Time for an update on this running saga.
I still haven’t had a personal reply from Seagate from my support request one week ago (see part 3). However they have released a number of firmware upgrades (see part 4).
- First I downloaded the image files from the Seagate site.
- Then armed with the advice from Steve Maller I used Toast to burn the image onto a CD.
- Next I restarted my Mac Pro holding down the ‘C’ key on my keyboard and it booted into DOS and offered me options. This was very wierd for a Mac person to see!
- A number of the firmware downloads relate to several different drives so make sure you select the correct one. This I did by typing the appropriate single letter, there is no need to hit the Enter key.
- After a few moments it starts to install the firmware onto the relevant drive.
- Although some folk have advised to remove all other drives, I didn’t and the software worked out which drive it needed to install the firmware onto.
- Don’t be put of by the word ‘Download’ it means ‘Install’ really.
- At the end it will report success and also complain about the other drives in your machine and finally come up with a reminder to “power cycle..” to use the new firmware, almost immediately followed by a “Press any key to continue” request.
- Some folk have reported this did nothing. In my case it shut the machine down.
- When I pressed the power button the computer booted back up in to Mac OS X again and when I checked the System Profiler my drive had been updated.
- I had to do this twice as I had both a ST3500320AS 500 gig drive as well as a ST31000333AS 1 Terabyte drive.
We will see whether this is the end of the matter or not. As a veteran Seagate user and evangelist this is a very disappointing saga but I am not ready to run away yet. I still believe they are the most reliable drives around but I am going to be a lot more circumspect about them and monitor this story carefully to see if there are any longer term problems.