Force firmware on Seagate ST3750640NS

[Grendizer]

Hi guys,

This is my first post.

I am trying to recover a failed SAN that consists of 48 disks.
12 of those are Seagate ST3750640NS and another 4 are ST3750330NS.

The SAN and drives are NLA/EoL and i have therefore purchased replacement drives online from a distributor.
The problem is that these drives, although identical down to the P/N and Firmware on the labels, differ in installed firmware version.

The drives that died in the SAN have been updated throughout the past the years with OEM firmware.
Putting the newly purchased drives in the shelves and using the SAN storage management software to apply OEM firmware won't work because the firmware found on the new drives is too old.

My options are therefore:

1. Rollback SAN controller firmware, software, ESM etc
2. Update the firmware on the newly purchased drives to that of OEM grade

Option one is just not doable. I canot begin to descibe what a nightmare that would be to carry out in a production environment. Also, i am pretty sure that at some point in the controller firmware, a downgrade is just NOT permissable.
That leaves me with option two.

I downloaded Seagate iso files along with necessary tools to unpack and create bootable USB drives to perform a forced firmware update but it keeps failing.
I am pretty sure i've got all the prerequisites like IDE mode and such are in place but what I'm uncertain of is whether i am using the right software and commands.

So my plea now is to get some help from start to finish in getting new software, and modifying it to allow usage of specific OEM firmware files.
Is that something anyone cares to help me with?

Attached you'll find the two OEM firmware LOD files i need to force onto the two types of drives.

Thanks in advance.

Attachments

Seagate SAN Drives Firmware.zip

(980.37 KiB) Downloaded 699 times

[Grendizer]

Anyone?

[fzabkar]

Do you have the complete firmware update package? This will have the SeaFlash executable (or equivalent), plus the BAT file with the appropriate command lines.

BTW, it is usually not advisable to mix OEM and retail firmware, but since it has worked for you in the past, then I assume it should work again.

[hhddrec]

Not good option a mix of OEM drives an DELL drives, but fzabkar says i think updrade will works fine.

[fzabkar]

See https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Talk:Known_issues

The author writes ...

I've successfully upgraded the firmware on Seagate ES.2s SN05,MA0D -> AN05 using hdparm v9.27 --fwdownload.

I've also used the same kernel+hdparm version to upgrade a ST3500630NS from 3BKS -> 3BKT on a SiI 3132. Firmware from same Dell package.

He warns that Dell's firmware images have headers which need to be stripped off before the update is applied.

[Dmitri]

I am trying to recover a failed SAN that consists of 48 disks.

What's the goal: you need to recover the data from the SAN or just to get it to a working condition?

If that's the former, I'll be happy to help remotely. We've been successfully recovering data from larger corporate storages online.