Seagate Posts Hard Drive Fix

Seagate Technology on Thursday posted its second fix for a firmware problem that has caused the company's hard drives to stop working.

The latest patch corrects compatibility problems the original fix had with some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives. The first firmware upgrade was released Jan. 16.

"We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers," the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Customers last week flooded Seagate's community forum with complaints that the 1-TB Barracuda 7200.11 would freeze up suddenly. Seagate determined the problem was in the firmware and released a fix that customers later reported caused the 500-GB version of the hard drive to stop working.

Seagate said the firmware problem extended beyond the Barracuda drives to other products based on the same platform, such as the Barracuda ES.2 and the DiamondMax 22.

However, Seagate says the "vast majority" of customers have not experienced any problems related to the faulty firmware. The company also claims customers won't lose any data as a result. Nevertheless, the company says it will provide data-recovery service at no charge to customers unable to access their files.

Seagate's product headaches are on top of the company's financial troubles. The company last week said it would cut thousands of jobs and slash executive salaries as a result of a drop in sales related to the economic downturn.

On Wednesday, the company reported a net loss of $496 million on revenue of $2.3 billion for the fiscal second quarter ended Jan. 2.