how to update Seagate hard drive firmware from DVD drive in G4 Powermac DA

Question

Level 2

185 points

how to update Seagate hard drive firmware from DVD drive in G4 Powermac DA

Posted earlier in wrong forum. Apologies if you see this twice.

Short version of story:

Just put Sonnet PCI SATA card in G4 Digital Audio Powermac running Tiger. Have replaced two IDE drives with Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB hard drive. It's recognized and working fine. EXCEPT: this is the now infamous drive ST31000340AS that WILL most certainly fail if it does not get the firmware update that Seagate has made available. (These drives are failing like crazy-- Google for info, do not buy!) I have the firmware update on CD as an ISO file (of course Seagate makes nothing that it Mac friendly but this has worked for other Mac users). But when I try to flash the firmware by starting from the CD ("C" key held down), nothing happens. The G4 just goes ahead and starts Tiger 10.4.11. I have also tried holding down "O + F + option + control on start up. I'm not getting anywhere.

Since the drive is functional and it's the only drive in the G4, what am I doing wrong? Help!

iMac 3.06 ghz, G4 Powermac, G4 Powerbook, G3 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 19, 2009 9:00 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jeff

Level 6

12,328 points

Jun 19, 2009 9:29 AM in response to haplogroupk

If the Seagate firmware update must be performed while booted from another drive/device, the CD containing the firmware update must be bootable. Is the Seagate firmware update a ".dmg" file, to be run under OS X? Can you copy it to a USB flash drive and boot the computer from your Tiger installer DVD?

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 19, 2009 10:57 AM in response to haplogroupk

This is dated January 21st, so I hope it's been updated...
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&message.id=5692

Also, I found this:

MOST IMPORTANT - If you have a reasonable suspicion that you may have an affected drive - do not power the unit off - make fresh backups immediately. The power-on process is what triggers the failure.

Quoted from http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=e2542559aab0b513be11ac48f7ec3a49&a ction=printpage;topic=3887.0

Sorry about the long second link. The usual shortening method didn't work.

Reply

Answer 3

haplogroupk Author

Level 2

185 points

Jun 19, 2009 12:00 PM in response to Dave Hamilton

Thanks Jeff & Dave

I just got off the phone with Seagate who say that my two drives have serial numbers that do NOT need the firmware update. However, I'm not feeling very lucky. I took these two drives from my Maxtor One Touch III because it was failing-- "now you see me, now you don't". But as there's no firmware to install this is one problem I don't need to deal with.

People should be avoiding Seagate Barracuda drives or at least researching them very thoroughly before buying. Seagate wanted $400 to do data recovery on my Maxtor One Touch III which was under warranty--but all the warranty would get me was another refurbished One Touch III. I violated my warranty, pulled the drives and got all my data back.

Reply