If you own one of those Seagate hard drives we found out were dropping like flies yesterday, it's possible that you can now relax. Seagate has come up with a solution to what it calls a "potential problem" with the firmware. Firmware is like a set of simple programs on a hardware device that tells it how to behave, and Seagate belives the firmware for its hard drives is making an error and causing the failures.

If you head over to the Seagate website, you'll find instructions on how to upgrade your firmware to a version that the company says won't have the problem. Of course, if your drive has already failed, this won't help you much if you're just concerned about getting your old files back. If you contact Seagate, though, the customer service representatives there will likely try to find a way for you to recover your data. We wouldn't expect a guarantee though.

This serves as a reminder to backup your stuff in case your hard drive fails. You don't need special hardware or software to do this; we have a guide to online backup services that'll help you store your stuff on the web so you can pull it back down whenever and wherever you need it.
 

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