Firmware upgrade may be required for Seagate half-terabyte drives

At the beginning of 2009, Seagate had to deal with a firmware bug affecting 21 different hard drive models which caused widespread failure. For the second time this year, a Seagate internal HDD is causing problems that may necessitate a firmware upgrade.

The model in question is the 500 GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drive (model# ST9500420ASG), which causes the system to pause for as much as 10 seconds as the drive audibly hiccups.

While the main body of users complaining of the problem are Macbook Pro owners, the drive was also made available as an upgrade to certain Dell notebooks.

Apple yesterday said it is working on a software update to address the problem, but has not said when it will be ready.

We're waiting to hear back from Seagate about whether it plans to issue a firmware upgrade for users on non-Mac platforms who experience the same issue.