Seagate offers fix for bricked Barracuda HDDs

Many users were having trouble with Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive failures but fortunately Seagate has finally released a firmware fix so you can resolve the problem without having to RMA your drive. You can download the fix over here. The page says not only the Barracuda 7200.11 series but also the DiamondMax 22 and Barracuda ES.2 SATA are affected.

The HDD maker assures you that your data should be safe, after applying the firmware fix which resolves a firmware bug you should be able to access it again. However, if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate promises to provide free data recovery services.

Welcome, Seagate hard drive owners. A number of Seagate hard drives from the following families may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on:

Barracuda 7200.11
DiamondMax 22
Barracuda ES.2 SATA

Once a drive has become affected the data becomes inaccessible to users but the data is not deleted. Seagate has isolated this issue to a firmware bug affecting drives from these families manufactured in December 2008.

Please use the following tools and instructions to determine if you have one of the affected products. If your drive is affected, we recommend that you update the firmware on the disk drive to prevent this condition.