Certain Seagate hard drive models manufactured in December '08 may have firmware issue

MacMedics has started getting reports of a new Seagate hard drive problem that causes the drive not to work, but apparently does not damage the data on the affected hard drive.
Here’s what Seagate has to say about the issue and how to find out if your hard drive is on of the affected models:
A number of Seagate hard drives from the following families may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on:
Barracuda 7200.11
DiamondMax 22
Barracuda ES.2 SATA
SV35
Once a drive has become affected the data becomes inaccessible to users but the data is not deleted. Seagate has isolated this issue to a firmware bug affecting drives from these families manufactured in December 2008.
Please use the following tools and instructions to determine if you have one of the affected products. If you do, we recommend that you update the firmware on the disk drive to prevent this condition:
Click here for instructions on how to find the serial number on your drive.
Click here to use the online serial number validation tool to check whether your drive requires a firmware update or not. Note: You need to disable your pop-up blocker if you have one turned on.
Important Note: When typing in your serial number into the validation tool, make sure to use ALL CAPS. Using lower case characters will invalidate the result.
If the online serial number validation tool states that your drive is affected, we recommend that you contact Seagate Customer Support for a firmware update to your hard drive.
You can expedite assistance by contacting Seagate via email. Please include the following disk drive information: model number, serial number and current firmware revision. Seagte will respond to your email request with appropriate instructions.
For more info on this issue please see Seagate’s website for more info.