2 TB Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS Firmware Issues


Recommended Posts

Zack84a I will have to try that, can you post some instructions on how you pulled it off.

 

I actually did it months ago, so I don't remember the exact steps.. I do remember I pulled my unraid flash drive, and set boot to usb cd-rom.  From there I followed the instructions that was posted earlier in this thread.  It is very very likely that you will have to force the upgrade (ie escape out of the initial menu), and force it to update the drive via the command you give it. 

 

I don't remember having to doing anything funky or at of the ordinary to accomplish it.

 

If you have any trouble let me know and I can get it setup again to see if there was anything special to get it to work.

Link to comment
  • Replies 72
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

For those who are forcing their newly acquired ST32000542AS drives to firmware CC35, are your drives made in China?

 

Just asking since last month I forced a ST32000542AS made in China to C35 and it failed preclear and so I had to RMA it.

 

I also purchased two ST32000542AS drives for $69.99 from NewEgg during the recent Black Friday sale and they both just passed preclear.  Now I am debating whether or not to force the firmware to C35 and then running preclear again.

 

I also have a ST31000520AS (1TB) with CC32 firmware and another ST32000542AS (made in China) with CC34 with data in my unRAID.  I am just debating if I should update the firmware to CC35 too.

 

Link to comment

I've recieved 5 this week from two vendors: Newegg and TigerDirect.  All 5 have been from china and I forced the firmware upgrade on all 5.

 

The first has passed preclear and has been my parity drive for a few days.  The second has passed and the 3rd is being precleared now.  

 

The only think I noticed so far is that since changing out the parity drive I've see choppy transfers when copying files to the array.

In my attempt to check the network connection I installed a second nic and a different cable but the transfer is still choppy.

Windows_Task_Manager_2010-12-03_19-53-50.jpg.b243d3aad6c2345873c8c5aa1a204728.jpg

Link to comment

I've recieved 5 this week from two vendors: Newegg and TigerDirect.  All 5 have been from china and I forced the firmware upgrade on all 5.

 

The first has passed preclear and has been my parity drive for a few days.  The second has passed and the 3rd is being precleared now.  

 

The only think I noticed so far is that since changing out the parity drive I've see choppy transfers when copying files to the array.

In my attempt to check the network connection I installed a second nic and a different cable but the transfer is still choppy.

 

My transfers have looked like that for a while, but I am still on 4.5.4 I believe (waiting for 4.6final). I thought I read somewhere not to worry about it, but if it is abnormal, I'm right with you.

Link to comment

I bought 2 of these (Made in China, both came loaded with CC34 and forced an upgrade to CC35 without issue). Both have been pre-cleared and I'm at the point of adding them to the array. However, I have a problem with one of them. One of the drives is slightly larger than the other and all my other 2TB drives, including parity:

 

Parity: WD2001FASS 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #1: 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #2: 1,953,514,552

 

Of course, unRAID (4.5.6) doesn't like that #2 being larger than the parity. Anything I can do here besides swapping it for the parity drive? I really don't want to go that route.

Link to comment

I bought 2 of these (Made in China, both came loaded with CC34 and forced an upgrade to CC35 without issue). Both have been pre-cleared and I'm at the point of adding them to the array. However, I have a problem with one of them. One of the drives is slightly larger than the other and all my other 2TB drives, including parity:

 

Parity: WD2001FASS 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #1: 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #2: 1,953,514,552

 

Of course, unRAID (4.5.6) doesn't like that #2 being larger than the parity. Anything I can do here besides swapping it for the parity drive? I really don't want to go that route.

Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard? I'm guessing you do. (or connected the drive to one when clearing it)

 

Check out "HPA" in the wiki.  http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Topical_Index#HPA

You probably have an issue to deal with in your BIOS configuration and all your disks that appear a tiny bit smaller have a host-protected-area defined.  This is basically a time-bomb waiting to hit you when you least need complications. (as when replacing a failed drive)  Many with an older BIOS that does not have the HPA feature disabled by default have replaced their motherboard.  Others were able to upgrade the BIOS.

 

Joe L.

Link to comment

I bought 2 of these (Made in China, both came loaded with CC34 and forced an upgrade to CC35 without issue). Both have been pre-cleared and I'm at the point of adding them to the array. However, I have a problem with one of them. One of the drives is slightly larger than the other and all my other 2TB drives, including parity:

 

Parity: WD2001FASS 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #1: 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #2: 1,953,514,552

 

Of course, unRAID (4.5.6) doesn't like that #2 being larger than the parity. Anything I can do here besides swapping it for the parity drive? I really don't want to go that route.

Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard? I'm guessing you do. (or connected the drive to one when clearing it)

 

Check out "HPA" in the wiki.   http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Topical_Index#HPA

You probably have an issue to deal with in your BIOS configuration and all your disks that appear a tiny bit smaller have a host-protected-area defined.  This is basically a time-bomb waiting to hit you when you least need complications. (as when replacing a failed drive)   Many with an older BIOS that does not have the HPA feature disabled by default have replaced their motherboard.  Others were able to upgrade the BIOS.

 

Joe L.

 

Joe, that's correct. I do have a Gigabyte m57sli-s4 rev 1 board using the F15D BIOS. The parity drive is connected directly to the motherboard while these two particular Seagates are connected to a Rosewill RC-218 HBA (Marvell 88SX7042 chipset).

 

I don't see a way to enable/disable HPA in the BIOS.

 

After rebooting and looking at the syslog, I can confirm HPA is active on 3 of my 4 2TB drives.

 

This board has lots of quirks when it comes to storage so  it looks like it might be time for a new motherboard.

 

Thanks!

Link to comment

I bought 2 of these (Made in China, both came loaded with CC34 and forced an upgrade to CC35 without issue). Both have been pre-cleared and I'm at the point of adding them to the array. However, I have a problem with one of them. One of the drives is slightly larger than the other and all my other 2TB drives, including parity:

 

Parity: WD2001FASS 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #1: 1,953,513,496

ST32000542AS #2: 1,953,514,552

 

Of course, unRAID (4.5.6) doesn't like that #2 being larger than the parity. Anything I can do here besides swapping it for the parity drive? I really don't want to go that route.

Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard? I'm guessing you do. (or connected the drive to one when clearing it)

 

Check out "HPA" in the wiki.   http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Topical_Index#HPA

You probably have an issue to deal with in your BIOS configuration and all your disks that appear a tiny bit smaller have a host-protected-area defined.  This is basically a time-bomb waiting to hit you when you least need complications. (as when replacing a failed drive)   Many with an older BIOS that does not have the HPA feature disabled by default have replaced their motherboard.  Others were able to upgrade the BIOS.

 

Joe L.

 

Joe, that's correct. I do have a Gigabyte m57sli-s4 rev 1 board using the F15D BIOS. The parity drive is connected directly to the motherboard while these two particular Seagates are connected to a Rosewill RC-218 HBA (Marvell 88SX7042 chipset).

 

I don't see a way to enable/disable HPA in the BIOS.

 

After rebooting and looking at the syslog, I can confirm HPA is active on 3 of my 4 2TB drives.

 

This board has lots of quirks when it comes to storage so  it looks like it might be time for a new motherboard.

 

Thanks!

Check for a BIOS update first... might save you a bit of work in swapping out the motherboard.

 

If you do go through the process of removing the HPA do it one drive at a time, let that one disk get re-constructed, then once parity is re-established, do the next disk in turn.  If you try to do it to multiple disks at once the array will not start as they will all be detected as different disks.

 

Joe L.

Link to comment

Joe,

 

I'm at the latest BIOS. Even with enabling the advanced settings page (CTRL-F1) there doesn't seem to be a way to disable HPA. From my quick research, this should only be a problem if HPA is on the parity drive. So should it be safe enough to move the parity drive to a higher port on the board (currently on the first port) and move one of my other HPA'd drives in it's place? Therefore, HPA is found by the BIOS and the other drives shouldn't be touched.

Link to comment

Joe,

 

I'm at the latest BIOS. Even with enabling the advanced settings page (CTRL-F1) there doesn't seem to be a way to disable HPA. From my quick research, this should only be a problem if HPA is on the parity drive. So should it be safe enough to move the parity drive to a higher port on the board (currently on the first port) and move one of my other HPA'd drives in it's place? Therefore, HPA is found by the BIOS and the other drives shouldn't be touched.

It is a problem no matter which drive it is on.

 

You can swap the drives for now, but look for a different motherboard.

The problem arrives when a disk it is currently detecting the HPA dies and it decides to put one on a different drive.  To unRAID you then have a failed drive AND another different drive... effectively a two drive failure and the array will not start.

 

Joe L.

 

Link to comment

Is HPA only a problem with Gigabyte boards? My Unraid has a BIOSTAR TA785G3HD and the computer I will use for updating the Bios is an Asus P5Q-EM

 

As far as I know, yes.  I believe there are some Asus boards that also have HPA options, but they are never turned on by default so they aren't a problem.

Link to comment

Is HPA only a problem with Gigabyte boards? My Unraid has a BIOSTAR TA785G3HD and the computer I will use for updating the Bios is an Asus P5Q-EM

 

As far as I know, yes.  I believe there are some Asus boards that also have HPA options, but they are never turned on by default so they aren't a problem.

 

Yes, gigabyte are the only boards with the problem.  There are no Asus boards that have the problem.

Link to comment

This updating firmware is turning into a hassle. I only have sata on my unraid server which only has ver 4.6 and nothing else. I don't have a cd or dvd drive in the box. All my other computers are mac or ide. I have an external blue ray burner in a vantec enclosure connected by usb 2.0. I tried to burn the iso and connect it using the blue ray burner but it doesn't appear the bios sees it. Im guessing its because there are no drivers installed? The usb keyboard shows up. Short of buying a sata card to put in my old ide box anyone have any other ideas?

Link to comment

In the event there were others like me that didn't have an optical drive in their unRAID server and didn't want to or couldn't move the drive to another machine to update the firmware...

 

I picked up this external CD-ROM from Amazon, less than $12:

http://www.amazon.com/External-Slim-CD-ROM-Drive-Black/dp/B001B1796U/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1292287589&sr=8-3

 

Worked fine on my already-in-use disk.  Though, like everyone else, I did have to force the flash.  I noticed the software was dated in February 2010, so my guess is until they release another firmware version, you'll definitely have to force it for this model.

Link to comment

I have to be doing something wrong since everyone else seems to not have a problem updating their drives. Maybe I am not choosing the right settings in image burn software. I dl the iso file to the desktop then copied it to the cd. What is the correct settings to choose in image burn.

 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.