14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, leading hard disk drive maker Seagate announced a new hard drive firmware fix, designed to provide support to those users who had reported issues with their 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives. In an unfortunate turn of events, the released firmware has reportedly caused 500GB versions of said drives to stop working. The company promised its customers that a second fix was on its way, offering support for the newly-reported issues.
Seagate announced on Monday that it isolated the problem that was affecting its Barracuda hard drives, as well as other drives in the company's lineup. Coming to provide its users with support, the company issued a firmware fix, which was to deal with the reported problems. The released firmware was, however, harmful to those Barracuda 7200.11 drives that only boasted 500GB of storage space. Following reports from its customers, the company pulled down the firmware, letting users who had “bricked” their Barracuda drives wait for another firmware release.
The reported issues with Seagate's hard disk drives aren't new, as members of the company's community have been complaining about them since back in November. Despite the fact that it has taken the company almost two months to fix the problem, it looks like Seagate Barracuda owners will still be required to wait until the company comes out with a viable solution. Until then, the company has provided its customers with a free data recovery program designed for users who have lost their data, due to the firmware bug.
Seagate could have done without the reported Barracuda issues as the company is already going through a difficult period, having been required to cut jobs due to the low worldwide consumer demand. Just recently, it announced its preliminary financial results for Q2 2009, which weren't the most positive, with the company reporting a net loss of $496 million.