Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB

bdl99 wrote:

So I've solved one of my own problems that I hope will be useful information for others. It appears when I updated the firmware on the drives the maximum drive size was somehow set to 500Gb (searching the web it appears that I'm not the only one). I discovered this when I decided to place on of the four drive in a PC to create a backup in case the recommendation from the Jedis was to start a fresh. I downloaded http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/ and was able to set the drive max back to 1.5Tb and at least on the PC everything is fine. So I think I will need to do the same with the other drives before putting them in the ReadyNAS.

Update: I removed the first 1.5Tb disk that had initialized and sync'd but was only reported as 465Gb and used the SeaTools utility mentioned above to set to 1.5Tb max. When I returned the drive to the Readynas it proceeded to reinitialize and resync but it then correctly reported it as 1397Gb. I then replaced the second drive with one that I had already updated the firmware on and set the drive size to 1.5Tb (using SeaTools) and every thing went as expected. I am now on the 3rd disk and 50% of the way through the initialization.

iProb8 wrote:

I bought four of these 1.5TB drives when I bought my ReadyNAS NV+ about ten days ago. Purchased them from NewEgg. All of them came with firmware CCJ1. One of my four 1.5TB drives keeps generating error messages about sectors being reallocated. It has gone from 1 to 2 to 19 to 27 to 32 bad sectors in less than one week. Also, one of my other 1.5TB drives initially went from 0 to 2 during the first day or two of use but has held stable since. Today, I called NewEgg and said I thought I had two defective drives. Without any hesitation, the customer service rep offered to send me two new ones. The only hitch is that I first must return the two I have; NewEgg will ship the replacements to me only after it has received the original (defective) drives. Luckily, I had the foresight to order three of the drives from Amazon on 12/31. I was going to use two in a DLink NAS and keep the third as a spare. I'll now wait until I receive those drives (should be sometime next week) and then use them to replace the two drives in the ReadyNAS. I'm curious to see what firmware is on the drives I receive from Amazon.

Well, I received my three 1.5TB drives from Amazon today. They were delivered to my home, and I'm still at the office so I have no idea what firmware is on them. Hopefully, they'll have the right firmware so I can pop out one of the bad drives and pop in one of the new ones when I get home. Otherwise, I'll have to bring the new drives to my office tomorrow so I can update the firmware (I've only got Macs at home and, thus, no ability to upgrade the firmware unless I bring them to my office, which uses PCs).

I just got home and opened the boxes from Amazon. All three drives have the CC1G firmware. Looks like I'll be contacting Seagate and asking for the firmware update. :-( I should have ordered them from NewEgg, which is where I got my original four drives, all CC1J.

got my second NewEgg drive in today, it is CC1J as well. My first Egg drive though was CC1G. We will see what tomorrows is. Hopefully I can get the CC1J firmware from Seagate to have all drives at the same rev

How are you contacting Seagate--telephone, e-mail, chat?

I just spoke with Seagate support regarding the firmware update.

First I should test if this problem occur on my 2 drives. If so I should flash the new Firmware SD1A.

How do I handle the process correctly?

1) Insert drive 1 and let the readynas make the raid expansion
2) when completed insert the 2nd Drive and also let expand it.
3) Testing if Firmware is needed--->If so Flash new Firmware via PC.
4)Re-Insert Drive into Readynas?

Now my question is? Is the data still intact or will I have to do something special?

Reformat after FW upgrade and start expansion once again?

Any advice?

I decided to call Seagate to request the firmware upgrade. I called around 8:00 a.m. Mountaint Standard Time. I was on hold for just shy of 20 minutes. The gentleman with whom I spoke was quite courteous and acknowledged that problem with some of the 1.5TB drives. He said it was due to the drives radomly going into diagnostics/testing mode. He said the firmware upgrade resolves the issue. I gave him the part number, serial numbers, and current firmware info for all three of the drives I bought from Amazon. Less than 1/2 hour after I got off the phone with him, I had received the link and certificate number for the firmware upgrade. My original firmware was CC1G. The upgrade is for CC1H. I was hoping to receive firmware for CC1J, which is the firmware on the drives I ordered from NewEgg. Oh well. I'll try upgrading the firmware from CC1G to CC1H later today.

Oh, incidentally, I was talking to the Seagate rep about the warranty issue. He told me that if a drive is sold as OEM, then the retailer/seller provides the warranty, not Seagate. Thus, he warned me, if buying an OEM drive, pay careful attention to the warranty information. He told me the drives I had bought from Amazon were being warrantied by Seagate (thus, 5 year warranty); however, because I did not have the s/n for the drives I bought from New Egg, he could not provide me with the warranty info on those drives.

iProb8 wrote:
How are you contacting Seagate--telephone, e-mail, chat?

Call them - their email/chat support seems to go somewhere else and I've gotten bad info from them.

iProb8 wrote:

I decided to call Seagate to request the firmware upgrade. I called around 8:00 a.m. Mountaint Standard Time. I was on hold for just shy of 20 minutes. The gentleman with whom I spoke was quite courteous and acknowledged that problem with some of the 1.5TB drives. He said it was due to the drives radomly going into diagnostics/testing mode. He said the firmware upgrade resolves the issue. I gave him the part number, serial numbers, and current firmware info for all three of the drives I bought from Amazon. Less than 1/2 hour after I got off the phone with him, I had received the link and certificate number for the firmware upgrade. My original firmware was CC1G. The upgrade is for CC1H. I was hoping to receive firmware for CC1J, which is the firmware on the drives I ordered from NewEgg. Oh well. I'll try upgrading the firmware from CC1G to CC1H later today. Oh, incidentally, I was talking to the Seagate rep about the warranty issue. He told me that if a drive is sold as OEM, then the retailer/seller provides the warranty, not Seagate. Thus, he warned me, if buying an OEM drive, pay careful attention to the warranty information. He told me the drives I had bought from Amazon were being warrantied by Seagate (thus, 5 year warranty); however, because I did not have the s/n for the drives I bought from New Egg, he could not provide me with the warranty info on those drives.

I've bought OEM bare seagate drives for years and have RMAd quite a few. Never had any problems. If I haven't had the original receipt, they go based on the manufactured date (you can translate the date code on the drive to get this - I posted earlier in this thread how). If you do have the original receipt (I used one from Amazon last time, one from Newegg before that), they then go based on the purchase date, I believe. You can also lookup warranty status online.

I'm sure this will be changing, though (since their warranties just changed). I suspect that if you can product a receipt from 2008 and before, you'll get a 5yr warranty...but looking up one of my Nov 26th, 2008 manufactured drives, it shows with a warranty expiration of 26-Mar-2012. So looks like they'll default to 3 years + 4 months for the default warranty unless you can product a receipt from 2008 or older to get an additional 2 years? That's what I'm guessing, at least.

bonez wrote:
but looking up one of my Nov 26th, 2008 manufactured drives, it shows with a warranty expiration of 26-Mar-2012. So looks like they'll default to 3 years + 4 months for the default warranty unless you can product a receipt from 2008 or older to get an additional 2 years? That's what I'm guessing, at least.

I hope that is not the case. That would be really annoying.

I just looked up my 5 1.5 TB drives and they all show a Warranty End Date of Nov 28, 2013. So, they still show 5 years on the site for me...