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Re: Drive Firmware Important?

 
Benjamin W. Hill
Occasional Advisor

Drive Firmware Important?

Proliant 6000
Smart Array 3200
Smart 2P
3 drive cages, two on 3200, one on Smart 2P.
I have recently added larger drives to this system, replacing all but the four 9.1 gig compaq drive where the system partition and OS reside in a RAID 5 array.
My question is do I need to update the firmware on the new drives(IBM DGHS 18-Y, 18.2) since they did not come from Compaq?
Is there a utility that will show me what firmware the drives currently have?
Regards,
ben
Measure twice, cut once.
4 REPLIES 4
Claude Boileau
Valued Contributor

Re: Drive Firmware Important?

Hi Benjamin

Its always a good to upgrade firmware. But for the utility to check firmware on IBM drive, I would suggest looking on the IBM site for such a utility and for the firmware upgrade as well.

regards
e4services
Honored Contributor

Re: Drive Firmware Important?

Why would you WANT to upgrade the firmware? You have a need or a problem with these drives?
Anyway, I am pretty sure Hitachi/IBM does not supply any Updates to Firmware.
Hot Swap Hard Drives
Benjamin W. Hill
Occasional Advisor

Re: Drive Firmware Important?

I was able to find out the firmware version by going into ACU. The reason I wondered if the version was important was that I had a couple of drives reported as bad. I found the firmware update and information that stated that sometimes a drive is erroneously reported as "bad" by the Array controller software due to out of date firmware. Thanks,
ben
Measure twice, cut once.
Roy Main
Valued Contributor

Re: Drive Firmware Important?

That advisory regarding updating your drive's firmware because of possible false failures should only affect Compaq/HP branded drives. That is because the Compaq/HP drives have special information that works in conjunction with the controller to monitor failures. With the IBM drives they should only be up to date to cover any firmware bugs that may be present in the old firmware.