<p>[Update:</a> Seagate offers free data recovery for faulty drives, new firmware](<a href=“http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=disaster_recovery&articleId=9126360&taxonomyId=83&intsrc=kc_top]Update:”>http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=disaster_recovery&articleId=9126360&taxonomyId=83&intsrc=kc_top)</p>
<p>January 20, 2009 (Computerworld) Seagate Technology LLC today is offering free data-recovery services for customers who purchased the company’s Barracuda 7200.11 desktop hard drive through December 2008. A firmware bug in those drives has produced a high number of failures.</p>
<p>According to users on Seagate’s online support forum the drives tend to freeze for about 30 seconds during I/O transfers of streaming video or when reading or writing files at low speeds.</p>
<p>“We’re offering free data recovery because the information on the drives is not deleted. It’s just rendered inaccessible by this suspect firmware,” said Seagate spokesman Michael Hall.</p>
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<p>Western Digital is my current drive of choice.</p>
<p>I am considering Intel SSD drives for future notebooks. It’s a bit rich at $800 for a 160 GB drive but I expect prices to come down in a few years as they improve process geometries.</p>