be slightly off topic but -- Here in Australia we have very progressive consumer protection laws, wherein if you purchase an item (eg a disk drive) and it does not function as per its published specifications (as the seagate drive did not) then the seller is required to replace / exchange the item or refund the sale price. This law overrides any of the manufacturer's warranty provisions - however from reading some of the Seagate forum posts about this problem, the USA does not seem to have such protections. What about the EU anyone.

When I took the faulty drive back to the shop yesterday, they did not even test it - they just suggested another brand and exchanged it - no questions asked.

[edwin]

You want to hang on to that shop, sounds like decent customer service.

[koala15]

I fully agree