#Google blocks uniextract update#
I was all set to update the firmware on these when one of our guys found that the update rendered unusable 8 of the 8 drives he upgraded the day before Seagate pulled the update. Thankfully none of the disks on the systems that I admin have shown problems yet, but we try to run a quality operation and that includes preventive maintenance wherever possible. I couldn't guess how many are deployed throughout the datacenter but on some of our backup servers alone I've calculated that I have almost 100 drives that need the firmware update. I work for a web hosting company and we get these drives by the case. The cost of junking returns can be greater than the cost of repairing them. Then you have a bunch of poorly-repaired devices bearing your brand name, floating around generating forum posts and hate mail all over the web. Throwing it in the trash is not a good idea, because if you don't try to fix the broken ones, someone else will buy your trash and do it behind your back. In practice, you end up seeing the same problems over and over, most of them very simple, so your tech might be able to fix 5+ per hour, and I'm being conservative here. If a gadget sells for $100, and your staff tech costs $50/hour, then as long as he can fix more than one unit every two hours (minus S&H and markdown), you fix the gadget. There are very few cases where a "bricked" device is truly beyond repair by a skilled and equipped technician. He'll reflash your PSP, cell phone or hacked FTA receiver for ten bucks, right from his ornate Honda Civic office. There's also a pretty large market of "unbricking services", usually just some half-breed with a special cable he bought off of some other wannabe-crook on eBay. If you're as dumb as the average forum troll, you're probably not clever, resourceful or brave enough to hotflash your socketed chip on a different board, but an experienced techie could do it. There is such a think as "unbricking".įor example, you might brick a motherboard by flashing it with some hacked BIOS you found on a tweak forum. You're close, but bricked really just means "you can't fix it, nor can the average layperson".