| This is from a recent 2008 Mac Pro report - not sure if this affects all 7200.11s w/firmware before AD14, or just SD04 firmware, but posting as a FYI. Can't recall if any G5 onboard SATA users have seen this to date.
"....I just added 4 Gbytes of RAM and a Seagate 750 Gbyte 7200.11 (ST3750330AS) from OWC to my box this morning. Too soon to tell how much faster the additional RAM makes it "feel", but I noted in Disk Utility and "About this Mac that the new internal SATA drive is described under "Model" as "ST3_INVALID_PFM"
What does that mean? (I googled this and came up with the following (Seagate user forum):
ST3_INVALID_PFM as model number on ST3750330AS drive
(Posts there from PC users mention the "invalid" model reporting and has 2 comments that updating the drive firmware (to "AD14") corrected the model number reporting, but said the drive then showed 0KB of buffer in HDtune (PC benchmark). As in the past, I suspect Seagate's firmware updates are still for PCs only unfortunately (and still require a floppy drive - but Jim later wrote the updater includes an ISO file for creating a bootable CD, but as I suspected it would not work under his VM windows (fusion, parallels, etc.)).
I asked Jim to send the firmware version of his 7200.11 drive (ASP 'revision' info). Based on posts in that thread I suspect it's firmware SD04. He later said it was SD04.-Mike)
Guess I'll try Seagate's website as well. The drive formatted just fine and Disk Utility doesn't find any problems with it afterwards, but the errant model number persists.
(he later wrote)
Sure is. (Firmware SD04) Later today, I'll be installing VMWare Fusion and Windows XP Pro, so perhaps I'll be able to flash the firmware. I'll let you know. (I replied I don't think you can update the drive's firmware via windows running in a VM.)
The firmware flasher also includes an ISO file to create a bootable CD if one is running from the command line. However, the problem is that my SATA internal drive in question is not visible to the virtual machine (the "hard
drive" for the virtual machine is a file that is treated as the C drive, and no other physical drives are seen by the machine.
That might not be the case had I installed Windows XP using Boot Camp for Leopard, but I didn't think of that in time, and the Win XP Pro I purchased is an OEM version, so I don't want to annoy Microsoft's software snoops that would detect running under Boot Camp as running the OS on a different "machine."
So, I'll call Seagate tech support tomorrow and see if they have any other ideas.
-Jim R."
I've also added this as a drive database report. As noted here in the past (news page posts, drive database reports, etc.) over the years - there's been cases in the past where some seagate drives (i.e. 7200.9 and .10 models previously) had some issues with some drive firmware versions. Seagate tech support may offer to exchange the drive since you do not have a PC to update it. This is why I prefer the Hitachi drives. (I chose the Hitachi 7K1000 series over the Seagate, although they were both 7200rpm/32MB cache.) The Hitachi 1TB was also a bit less than the Seagate 1TB at the time and still is I think.
I asked if he recd a reply from Seagate tech support to let me know. (Years ago when the first 7200.9's shipped they had SSC enabled by default, not compatible with Macs onboard SATA. (Later .9s had SSC disabled by default.) OWC back then got the patcher and patched drives they had in stock but not sure they are aware of this issue so I sent Larry a FYI on this and got a reply they're contacting Seagate support about it. The Site specials page has the Seagate 750GB 7200.10 model, not the .11 but their main SATA HD listings include the .11.)
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