HDD GURU FORUMS

Hello,
I lost data two times last year, and afterward I learned that maybe I could have avoided this situation if I had upgraded my firmware on those drives with newer version (Kingston 120gb SSD and WD usb3.0 external) .

WTF ? How should I have know that there was a new FW version ? Is there some utility in windows or some feature that would inform me about new available firmware ? I have disks from 4 manufacturers Maxtor, WD, Kingston, Samsung .

Really I dont understand, if I buy HDD, then the OS should inform me about new FW, or there should be some information about this ...

Spildit wrote:Or you shouldn't mess with the firmware to begin with... Just because drives fail it doesn't mean that updating the firmware will prevent them from failing, even if with firmware problem...

What u mean ? There is always some reason why manufacturers update and publish firmwares . I want to be informed about those updates and have the choise to upgrade or not to .

It stands to reason that if a drive manufacturer finds firmware issues that are pretty much definitely going to cause customers to have data loss, and that a firmware upgrade would fix it, that the firmware upgrade should be given to customers. yes this is entirely logical and seems on the surface to be sensible, almost to the point of they SHOULD do it as a duty of care. I can imagine how pissed you would be to lose data and then find out a firmware upgrade known about 6 months ago would have fixed the issue.

A number of problems arise:
1) To do this, manufacturers would need to establish some way of contacting end users of the drive, work out ways with re-sellers etc.. I can see MANY issues with this.

2) Many firmware upgrades do not preserve the data, or corrupts it, so not a "typical End User" process. This would need major work to make it safe for people to try.

3) Many people just do not patch. they don't care. They don't read tech forums or even if patches are presented to the in their face, they just click it off and get annoyed with the popup.

I know what you are saying, but... You're REALLY optimistic if you think anything is going to change!

Spildit wrote:Or you shouldn't mess with the firmware to begin with...

Sometimes, you have to... If you don't, you'll loose your data !
I'm thinking 8mb bug in intel SSD for exemple.