Seagate has just posted updated firmware for many of its high-end drives that may be affected by faulty firmware. This causes them to brick or lock up. A number of Seagate hard drives may become inaccessible when powered on, including the Barracuda 7200.11, DiamondMax 22, and Barracuda ES.2 SATA drives.

All of these bricked devices are tied to a firmware bug that was introduced into drives manufactured before the month of December. In order to determine whether a particular drive is affected, Seagate suggested three different methods. First, you can download the company's “Drive Detect” tool, then you can use Device Manager to identify the drive or use the older SeaTools for Windows tool. All of these will help a customer identify the drive model, the serial number and the firmware revision.

Afterwards, Seagate recommends that users visit certain links in order to identify the drive and find updated firmware. The problem is that many of the firmware revisions were themselves pulled earlier this week for additional testing and validation. However, Seagate told its customers that they shouldn't lose any of their data as a result of the problem, but it has also promised to provide recovery services at no charge, if necessary.

Unfortunately for the hardware company, this is not their only problem. Last week, Seagate announced that it would cut thousands of jobs and slash executive salaries as a result of a drop in sales related to the recent economic downturn, with losses of $500 million in its second fiscal quarter of 2009, due to a huge drop in hard drive shipments and a slow adoption of the latest technology.