topic Re: HDD Firmware upgrades in Disk

HDD Firmware upgrades

Stuman333 — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 04:51:28 GMT

Hi Guys,

We have had some recent HDD Failures on our HP Universal 72GB U320 10k drives, our Tech support have suggested upgrading to the firmware on the disks to the latest revision. I've not needed to do this before so I’m a little concerned that it may leave me with a lot of blank disks afterwards.

Has anyone had a lot of experience upgrading firmware on hard disks?

Am I being a paranoid freak?

Is there a safe reversion path?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Re: HDD Firmware upgrades

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:47:06 GMT

I've done a few upgrades to Fibre Channel disks and I know that a colleague has done SCSI disk updates as well. As far as I can tell, all upgrades went without problems, but being paranoid is the right way!

You *must* have a full, verified backup before you proceed. The disk may not be 'blank' after a failed upgrade, but a dead disk with corrupted firmware won't give you access to your data and you can't downgrade a dead disk either.

Re: HDD Firmware upgrades

e4services — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 11:06:32 GMT

So your "tech" told you to flash the drive firmware to try and correct failures? Are these predictive failures and you bring the drive back online or a real failure. We would not flash a hard drive unless you are correcting a documented corrected problem with your existing firmware.
Note: Drive manufacturers do not support flashing their firmware anymore.

They should replace the drive if it is under warranty.

Re: HDD Firmware upgrades

Andrew Merritt_2 — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 03:57:16 GMT

What system is your disk connected to, and what OS is it running?

Andrew

Re: HDD Firmware upgrades

Stuman333 — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:31:22 GMT

The OS Is NetWare 5.1,

The disks fail, insight reports the failure the spare kicks in then we replace the drive. If we have one more failure in the next week or so the company we purchased them of said they will replace the batch.

Cheers for all the input guys