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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Firmware update NetApp disks

June 9th, 2026, 11:27

Hi guys
I hope I can find some help here with the Gurus ;-)

I have a bunch of NetApp 8TB NL-SAS disks from WD, HGST and Seagate.
Disks from NetApp are typically 520bps which isn't a problem to convert to 512.
But I would also like to patch the firmware, so that it doesn't show "X318" as the SCSI INQ.
This was possible on the WD disks which are now reporting: HGST HUS728T8TAL5204
But for some reason this is harder to do with the HGST and Seagate drives...
The HGST PN is: HUH721008AL5204
The Seagate PN is: ST8000NM0075

What I have done in order to "fix" the WD disk, is to download the NetApp (ONTAP) disk firmware file, and download the same for the NetApp E-Series, they share some disk PN and this is one of them.
The E-Series uses 512bps and disks report their original SCSI INQ while the ONTAP FW reports NETAPP X318.....
The ONTAP firmware file is "clean" and I am update the disks with this file, no problem.
The E-Series firmware file has a header which you need to peel off... I did this comparing it to the ONTAP firmware... and as mentioned, this worked fine with the WD disks...
But no dice on the others...

Does anyone have a clue as to verify the FW file? Maybe there is a checksum that I need to update?
Or.. the drives are "vendor locked", but how can I be sure that this is the case?

I have tried with "sg_write_buffer" and "openSeaChest_Firmware" tools...

Hints are very welcome...

Re: Firmware update NetApp disks

Yesterday, 5:48

A little update... I managed to get HUH721008AL5204 working.. that is X318_HLBRE08TA07 -> HUH721008AL5204
But X318_SMKPE08TA07 I think is a Seagate disk which there was never released a new firmware version (from NetApp)...
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