Seagate ST series 1TB/plate firmware update for ST1000 ST2000 ST3000

[DarfWeder]

As an avid Seagate collector I was not impressed with my latest addition to the ever growing base of hdd's. I had bought the ST2000DM001 2TB drive. 7200 rpm, 64MB cache... just the way I like them.

One thing that bothered me immensely was the occasional BEEP/crash sound it was producing, and the inability of the drive to go to sleep... Kinda makes you wonder WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?

Via the Seagate website and their support I found out there is new firmware for the drive's series. Even for Hackintosh users that don't have anything like windows on their systems, there is a solution. They provide an iso file which via DiskUtility you can burn to a CD and use that to upgrade the firmware.

The way to go about it (I didn't find this in the documentation) is to first enter the BIOS and set the drive to IDE mode from AHCI as we need it for MAC OS X. After that you can boot the CD, and to make sure you can target your drive (remove other drives if need be) you press the S in the menu to do a scan, after you agreed to their blurb.
When it shows your drive, you're good. Otherwise check if you did set IDE... In my case it found the ST2000DM001 and I then proceeded to the download which means it puts the new firmware on the hdd.
It took about 30 seconds and I had to power off the machine.

Even if you don't set back the SATA mode to AHCI, Chameleon will come up but crash pretty good in the beginning, so reboot and enter the AHCI mode again and reboot and you should be good to go.

The firmware was upgraded from version CC4C to CC4H and it now doesn't have this ugly screeching sound anymore and it goes to sleep too. Nice!

For a 7200 rpm drive, this drive is exceptionally quiet, really.

 

[DBP]

I've been using the 3 TB model of this range (the Barracuda.14 s) and am very impressed.
However, it's worth noting that the SMART information that the drive supports is very limited. Doesn't even report its own temperature.
But updating the firmware to CC4H is highly recommended. And if you're doing to be using these drives in a NAS or other "hardware RAID" controller it's pretty-much mandatory.

Via the Seagate website and their support I found out there is new firmware for the drive's series. Even for Hackintosh users that don't have anything like windows on their systems, there is a solution. They provide an iso file which via DiskUtility you can burn to a CD and use that to upgrade the firmware.

When I did this I was hoping I could make a bootable USB stick from that ISO but I mustn't have been holding my mouth the right way when I tried it. At least I have a USB DVD drive on the shelf for times like this when I need to fall back on optical media...

Good catch on the BIOS drive mode.

For a 7200 rpm drive, this drive is exceptionally quiet, really.

And also very fast!

 

[DarfWeder]

Yes I am really happy with the drive now. As you say, it is really fast too.

I was a bit miffed and had to do the boot0 fix via Unibeast Install/Terminal, as this drive has 4K sectors, as Seagate previously had shielded us from this. I had even zeroed the drive in an attempt to iron out a bad MBR, but also that was a futile 6 to 8 hr exercise (took 4ever!).
MACMAN's guide on how to fix it was the golden tip.

You just wonder how many people would simply return the drive etc? I have to admit I rarely do a f/w update on a hard drive, some of my fellow warriors actually never ever did one, but... it really really saved the day and me from returning it to the local shop.

I was a Seagate fan already but try to get me to buy anything else...