When trying to upgrade firmware on a Seagate Barracuda 7400.11 from version SD15 to SD1A, the FreeDOS boot CD reports a number of " error reading partition table drive 01 sector 0 " errors. This is followed by " get Fatblock failed:0x000000e8 " or some variant of " getFatBlock failed : " The process then appears to stall at this stage, and does not continue to the firmware flasher program.
The drive is formatted as NTFS using MBR partitioning scheme.
#59: getFatBlock error when upgrading Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 firmware
Solved!on July 07, 2009, 11:43 AM UTC — from 
yliu ( 3,388 views )
yliu ( 3,388 views )
Turn off both AHCI and RAID options for the SATA controller
- yliu on July 09, 2009, 05:52 AM UTC
The solution appears to involve switching off AHCI and RAID for SATA. On the Dell Precision T5400, press F12 to enter the boot menu, choose Setup to enter the BIOS.
Go past the list of SATA drives to the last few options. One of the screens should present three options for the SATA mode: AHCI, RAID, and the pure ATA-based option. Once you select ATA and reboot, the FreeDOS boot CD should work. It will still report "error reading partition table drive" errors, but it should no longer block on the "getFatBlock" error.
Go past the list of SATA drives to the last few options. One of the screens should present three options for the SATA mode: AHCI, RAID, and the pure ATA-based option. Once you select ATA and reboot, the FreeDOS boot CD should work. It will still report "error reading partition table drive" errors, but it should no longer block on the "getFatBlock" error.
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1TB ES.2 (ST31000340NS) firmware - SN04 -> AN05? - Internal (ATA and Serial ATA) drives - Seagate Community Forums
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=1734&page=4 - found by yliu on July 07, 2009, 11:56 AM UTC
Seems to corroborate the first link - disable AHCI mode first
FreeDOS | Bugzilla archive
http://www.freedos.org/bugzilla/cgi-bin/show_bug.cgi?id=1197 - found by yliu on July 07, 2009, 11:48 AM UTC
Microsoft: Windows XP Pro - Boot floppy
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=482680&page=1374 - found by yliu on July 07, 2009, 11:47 AM UTC
random people babbling about a similar error. doesn't seem to be related
SeaTools for DOS getfatblock failed Error - SeaTools - Seagate Community Forums
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=SeaTool&thread.id=88 - found by yliu on July 07, 2009, 11:45 AM UTC
not directly related, but SeaTools is also a Seagate boot CD
Comments
Thank you very much yliu. It worked as directed.
— KG on December 30, 2009, 04:10 AM UTCthanks this worked
— destiny on December 09, 2010, 09:11 PM UTC