Data Recovery Blog

This is a help post for seagate windows firmware update utility which may be downloaded from seagate firmware update pages.

Your drive is eligible for a firmware update?

Seagate products are run by firmware. Having the latest firmware can improve performance and or reliability of your product. Seagate recommends applying new firmware to enhance the performance and or reliability of your drive.

Like any software, firmware is improved over time and problems are also fixed. Every drive family has a couple of firmware releases during the life of the product. Please check in regularly to determine if new firmware is available for your drive.

If newer firmware is available for your drive, it will reflect the improvements we have engineered for the latest manufacturing. Firmware for legacy products will be the final release from manufacturing. Please note that Seagate does not offer details about specific firmware.

Until recently, firmware updates for typical desktop and laptop computers were difficult and somewhat risky. This situation, in part, was based on a lack of friendly firmware download tools and operating system limitations. This situation has improved and Seagate now offers firmware updates as a routine matter for the general support of your Seagate drive.

Note: If you are troubleshooting a system or OS problem, you should not consider firmware updates until after exploring more typical troubleshooting steps like file system error checking and anti-virus scanning.

Firmware update step by step

1) Choose from the list of languages. The screens in Windows will be translated to your selection. When the application restarts in DOS, the language will be in English.

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2) Welcome screen.
Be sure inspect the title, which gives a description of what products and firmware versions are supported by this package. This screen contains an important warning to remind you to back up your system.

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3) End User License Agreement

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4) Very important instructions and warnings. Again, they are:

DO NOT run this firmware update on RAID systems.
DO NOT turn the power off during the firmware update procedure.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN:

Make sure you have backed up all of your important files and critical data to some other storage media.
Save any work in progress.
Close all other open applications.
Disconnect all external storage devices.

Windows will shut down and your system will reboot. You will see a new boot message “Starting Seagate Loader…” and “Starting Seagate Firmware Update Utility…”
Do not interrupt this procedure.

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5) About screen

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6) Windows will shut down and the system will reboot.

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7) These are the first screens you will see after the reboot.
DO NOT INTERRUPT this procedure!

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8) The SeaEnum utility will scan your system for hard disk drives and display the Model Number, Serial Number and current Firmware Revision for each drive.

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Try the Seagate Drive Detect utility if you want to see this information while in Windows.

9) The Firmware Update Utility runs from DOS to load the new firmware on your disk drive. This utility will upgrade the firmware on your Seagate disk drive if the drive model and the current firmware are compatible with this update.

This process may take a few minutes. Afterwards, the utility will exit and reboot. If the software is unable to automatically reboot system, you may restart the system yourself.

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Besides the “Sending data” firmware download message, other common messages are:

Firmware Already Updated! Will not download firmware. – The current version on the disk drive matches the version supplied in this update.
Model Matched, No Firmware Matched! Will not download firmware. – Even though the model is a match, the current version on the disk is not compatible with the version supplied in this update.
No Model Matched! Will not download firmware.
Wrong Model, or Not a Seagate drive.

If the software determines that the update should not be run, the utility will exit and reboot back to Windows.

10) Windows starting to load.

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Finished!

Related Link: Firmware Download Base

Hard Disk Repair

Free Partition Manager: EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago01 mins

File Name: Partition Master
Version: Home Edition
Publisher: CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., Ltd
Languages: English
OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista (32 bit) operating system
Price: Free

EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition is a FREE disk partitioning utility for extending system partition, better disk space management, settling low disk space problem under Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

This free partition manager works perfectly with hardware RAID and laptops like HP, Dell, etc. Your data is completely protected during all operations.

If your computer is running 64 bit Windows systems, please check Professional or Server editions.

Main Features

Resize/Move partitions without data loss
Extend system partition easily and safely
Create partitions, Delete partitions and Format partitions with simple steps
Support up to 2TB partition or hard drive
Disk Copy, Partition Copy, Dynamic Disk Copy to protect or transfer data

Related Links

EASEUS Partition Master Screenshots
EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition Free Download

Hard Disk Repair

Free Partition Manager: Partition Wizard Home Edition

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago02 mins

File Name: Partition Wizard
Version: Home Edition
Publisher: MT Solution Ltd
Languages: English
OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7 (32 bit & 64 bit) operating system
Price: Free

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition and Partition Recovery.

Partition Wizard Home Edition is designated for home user only, to use Partition Wizard in a business envirnoment, Partition Wizard Business Edition is required.

Main Features

Support RAID.
Extend system partition to improve computer performance to maximum.
Manage the hard disk to get the best performance of computer.
Create Partitions , Delete Partitions and Format partitions with simple steps.
Disk Copy to protect or transfer data.
Support disk and partition size larger than 2TB.
Convert partition format from FAT to NTFS.
Partition Copy: Copy the entire hard disk to another one.
Copy Disk Wizard: Copy the entire hard disk to another one without windows reinstalling.
Disk Map – Visually demonstrate your disk/partition configuration; preview the changes before applying.
Hide/unhide partition, set active partition, etc. – Change partition properties.
Explore FAT/NTFS partition.Related Links:

Partition Wizard Sceenshots
Partition Wizard Download

Hard Disk Repair

Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives in a Macintosh

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago09 mins

Serial ATA interface disk drives are designed for easy installation. It is not necessary to set any jumpers, terminators, or other settings on this drive for proper operation. The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 150MB/s drives is for factory use only. The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 300MB/s drives can be used to force the drive into SATA 150MB/s mode for use with older SATA controllers that only work with SATA 150MB/s drives.

With a Serial ATA interface, each disk drive has its own cable that connects directly to a Serial ATA host adapter or a Serial ATA port on your motherboard. Unlike Parallel ATA, there is no master-slave relationship between drives that use a Serial ATA interface.

You can use a Serial ATA drive in the same system with Parallel ATA drives as long as both interfaces are supported on the motherboard or with a host adapter. This makes it easy to add Serial ATA compatibility to your existing system without removing existing Parallel ATA disk drives.

What You Need?

A Phillips screwdriver and four 6-32 UNC drive mounting screws.
A Serial ATA interface cable (sold separately). Maximum length is 39 inches (1 meter).
A Serial ATA-compatible power cable or adapter (sold separately).
A system with a motherboard that has a Serial ATA connector on it, or a Serial ATA host adapter and available PCI slot in which to install the adapter.

Refer to your computer system documentation to see if your system supports Serial ATA on the motherboard and to locate the Serial ATA connector. If your system does not have a Serial ATA connector on the motherboard, you must purchase a Serial ATA host adapter that is compatible with your computer and operating system and install it with the appropriate device driver according to the host adapter manufacturer’s installation instructions.

Handling Precautions

Disc drives are fragile. Do not drop or jar the drive. Handle the drive only by the edges or frame. Keep the drive in the protective anti-static container until you are ready to install it to minimize handling damage.
Drive electronics are extremely sensitive to static electricity. While installing the drive, wear a wrist strap and cable connected to ground.
Turn off the power to the host system during installation.
Do not disassemble the drive. Doing so voids the warranty.
Do not apply pressure or attach labels to the circuit board or to the top of the drive.

See your Power Mac or Macintosh Server documentation for information about internal storage options and installation instructions.

Note: You must purchase and install a Mac OS-compatible Serial ATA host adapter into an open PCI slot to install this drive in your Macintosh.

Mounting the Drive

Turn off your computer.
Open your computer case (See your computer manual for instructions).
Slide your new drive into an open drive bay.
Orient the drive with the drive label facing up and the PCB facing down. You may find it easier to attach cables to your new drive before installing it. If so, follow the cabling steps below, and then return to this step to install the drive.
Use four (4) mounting screws to secure your drive.
If you want to mount your new Seagate drive in a 5.25-inch drive bay, you must purchase drive rails at a computer supply store.

Attaching the Cables

Attach the cables to your new drive.
Attach the Serial ATA interface and power-adapter cables. Connect either end of the interface cable to the drive. Both connectors are keyed the same to ensure proper orientation. You can connect only one end of the power-adapter cable to the drive. That connector is also keyed to ensure proper orientation.
Note: Do not disturb the power and interface cables that are attached to your existing drive.
Attach the Serial ATA interface cable to your computer.
Connect the open end of your Serial ATA interface cable directly to your motherboard if your computer supports Serial ATA. If not, you must have an open PCI slot on your motherboard into which you install a Serial ATA host adapter (sold separately).
Connect your power-adapter cable
Connect the open end of the Serial ATA power-adapter cable to any available connector from your computer’s power supply. If none is available, you can purchase a Y-adapter cable to convert any one existing power connector into two, one of which you can use to power your new drive.

Initialize Your Drive

Use one of the following Apple utilities to initialize your new drive:

Mac OS X
Use Apple’s Disk Utility application.

Mac OS 9
Use Apple’s Drive Setup application.

These applications are normally located in your Applications/Utilities folder.

Note: DiscWizard is a PC (Windows/DOS) application. You do not need DiscWizard to install your drive in a Macintosh system.

Troubleshooting

If your drive is not working properly, these troubleshooting tips may help solve the problem.

Does the drive spin up?
A spinning drive produces a faint whine and clicking noise. If your drive does not spin, check that the power connector and interface cable are securely attached.
Does the computer recognize the drive?
Verify that the drive is enabled in the system CMOS or setup program. If not, select the autodetect option and enable it. If your drive has a problem, it may not be recognized by the system. If the operating system does not recognize the drive, you need to load your host adapter drivers.
Why does my computer hang on startup?
Verify that your system is Serial ATA compatible. You need either a Serial ATA 1.0-compatible motherboard connector or Serial ATA host adapter to use this drive.

Hard Disk Repair

How to install, format, and partition internal PATA/SATA drive in Vista?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago07 mins

Internal hard drive installation instructions for Windows Vista using Vista installation process or Disk Management.

It is recommended you use Windows Vista to format and partition your hard disk drive when installing Vista on a boot drive or adding a drive as additional storage.

DiscWizard is your best choice if you want your new drive to become the new boot drive. To do that, the operating system and the files on the old boot drive need to be copied to the new drive.

The following are step-by-step installation instructions on how to format and partition a drive in Windows Vista.

Fresh Vista Install:

Physically install the hard drive in your computer. If this is a PATA / IDE drive, set the BIOS to Auto-Detect the hard disk. If this is a SATA drive, on some systems you may need to enable the SATA port in the BIOS before the computer recognizes the drive. For further information on navigating your system’s BIOS, please consult with your computer manufacturer’s documentation.
Insert the Windows Vista CD-ROM and restart the computer.
Follow on-screen prompts for setup. When installing Vista fresh on this hard drive, at the screen titled, “Which type of installation do you want?”, click Custom (advanced).
At the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen, select Disk 0 Unallocated Space and click Next.
If this is a SATA drive and it is not recognized in the above step, you may need to install drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer if the drive is connected directly to the motherboard, or install drivers provided by the controller card manufacturer if the drive is connected directly to a SATA PCI controller card. To install the driver for the SATA controller on the motherboard or PCI controller card, you will need to click Load Driver.
Note: there are no Vista drivers provided by Seagate for any Seagate or Maxtor branded PATA or SATA drive, as the drives themselves are all Plug-and-Play within Windows Vista when connected internally on your computer.
From here, proceed with the rest of the Vista installation.

Installing an Additional Data Drive in Windows Vista:
Note:If the second drive is pre-formatted or used in another Windows system, it is not necessary to re-format the drive. Follow the instructions below up to Step 2 and Vista should recognize the drive.

Physically install the hard drive in your computer. If this is a PATA / IDE drive, set the BIOS to Auto-Detect the hard disk. If this is a SATA drive, on some systems you may need to enable the SATA port in the BIOS before the computer recognizes the drive. For further information on navigating your system’s BIOS, please consult with your computer manufacturer’s documentation.
Restart the computer and boot into Windows Vista.
Click on the Start button and select Control Panel. In the Control Panel, click on System and Maintenance. Scroll down and click on Administrative Tools. Double-click on Computer Management. On the left-hand side of the Computer Management window, click on Disk Management, located in the Storage section.
In Disk Management you will see the active hard disks. Be patient, as it may take a minute or two for it to load the disk information. On the bottom half, you will see Disk 0, which is the Primary (or C:) drive. Disk 1 and greater are generally considered secondary storage drives.
If the description of Disk 1 is “Not Initialized” then you must right-click on the Disk 1 icon and select Initialize.
In the window that appears, click on the disk to be initialized and click on OK.
Next, right-click on the Unallocated region of the basic disk, and select New Simple Volume.
In the New Partition Wizard, click Next. Select the type of partition you want and follow all on-screen instructions. After finishing, the section of the disk that said “Unallocated” should say “Formatting” for a few seconds. Once it is finished formatting, it will say, “Healthy”.

Hard Disk Repair

How to determine the model and capacity of Quantum® hard drive?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago02 mins

To use the table below: The bolded values in the model and capacity code columns are the alpha-numeric characters found on the disk drive’s TLA label. The TLA (Top Level Assembly) number is located on a the bar-code label affixed to either the drive’s top cover or on the drive’s interface connector. See the diagram below for examples and locations.

On Quantum hard drives, the terms “TLA“, “GTLA“, and “Part Number” all refer to the same hard drive model indicator and should be considered interchangeable.

By referring to the drive’s TLA label and then scrolling through the table below, you should be able to identify your drive’s product family and its capacity.

Interface values:

A = ATA (IDE)
D = SCSI Wide, 68-pin High Voltage Differential (HVD)
F = Fibre Channel
J = SCSI SCA, 80-pin
L = SCSI Wide, 68-pin Low Voltage Differential (LVD)
S = SCSI, 50-pin Single Ended (SE)
W = SCSI Wide, 68-pin Single Ended

Capacities are listed in Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB) as noted.

Early versions of the Atlas and Capella disk drives did not carry the complete TLA number scheme. Please refer to the drive cover label if you suspect your that you may have either of these products. The drive label does contain the product model number displayed in the above table.

DSP drives are not included in this table. DSP series drives were manufactured by Digital and contain Digital part number schemes.

Data Storage

WD Ships Industry’s First 1 TB Mobile Hard Drive

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago14 mins

– New Drives Offer the Highest Capacities to Date For Mobile Storage Applications and Notebooks.

WD announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model – the industry’s highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio® Blue™ SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor¹ and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport™ Essential™ SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

“The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices, Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives.” said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD.

WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.

WD Scorpio Blue Features

WhisperDrive™ – WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available.

ShockGuard™ – Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.

SecurePark™ – Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.

Price and Availability

WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive is $249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty.

Hard Disk Repair

Error Message: "NTLDR IS MISSING" during Windows boot

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago02 mins

Problem:
“NTLDR IS MISSING” error message encountered during Windows 2000/XP boot.

Cause:
The NTLDR is missing error can be caused by many different things. Generally, it is when a Windows 2000 or XP installation either fails or did not properly complete. This can also occur when the partition table on the drive has become corrupted.

If you are using Data Lifeguard Tools to install your drive, make sure your BIOS is setup to boot from your CD-ROM first, then the hard drive.

Resolution:
Windows 2000/XP will allow you to run the operating system installation process in order to fix a corrupted partition. There are two ways that you can boot your system to start this process:

Boot to the floppies supplied by the operating system.
Set your computer’s boot sequence so that you can boot from your operating system installation CD-ROM.

While performing the installation, choose to repair the partition instead of reinstalling the entire operating system. If using the operating system to repair the partition does not work, you may need to obtain specialized data recovery software.

Hard Disk Repair

Windows 2000/XP Restarts Repeatedly After Adding A Drive

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago02 mins

Problem:
After adding an additional drive to the system, Windows 2000/XP may fail to completely load. The system may end up in a loop in which it restarts repeatedly.

Cause:
Windows has a setting that dictates what happens when a system failure state occurs. This may be causing the restarts.

Resolution:
To check for this, do the following:

Shut down the system and remove the recently added drive. At this point, Windows should boot up normally.
Once the desktop appears, right-click on My Computer and click Properties.
Click the Advanced tab at the top of the resulting window.
Click Startup and Recovery at the bottom of the next window. Look for the Automatically reboot option and uncheck it.
Click OK twice to close the remaining windows.
At this point, shut the system down and reconnect the drive. You should now be able to start the system and boot up completely into Windows.
If necessary, proceed as normal to configure the drive using Disk Management.

Hard Disk Repair

FreeAgent Pro Tools Utilities – Performing Drive Diagnostics

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago02 mins

How to check the health of my FreeAgent drive?

You should run a diagnostic on your drive regularly as part of general maintenance. A health check determines hard disk integrity and can help troubleshoot potential problems with disk surface, partitioning, and drive recognition. To run a drive diagnostic:

Close all open files located on the FreeAgent drive.
Open the Seagate FreeAgent Tools application. Click Utilities in the Command panel.
The Utilities window opens. Click Run Drive Diagnostics.
The Run Drive Diagnostics window opens. Click Test to begin the drive diagnostic. The diagnostic utility performs its tests without affecting the data on your drive and takes only a short time to complete. When the test is complete, the Utilities window displays the results. If the drive encounters an error during testing, the window displays an error code with instructions to contact Seagate for service and support.
Click OK to return to the Utilities window

Flash Videos: FreeAgent Pro Tools Utilities – Performing Drive Diagnostics