MurrayW Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 I have nine 2TB new hard drives that I am getting ready to load into my first unraid build. These drives are a mixture of WD (EARS AND EADS), Hitachi, Seagate and Samsung. Would it be easier to check and update the firmware from a windows machine before adding it to my unraid server or add them to my server then update the bios? If I do it from the server, is it easiest to just create a bootable usb drive to do the update? thanks, Murray Link to comment
jeff.lebowski Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 I had more peace of mind doing it from my Windows machine where I could easily disconnect all disks that were not to be updated. I updated firmware on two Samsung F4 disks. Link to comment
dgaschk Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 I don't believe that there are any WD firmware updates for new drives. Link to comment
brandon Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 For the EARS drives you need to run WDIDLE3 (at least I did for mine, otherwise load cycle count will be very high). Link to comment
jeff.lebowski Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 For the EARS drives you need to run WDIDLE3 (at least I did for mine, otherwise load cycle count will be very high). Can you expand on this a bit? Where did you get the software, did the disks need to be empty to update, did you need to remove them from the server first, etc. Link to comment
MurrayW Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 For the EARS drives you need to run WDIDLE3 (at least I did for mine, otherwise load cycle count will be very high). From the WD site, it looks like this is only to be used on some of their drives. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113 This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0 Link to comment
brandon Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 For the EARS drives you need to run WDIDLE3 (at least I did for mine, otherwise load cycle count will be very high). Can you expand on this a bit? Where did you get the software, did the disks need to be empty to update, did you need to remove them from the server first, etc. Check the SMART (smartctl) report for your EARS drives. Check what value the 'load_cycle_count' is. It's probably really high. These drives are rated for 300k cycles over a lifetime. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357 How-to: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/Disable_WDGreen_HeadParking.htm Link to comment
brandon Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 For the EARS drives you need to run WDIDLE3 (at least I did for mine, otherwise load cycle count will be very high). From the WD site, it looks like this is only to be used on some of their drives. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113 This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1000FYPS-01ZKB0, WD7500AYPS-01ZKB0, WD7501AYPS-01ZKB0 http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357 (link to download location at bottom... it links to the same download link you posted... when you run the program, it recognizes the EARS drives and will change the settings for them) Link to comment
dgaschk Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 I'm running a EARS drive and the load cycle count is not very high at all. I'd recommend monitoring the load cycle count and see if it grows much faster than the power-on hours. If it does you can always WDIDLE it later. This problem does not effect all drives. Link to comment
brandon Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 What firmware are you running? I just bought an EARS drive for $70US last week (in Canada) and it's still CC34. It got to about 1000 load cycles within 2-3 days before I took out the drive and flashed it. I'm wondering if CC35's are being seen on new drives in North America yet. Link to comment
SSD Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 What firmware are you running? I just bought an EARS drive for $70US last week (in Canada) and it's still CC34. It got to about 1000 load cycles within 2-3 days before I took out the drive and flashed it. I'm wondering if CC35's are being seen on new drives in North America yet. EARS running CC34? Link to comment
brandon Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Ooops, mixed up the thread lol. For some reason I thought it was Seagate. I didn't have my morning coffee yet. But I bought some 2TB EARS drives and some 2TB Seagate LPs (two different unRAID setups), but are afflicted by their respective issues (head parking). They also had the Samsung F4's for $70 at a different local store, but those also have problems. It seems like the only ones that don't have any issues, the Hitachi's, are the ones that cost more Link to comment
bigup Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 ive just received a brand new 2tb EARS drive which is made in march 2011 ive grabbed the wdidle3 util, what setting should i set it at? disable or a certain time? how do i tell if my drive is effected? i want to do this first before i fit it into my unraid server, will be used as parity. Link to comment
dgaschk Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 There is no way of knowing if it is effected until the problem starts. Link to comment
Superorb Posted April 1, 2011 Share Posted April 1, 2011 Ooops, mixed up the thread lol. For some reason I thought it was Seagate. I didn't have my morning coffee yet. But I bought some 2TB EARS drives and some 2TB Seagate LPs (two different unRAID setups), but are afflicted by their respective issues (head parking). They also had the Samsung F4's for $70 at a different local store, but those also have problems. It seems like the only ones that don't have any issues, the Hitachi's, are the ones that cost more They do have issues, but flashing the Samsung drives or doing the EARS Utility is very easy. I wouldn't really call it a problem, maybe an extra step, but certainly not a problem. Link to comment
MurrayW Posted April 17, 2011 Author Share Posted April 17, 2011 I had more peace of mind doing it from my Windows machine where I could easily disconnect all disks that were not to be updated. I updated firmware on two Samsung F4 disks. Where did you find the firmware update? I've been all over the samsung site searching for firmware updates and can't find any for my HD203WI. Thanks Link to comment
Superorb Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 I had more peace of mind doing it from my Windows machine where I could easily disconnect all disks that were not to be updated. I updated firmware on two Samsung F4 disks. Where did you find the firmware update? I've been all over the samsung site searching for firmware updates and can't find any for my HD203WI. Thanks It has been posted several times here, just search for "JP1" and you should be able to find it. EDIT: My mistake, I just assumed you meant the F4 drive when you mentioned Samsung firmware. I'm not aware of any firmware for the 1.5TB drives. I have both BTW Link to comment
jeff.lebowski Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 I had more peace of mind doing it from my Windows machine where I could easily disconnect all disks that were not to be updated. I updated firmware on two Samsung F4 disks. Where did you find the firmware update? I've been all over the samsung site searching for firmware updates and can't find any for my HD203WI. Thanks I updated these: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI, not the HD203WI. I can't confirm they are the same firmware. Link to comment
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