Urgent Field Update
Topic: Drive Hang after Power Cycle Date: 1/16/09
Products: Barracuda 7200.11, Barracuda ES.2 (SATA), DiamondMax 22, FreeAgent Desk, Maxtor
OneTouch 4, SV35.3, SV35.4
For Immediate Release
Contact your Seagate representative for additional information.
Description
An issue exists that may cause some Seagate hard drives to become inoperable immediately after a
power-on operation. Once this condition has occurred, the drive cannot be restored to normal operation
without intervention from Seagate. Data on the drive will be unaffected and can be accessed once
normal drive operation has been restored. This is caused by a firmware issue associated with a specific
aspect of Seagate’s manufacturing test process.
Root Cause
This condition is caused by a firmware bug that allows the drive’s “event log” pointer to be set to an invalid
location. This condition is detected by the drive during power up, and the drive goes in to failsafe mode to
prevent inadvertent corruption to or loss of user data. As a result, once the failure has occurred user data
becomes inaccessible.
During power up, if the Event Log counter is at entry 320, or a multiple of (320 + x*256), and if a particular
data fill pattern (dependent on the type of tester used during the drive manufacturing test process) had
been present in the reserved-area system tracks when the drive’s reserved-area file system was created
during manufacturing (note this is not the Operating System’s file system, but is instead an area reserved
outside the drive’s logical block address space that is used for drive operating data structures and
storage), firmware will incorrectly allow the Event Log pointer to increment past the end of the Event Log
data structure. This error is detected and results in an “Assert Failure”, which causes the drive to hang as
a failsafe measure. When the drive enters failsafe further updates to the counter become impossible and
the condition will persist through all subsequent power cycles.
The problem can only occur if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or some
multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, an end user will not be able to resolve/recover
existing failed drives. Recovery of failed drive requires Seagate technical intervention. However, the
problem can be prevented by updating drive firmware to a newer version if available and/or by keeping
the drive powered on until a newer firmware version is available.
Note that in order for a drive to be susceptible to this issue, it must have both the firmware revision that
contains the issue, have been tested through the specific manufacturing process, and be power cycled.
Corrective Action
Seagate has implemented a containment action in to ensure that all manufacturing test processes write a
“benign” data fill pattern that does not trigger the error condition. This change is already a permanent part
of the test process. All drives with a date of manufacture January 12, 2009 and later are not affected by
this issue as they have been manufactured with this corrected test process. In addition, Seagate is
releasing updated firmware that will make a drive immune to this failure regardless of the date of
manufacture.
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