DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

thriftynomad wrote:

I believe I've got two of these running in my DNS-323, but I can't seem to find a way to check the serial number. Yes, I could just power down and take the drives out, but since the firmware seems to die on boot, I'd prefer to leave them up and running in the device.

If you haven't, yet, install smartmontools: http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/0. … rtmontools

# smartctl -i -d marvell /dev/sda

thriftynomad wrote:

Unfortunately, it told me that my DNS-323 has two 1TB Seagates that are both on the list of affected drives!!

I have one of these, too.

bobbyincognito wrote:

fonz wrote:

thriftynomad wrote:

Unfortunately, it told me that my DNS-323 has two 1TB Seagates that are both on the list of affected drives!!

I have one of these, too.

I actually just built mine so I will be returning the Seagate drives.  I think I'm going to get the Maxtor 1TB drives that are on sale this week at Frys.  Any opinions on the Maxtor drives?

If you buy Maxtor 1TB drives you will probably have exactly the same issue. Maxtor is owned by Seagate. Refering to http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … cId=207931 you will note that the DiamondMax 22 series of drives are affected and these are Maxtor.

I suggest you look at Wester Digital, Hitachi, or Samsung if you wish to avoid Seagate / Maxtor drives at the moment.

I currently have two 1TB Seagate drives ST31000340AS and ST31000333AS both with the SD15 firmware. Seagate support have informed me that both my drives will need a firmware upgrade because they could potentially get this issue.

Previously I had two ST31000340AS drives in my DNS 323 except one of these failed in late November with this issue. Purchase date was late June so it lasted only five months. I RMA'd that drive and they returned me a ST31000333AS and surely by that time they would have known about the issue but shipped me another potentially faulty drive anyways. I'm not very happy about that so it looks like my next drive will be Wester Digital after being 12 years exclusively using Seagate and not having a single failure until now.

If you have any of these affected drives in your DNS 323 I suggest you leave it on permenently  until you can get the firmware upgrade and backup all of your data prior to rebooting. Mine bricked itself upon booting up the DNS 323 as the hard drive light kept flashign blue for about 20 minutes until finally changing to amber. As a precaution I've also turned power management off to prevent the DNS 323 from spinning down the drives just incase the drives can brick themselves then as well.

mhoare1984 wrote:

bobbyincognito wrote:

fonz wrote:

I have one of these, too.

I actually just built mine so I will be returning the Seagate drives.  I think I'm going to get the Maxtor 1TB drives that are on sale this week at Frys.  Any opinions on the Maxtor drives?

If you buy Maxtor 1TB drives you will probably have exactly the same issue. Maxtor is owned by Seagate. Refering to http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … cId=207931 you will note that the DiamondMax 22 series of drives are affected and these are Maxtor.

I suggest you look at Wester Digital, Hitachi, or Samsung if you wish to avoid Seagate / Maxtor drives at the moment.

I currently have two 1TB Seagate drives ST31000340AS and ST31000333AS both with the SD15 firmware. Seagate support have informed me that both my drives will need a firmware upgrade because they could potentially get this issue.

Previously I had two ST31000340AS drives in my DNS 323 except one of these failed in late November with this issue. Purchase date was late June so it lasted only five months. I RMA'd that drive and they returned me a ST31000333AS and surely by that time they would have known about the issue but shipped me another potentially faulty drive anyways. I'm not very happy about that so it looks like my next drive will be Wester Digital after being 12 years exclusively using Seagate and not having a single failure until now.

If you have any of these affected drives in your DNS 323 I suggest you leave it on permenently  until you can get the firmware upgrade and backup all of your data prior to rebooting. Mine bricked itself upon booting up the DNS 323 as the hard drive light kept flashign blue for about 20 minutes until finally changing to amber. As a precaution I've also turned power management off to prevent the DNS 323 from spinning down the drives just incase the drives can brick themselves then as well.

Frack...I just came back with the two drives.  Thanks, you've saved me a lot of time now. I'll probably go back and grab one of them "Green" WD drives now.

Updated: Looks like the WD Green Power HDD have some problems too (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi … mp;start=0).  I think at this point, I'm going to keep my drives on and running 24/7 until Seagate has a firmware fix next week.

Last edited by bobbyincognito (2009-01-18 10:17:05)

skydreamer wrote:

I managed to upgrade the NS firmware to SN05 from SN03 and SN04 a couple of days ago, there was a measurable performance gain and some issues got resolved.

Does this mean that SN05 is safe?

Seagate published KB article - http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … cId=207931

fonz wrote:

If you haven't, yet, install smartmontools: http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/0. … rtmontools

Another option is:

# dmesg|grep -i seagate
  Vendor: Seagate   Model: ST31000340AS      Rev: SD15
  Vendor: Seagate   Model: ST31000340AS      Rev: SD15

By the way, as you can see my drives both use firmware SD15... Doh!

fonz wrote:

Does this mean that SN05 is safe?

Fonz- I think that the issue is with a particular combination of the spindle motor, servo and electronics board rather than a plain bug in the firmware the way this issue is presented. I used to be an EMEA service manager for a large US electronics multinational and we did a few recalls too so I understand the mechanism quite well and can read reasonably well between the lines.

What Seagate do in their new firmware is a workaround for some values that happen to be out of tolerance but not degrading fast over a period of time. Hence the shortfalls can be compensated for by altering the code that is behind the lock ups.

As with any other product life cycle the 1TB disks are reaching their maturity therefore there is a strong drive to cut the production costs plus the credit crunch with the market downturn and this introduces higher risks in quality terms especially in such carefully tuned products as the large hard disks.

So back to your original question- I think that the older NS disks are reasonably safe, which means firmware SN03,04. However I am going to watch this space because there might be more to these failures, which even the Seagate engineers are not fully aware of yet and in the end could widen the base of the affected drives.

Last edited by skydreamer (2009-01-19 03:07:03)

devotee wrote:

New firmware that (hopefully) fixes this issue is now available:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s … cId=207931

It is really only for one particular P/N, none of my 1TB drives is from the affected series. I even tried to upgrade the firmware and it refused to do so because of the incorrect P/N.

The technote starts:

Welcome, Seagate hard drive owners.

I think it would be more fitting:

Welcome, Seagate hard tried drive owners.

Last edited by skydreamer (2009-01-19 14:14:29)

Hmmm
they may have posted updated firmware, but the fix for the Maxtor drive STM31000340AS is broken ! The file is OK, but the contained iso is invalid. I've emailed disk-support. The firmware for the Seagate ST31000340AS appears to be usable. I noted its twice as long as that for the Maxtor fix.

If you only have a Mac, or a even just a Windows laptop you're stuffed, The firmware appears to be applied by a DOS based tool installed from the bootable CD you create from the downloaded iso. I doubt that will drive a USB-to-SATA adapter. From the readme notes with the ST31000340AS firmware, which I guess will be similar;

Basic instructions:
1) Create the  FreeDOS bootable floppy or CD-ROM.
2) Use a standard desktop PC with an integrated SATA controller, or
   a common SATA add-in controller like a Promise SATA150-TX2.
3) Disconnect all PATA or SATA devices from the system, except the
   device needing the firmware update.
4) Boot the system using the update floppy or CD.
5) At the DOS prompt run the flash.bat file

BEWARE, you can find the same file "MooseDT-32MB-MX1A.ISO" at various other sites on the internet. This currently is a previous version WITH THE SAME FILENAME. Seagate warn you not to use it.

Once the final working version is released, with the same filename, all manner of confusion will ensue.

What a way to ru[i]n a company !

regards - plugs

Guess what? I updated affected ST3500320AS drive with the new firmware, and now the drive is .. dead! Actually it is still being detected by BIOS, but at POST message it hangs while the system is trying to communicate with the drive.

Repeated firmware updates with the same firmware do work.. which means.. SD1A is simply a crappy firmware! No wonder KB article was taken down "for validation"

I spoke with Seagate support, few lessons: a) we cannot revert the firmware back to version SD15 from SD1A b) new firmware should be ready closer to the end of this week

I've just updated my ST31000340AS disks with firmware SD1A released today. The process went smoothly on a PC with integrated SATA ports and, once plugged on the CH3SNAS, they seem to be working as expected (at least, like they worked before).

  Vendor: Seagate   Model: ST31000340AS      Rev: SD1A
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 03
  Vendor: Seagate   Model: ST31000340AS      Rev: SD1A
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 03

I'll make regular backups on an external USB disk as I planned (even before knowing about this mess), let's hope the drives won't have problems.