Does Your Hard Drive Need A Firmware Update?

Firmware Update Many thousands of hard drives enter the market with any given version of firmware in common.

Thousands of drives have the same firmware version when they are sold.
External, SATA, and ATA drives that are used in PCs and for personal storage pass through extensive testing before they leave the factory.  Therefore, they are not designed for firmware updates in the field.

Firmware updates

Performing a firmware update can be risky by itself even in the best of situations.  For example, a power outage during a firmware update carries a very good possibility of ruining the drive.  External, Serial ATA, and ATA drives are not designed for field firmware updates by end users.

Very often, system or device driver issues cause symptoms that are incorrectly called “firmware problems.”

What is firmware?

Firmware is defined as a computer program that is hard-coded into the hard drive and contains its basic operational storage programming.  Another way to think of it is that firmware is a software middleman that allows your hardware to talk to software (i.e., Windows operating systems, etc).  For a hard drive, firmware is a program that governs the behavior and factory settings, even the identity, of that drive.  Any drive that comes out of the factory and is in use in a computer or server has firmware installed on it from the factory.

What is the relationship between firmware and drivers?

Drivers tell the operating system how to behave. Firmware tells the drive how to behave. Seagate provides no drivers for most products in any modern Windows or MacOS operating system – the drivers must come from Microsoft, Apple, or the motherboard.

Why not just put firmware updates online with public links?

There are four main reasons:

  1. Field support for firmware updates involves robust and compatible tools, backwards compatibility and data safety.  These features are designed into Enterprise class SAS, Fibre Channel and SAS interface disc drives.Desktop and Mobile SATA and PATA drives are not designed for firmware updates in the field in the vast majority of cases.  Very often what looks like a newer version of firmware, by the number, may actually be incompatible with previous versions.  If incompatible firmware is copied to an earlier version of the same model, data loss or drive ruin will result.  Performing a firmware update can be risky by itself even in the best of situations.  For example, a power outage during a firmware update carries a very good possibility of ruining the drive.  This is why Seagate uses a warranty exchange process, if necessary, to update SATA and PATA drive firmware.
  2. In most cases, when a hard drive is thought to be malfunctioning, it is an operating system (i.e. Windows) issue or a problem with a software program.  Firmware is easy to blame when a hard drive does not perform as a user expects, when its installation does not proceed exactly as expected, or a myriad of other situations, or even when a drive diagnostic reports bad sectors.  In order to protect the user, Seagate restricts access to firmware updates.
  3. Some drives that still bear the Seagate name on the label but are actually the property of an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) (such as Dell or Hewlett-Packard [HP]) might have unique firmware on them.  OEMs purchase large amounts of bare drives from Seagate and put their own firmware on them, at which point the drive is sold as part of a larger piece of equipment, such as a server or a personal or notebook computer.  Often the OEMs load specialized firmware in order to be able to build in performance enhancements that are specific to their product.However, sometimes these servers or computers are disassembled and the hard drives end up being sold separately from a third-party technology reseller or even on eBay, and because these drives have “Seagate” on the label and sometimes even the same model number (the “ST” number) as standard drives sold in a retail store, it can be easy to confuse the two.  The specialized firmware on some of these drives sometimes works outside of their original equipment and sometimes does not.  In very many cases, performing a firmware update with “standard” firmware would violate Seagate’s legal agreements with the OEM, thus voiding both the OEM and Seagate warranty, and carries a good possibility of ruining the OEM drive.
  4. Very seldom does a firmware update increase the drive’s performance. Most firmware updates are made available in order to solve a problem with timing, in order to synchronize with the timing of the system’s communication lines.

In summary, it is always best to seek other avenues of troubleshooting the hard drive and the surrounding system before resorting to questions of firmware.  If you suspect a drive may be defective, test it using Seatools.

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Hard Drive Firmware Update/Recover by Yourself

firmware update We know that up to 60% of hard disk drive failures are caused by firmware corruption. Just a little damage is enough to render a hard drive totally unusable. In such cases hard drive becomes inaccessible and sometimes can completely disappear from the system.

“For example, a hard drive can lose its parameters such as device model number and capacity. When it happens, there is no access to partitions and files. In most cases the problem is caused by firmware damage.”

What is firmware?
Firmware is software which is embedded in a piece of hardware. You can think of firmware simply as “software for hardware”.

Where the firmware stores?
Modern disks normally have their firmware codes located on data platters and also the PCB board.

Why firmware is so important?
Without the firmware, no communication will be possible between the PC system and the hard disk. If the firmware area is corrupted, the drive will appear to have failed even all the electrical and mechanical components are still fully functional.

The symptoms of firmware corruption:
1. Drive powers up, but is not recognized /defected by the computer
2. Drive powers up, but is recognized wrongly, sometimes with nonsensical characters, manufacture alias (Such as N40p for Maxtor 6Y and etc ;);
3. Drive freezes during booting up;
4. Drive detect in wrong Capacity, such as 80 GB detected as 1Mb;
5. S.M.A.R.T error;
6. Drive is locked by human error; such as Hitachi hard drive by a drop; it is a self protection method of HDD design;
7. Drive clicking ;( it can be caused by firmware too, the heads try to read the SA on platters and can not positing)

How to update/recover hard drive firmware by yourself?

In fact, in many drives the firmware can be updated under software control, very much the same way that a flash BIOS works. Unlike the system BIOS, this is only very rarely done, when a particular sort of problem exists with the firmware logic that can be fixed without requiring a physical hardware change. You can check the drive manufacturer’s web site for more details. For Example: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Command Queuing

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on the expensive data recovery tools, such as PC3000 or HD Doctor Suite, how do you recover hard drive firmware corruption? Here are some free firmware recover tools , hope them can help you:

A-FF Repair Station

  • Diagnoses the Firmware Area and hard drive mechanics and displays a short summary of hard drive’s health;
  • Reads the Firmware Area;
  • Extracts and analyzes all firmware structures;
  • Rebuilds damaged parts and writes the firmware back to the drive.

All the operation is absolutely safe to the data (partitions and files) and takes no more than 20 minutes.

Maxtor Firmware Repair 2.0
Aiming at solution for typical firmware malfunction of Maxtor 541DX (2B020H1 2B010H1), which may manifest itself as follows:

  • HDD is not identified or identified by its factory alias “Maxtor Athena”;
  • HDD starts the motor and then hangs.

Seagate Firmware Repair 5.0
Aiming at one-key solution towards typical firmware malfunction of Seagate Barracuda VII drives, which may manifest itself as follows:

  • HDD is not identified or identified incorrectly;
  • HDD starts the motor and then hangs.

Please share your ideas here!

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Hard Drive Firmwares

Definition of firmware:
Since modern hard disks have internal microprocessors, they also have internal “software” that runs them. These routines are what run the control logic and make the drive work. Of course this isn’t really software in the conventional sense, because these instructions are embedded into read-only memory. This code is analogous to the system BIOS: low-level, hardware-based control routines, embedded in ROM. It is usually called firmware, with the word “firm” intending to connote something in between “hard” and “soft”. The functions that run the logic board’s circuitry could be implemented strictly with hardware devices, as was done with early drives. However, this would be expensive and inflexible for today’s sophisticated controllers, since it would make it difficult to update or adapt the logic to match changes in hard disks or the devices they interface with.

Much the way the system BIOS benefits from being in a changeable ROM chip that can be modified relatively easily, the hard disk’s firmware does as well. In fact, in many drives the firmware can be updated under software control, very much the same way that a flash BIOS works. Unlike the system BIOS, this is only very rarely done, when a particular sort of problem exists with the firmware logic that can be fixed without requiring a physical hardware change. You can check the drive manufacturer’s web site for more details.

In short, without the firmware code, no communication will be possible between the PC system and the hard disk.

Where the firmware stores?
Modern disks normally have their firmware codes located on data platters and also the PCB board. If the firmware area is corrupted, the drive will appear to have failed even all the electrical and mechanical components are still fully functional.

You may know the importance of firmware on the HDD function. And know the firmware is like the micro codes between the elements of HDD. And what will it happen if there are some firmware corruptions?

Let’s see the symptoms of firmware corruption before the solutions given:

1. Drive powers up, but is not recognized /defected by the computer
2. Drive powers up, but is recognized wrongly, sometimes with nonsensical characters, manufacture alias (Such as N40p for Maxtor 6Y and etc ;);
3. Drive freezes during booting up;
4. Drive detect in wrong Capacity, such as 80 GB detected as 1Mb;
5. S.M.A.R.T error;
6. Drive is locked by human error; such as Hitachi hard drive by a drop; it is a self protection method of HDD design;
7. Drive clicking ;( it can be caused by firmware too, the heads try to read the SA on platters and can not positing 😉

The firmware is very confidential to common users and the HDD manufacturers will never publish to the public.

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