Continuing Saga - Seagate Barracude Drive Firmware Support Fiasco

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my drives reports a firmware version of SX15. So I had submitted a case 01/31/2009 to Seagate support in order to find out if I should update that drive. I finally got a response on 02/03/2009:

According to our records, this drive was shipped with SD15 firmware - it could be that the drive controller is interfering with reporting the drive's firmware correctly to the drive detect utility.

You can verify the firmware on the drive my looking at the drive label - it should read "SD15". If so, then you can update the firmware if appropriate.

I checked, and the label does indeed say SD15. I have a really hard time believing the drive controller is interfering with reading the firmware version of this drive, but not the other. It's more believable that someone mistyped the firmware version when they loaded it. Who knows...

I am impressed that they only took basically one business day to respond to this case.

Still no response to the case I submitted on 01/22/2009 about the SMART failures I'm seeing since upgrading the firmware on 1 on my drives.

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 003 003 036 Pre-fail Always FAILING_NOW 2004

I wonder if I should just create a new case.

I won't be upgrading the firmware on my second drive until I get some resolution on that SMART failure.