[mythtv-users] Dec 2008 - State of the Art - Hard DriveRecommendations?

[Boleslaw Ciesielski]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 12/17/2008 10:26 AM, Brian Phillips wrote:
>> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>   
>>> Seagate has a new firmware that fixes the affected drives (
>>> http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863 ).  I've applied it to the
>>> two affected drives of my three 1.5TB HDD's. 
>>>
>>> Note that you can only (legitimately) get the firmware update by
>>> calling Seagate.  You can not get it through the online chat help. 
>>> (And, though I've heard it can be found online in dark corners of the
>>> Internet, do you really want to trust the /firmware/ of a harddrive
>>> to whatever some person uploads.)    
>>>     
>> Newegg has the firmware download linked under their "product tour" of the
>> affected drives.  It's not what I'd call a dark corner myself but maybe you
>> prefer tigerdirect :P
>>   
> Hmmm.  Wasn't there when I got the firmware.  I'll bet (unless the 
> update utility checks to make sure the drive is the right model/firmware 
> version before update) that bricks quite a few drives.  I've bought 3 of 
> the drives from newegg and only 2 of them were affected models.  Oh, 
> wait, that won't happen becaues /every/ customer review (and, by 
> extrapolation, /every/ customer) at newegg is a high Tech Level, so they 
> won't do anything stupid.
> 
> Anyway, I'll leave that decision to those who spent/spend $130+ on the 
> HDD's.

I previously upgraded my 1.5TB drive (using the dark corner edition 
firmware) and now downloaded the newegg edition and the binary firmware 
file inside is exactly the same in both. However, the packaging is very 
different. The dark corner edition comes with bootable ISO and floppy 
images while the newegg edition just includes the DOS flash utility 
(actually a slightly older version of it).

Also, I am pretty sure that the flash utility does check the hardware 
version (how could it not? :-)). I did not follow the instructions (on 
purpose) and did not disconnect other drives (different Seagate models) 
and only the right drive got upgraded.

> ***I can't say for sure whether this "doesn't support" stuff happened 
> even before the firmware upgrade, but I didn't notice it until after:
> Dec  8 17:41:58 hostname sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read 
> cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

I get this on all Seagate drives, regardless of model/vintage.

Bolek