Upgrade Drive Firmware


mattekure

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7 hours ago, mattekure said:

I have a couple of Seagate drives that need firmware updates but I'm not sure how to go about it.  The instructions on the site involve downloading an ISO, burning a CD and booting from it but my server doesn't have a CD drive.  Is there any way to do this easily like from the command line? 


You can create a bootable USB flash drive for the Seagate firmware update utility.  I did this not too long ago on my unRAID server to update a couple Seagate drives.  Read the firmware notes about possible existing data issues - create backups!  A USB stick can be prepared from Windows using Rufus which would be the easiest way, or from the command line on unRAID with a few extra steps.

--edit

To prepare the bootable USB from command line in unRAID, install p7zip from the Nerd Pack plugin.  Make a folder somewhere to work in that you can delete when done.  Download the bootable ISO firmware file from Seagate into the new folder.  Use p7zip to extract the contents of the iso into the new folder, example:

7z x ./Barracuda-ALL-GRCC4H.iso

Find the '.ima' file and rename it to '.img'.  Insert a clean USB thumb drive into a USB port and use 'dmesg' or the log in the unRAID GUI to determine the device name (ex: /dev/sdx).  After determining the new USB drive device name and you have the renamed '.img' file (ex: GR-CC4H.img), use 'dd' to write the image.  Example:

dd if=./GR-CC4H.img of=/dev/sdx bs=1M

--

If you have boot menu capability in your BIOS that you can select the boot disk on start use it to boot using the new Seagate USB drive you just created after clean reboot.  If don't have that capability clean power-down and swap out the unRAID flash for the Seagate flash.

 

One other thing to note is the target HDD to be upgraded will need to be on a standard motherboard SATA port for this , not HBA.  If using a HBA temporarily use a SATA cable to connect the drive to a standard motherboard SATA port to upgrade the firmware.

 

Edited by unevent
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  • 3 months later...

Will updating a drive's firmware cause any data loss?

 

If not, is it safe to update the firmware if the drive is part of the array? That is, will any portions of the disk be changed (such as a signature) that would invalidate parity?

 

In case the answer depends on the drive/manufacturer, I'd like to update a WD Red WD60EFRX from version 68MYMN0 to 68MYMN1.

 

Thanks,

- Eric

 

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34 minutes ago, eweitzman said:

Will updating a drive's firmware cause any data loss?

 

If not, is it safe to update the firmware if the drive is part of the array? That is, will any portions of the disk be changed (such as a signature) that would invalidate parity?

 

In case the answer depends on the drive/manufacturer, I'd like to update a WD Red WD60EFRX from version 68MYMN0 to 68MYMN1.

 

Thanks,

- Eric

 

 

I'd suggesting going to the drive mfg user forum and ask the question there.  Most spinner firmwares I have done have not resulted in data loss, but why risk it?  Have backups just in case.

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