I built a new system, but a few days after delivery, the customer told me that sometimes (about 5 – 10% of the time) the computer would ask him to insert boot media (and then would not start).

Then, he would switch the PC off, then on, at the wall outlet, and then the computer would start (sometimes)

I’ve seen similar problems in the past, and a bios upgrade would usually fix it.

So I upgrade the gigabyte motherboard bios to the latest available, but 2 days later, the startup issued re-surface

So I then try changing the power supply (in case it couldn’t supply enough power to the hard drive at start time… which is when a hard drive needs the most power).

After a few more days, I found that didn’t work either.

Next I tried changing the sata cable… but still no go.

At this point, I took the PC back to the office for more test.

I connected a second hard drive on the same power cable, and after 15 cold boots, the first drive refused to be recognised by the bios, yet the second drive started normally.

So now I have no doubt. The problem is with the seagate st1000dm003-9yn162 hard drive (and not the power supply).

A search of the internet uncovers others with similar problems, with this exact model drive.

The good news is that its a fixable firmware fault (not a warranty hardware problem)

So a quick download of firmware cc4h from seagate HERE, flash it to replace the existing cc47, and after a few days of testing, the problem was gone.

Around the same time, I was also configuring some raid NAS drives, and I had a similar problem. It wasn’t as problematic, since NAS drives are rarely restarted.

I soon figured out I had more seagate st1000dm003-9yn162 drives to update.

I’ve now found that firmware up to and including cc4c needs upgrading, while firmware cc4d (and presumably later) refuses to update.