20 Most Recent Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A 80 GB Hard Drive Questions & Answers

Hi i have just looked into need to upgrade your firmware please read this
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.

As new firmware becomes available for other products we will make note of it here. At this time, we have firmware available for Barracuda 7200.12, DiamondMax 23, Barracuda LP, Barracuda 7200.11, Barracuda ES.2 (SATA) and DiamondMax 22 drive families.
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.

/> 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.
Please use the following links and instructions below to determine if firmware is available for your product. If firmware is available, we recommend that you make a back up before running the actual update and that you read and follow all instructions, cautions and warnings that may be displayed.

Follow these steps to determine if a firmware update is available for your drive:

1. Click here for instructions on how to determine your model and serial number.

if there is a massive recall then it is junk ans should be treated as such replace it with a Kingston solid state unit for trouble free service

Hi Simlei. If its a modern, fairly new drive, it should have built-in firmware, without a need for extra drivers. If you OS is old the OS itself may not be recognizing the drive's 'language', especially if the bus-width differs, ie 16/32/64bit. As 1 TB is quite recent on SSD's, I guess its new. My 1 TB Toshiba just plugs into USB and Win Explorer detects it as a storage drive. Regards, Clive.

Yes it will work with XP, I assume that is what you are asking.

They could be electronically and physically the same but I do not think the firmware is the same hence it will not work properly.

You need to contact Segate, that is proprietary information.

Check out Hirens Boot CD that has many hard drive apps to check your drive for errors:http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

It is perfectly safe to remove the power cable from a hard drive but leave the data cable connected. Make sure that whenever you want to connect or disconnect the power cable, your computer has been shut down first. You could do it with the computer powered on as well, but this would not be good practice and you may put errors on your drive.

READ THE MANUAL AT SEAGATE.or look at the chips there, see those I/O chipssee the p/n on them. look them up and read the data sheets.see the pata pins, see them , enter the PCB with copper tracesthey land on the I/O chip, and is clearly labeled on all mine.great question, I worked as and ATE test system programmer and we do this all the time. There are many tests. not just i/o.

For W98, if you create the bootdisk from within windows, you will need to go here to download the newest version of FDISK.EXE then copy it to the bootdisk, allowing it to overwrite the older version. This way you will have support for larger harddrives.

FDISK LIMITATION WITH 64GB DRIVES:
Why does FDISK not recognize my disk (or RAID array) which is larger than 64GB?

There is a bug in Microsoft's FDISK under Windows 95B, 98 and 98SE that can be corrected by downloading a newer version. See Knowledge Base Article Q263044 for more information.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q263044

When you use Fdisk.exe to partition a hard disk that is larger than 64 GB (64 gigabytes, or 68,719,476,736 bytes) in size, Fdisk does not report the correct size of the hard disk.

The size that Fdisk reports is the full size of the hard disk minus 64 GB. For example, if the physical drive is 70.3 GB (75,484,122,112 bytes) in size, Fdisk reports the drive as being 6.3 GB (6,764,579,840 bytes) in size.

NOTE: This hotfix is not designed for 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) hard disks, and it is not supported on hard disks larger than 137 GB. However, even if the drive is physically larger than 137 GB, if you create partitions smaller than 137 GB, this FDISK.EXE version will work correctly. (THE FORMAT COMMAND WILL SHOW THE DRIVE AMOUNT IN DOS TO BE OFF THE MARK, BUT WILL BE CORRECT WHEN YOU GET INTO WINDOWS ITSELF)

Direct English Version download:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/Win98/Update/8266R/W98/EN-US/263044USA8.EXE

This package installs the updated Fdisk.exe to the Windows\Command and Windows\Options\Cabs folders, on a computer running Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition. If you are starting a computer from a Windows 98 Startup Disk in order to partition and format the hard disk, you should copy the updated Fdisk.exe from the Windows\Command folder to the Startup Disk, replacing the original Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition version of Fdisk.exe on the Startup Disk.

Nope, even on swapping hard drive board with same spec(size, board version) doesn't guarantee success.

Consider how the hard drive is construct on different brand. Initialization, disc number and many things.

It maybe, if it is same spec like size, brand, board version and model batch.

Purchase or download a partition manager program. The only way you can easily manage or change your partition size is to get a third-party program. Partition Magic Freeware is the most widely known partition manager software. http://www.filehoo.com/download/Partition-Magic-8,0.aspx You can also download freeware programs such as Cute Partition Manager. http://download.cnet.com/cute-partition-manager/3000-2094_4-10605516.html

Open or run the partition manager. In Partition Magic you can open the program easily. In Cute Partition Manager you may have to create a boot disk and boot from it to run the program. Once the program is open, select the drive you want to manage. Go to the menu and choose an action or right-click and choose "resize." There will be an action -menu that will let you choose something like "resize" or "change hard drive size." Some programs will also let you right-click on the graphical expression of a drive and choose the action or drag the graph to change the size.

Pick a new size for the drive and decide what you want to do with the remaining space. The rest of the space should be partitioned or formatted to make use of it if the current partition is downsized.

Apply the changes by clicking "apply" or "OK." You will then have to reboot the computer for the changes to take effect. The program may automatically do this for you or it simply may direct you to do it.