Hi all, Hope this is the right place: I had a bad surprise this morning: my HDD (Seagate/Maxstor Diamond max 22, 500gb) was affected by a bug in the firmware (HDD with a firmware?? Gotta go back to school... http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/self...sp?DocId=207931 ) and disappeared from the HDDs detectable from the BIOS. Result: the HDD is unrecoverable and my PMDG airplanes are lost. I've bought the 744, the MD11 and Js41 (of course all FSX editions, and I have had also the NG for FS9). Is there a way I can recover the licenses/installers (sorry, I don't remember PMDG's policy) ? Thank you very much!Giuseppe AcitoPS: i'm sorry, but I will have to cross-post this "mayday" message at Hi-Fi Sim, LevelD, WilcoPub... a very long list :(

Hi Giuseppe, Sorry to hear that, that's terrible. I always update the firmware to my HDD's. Just curious, did you contact Seagate? I haven't had a seagate in years and it was a $1000 drive at the time (98). I do remember they had several utilities, and my seagate cheetah and SCSI latency issues with my adaptec 2940u2w card and Seagate was able to walk me through fixing it. There are ways to fix the firmware I believe, but they would know more than me which tool for your drive.

HDD with a firmware??

All hardware has firmware, it's the program that the hardware uses to run. Your remote control for your TV has firmware even. Basically, firmware is a low level driver.

Is there a way I can recover the licenses/installers

Visit their site, look for extended download service. Purchase that and contact them per the instructions to have the download links reactivated.Copy your installers to CDROM.

Found a solution to my problem, sorry (probably this is a FAQ: http://ops.precisionmanuals.com/wiki/Suppo..._Get_Support.3F )@downscc: will follow your hint. More: I have purchased "several" HDDs and now I have a RAID 5. (I share the computer with my wife, an architect, who is still accusing my FSX stuff to be the cause of the disaster...)@WhiteKnight77: I thought I knew something about computers, but I ignored completely that a HDD could have a firmware. That's why I need to go back to school :) (I'm narrowminded on software development...) :D@Turbine777: thanks for your spiritual support ;). Seagate/Maxtor have a data recovery service (called I365, http://www.i365.com/ ). BUT: you have to ship your harddrive to them, and it's not really clear if the service is free (since you are a customer) or not.@ALL: Update your firmwares!!!Thank you all, Giuseppe