flash Lenovo's Toshiba HDD FW without Lenovo HBA card

[frontwing]

I have a Lenovo-branded Toshiba MG08ACA16TE with stock firmware TJ82, bought from retired cryptofarms.
Lenovo has released updated firmware TJ84, but ThinkSystem FW package requires a Lenovo SAS HBA card to flash.
If you don't attach your drive to a Lenovo SAS HBA card, the updater won't detect the drive.

Luckily, Lenovo has not encrytped the FW image itself, so I finally found a way to bypass the restriction.
I modded Toshiba firmware updater from Dell's XG5 SSD, and it updated my drive to TJ84 successfully.

Modded TJ84 is here:
https://mega.nz/file/oMcR2A6I#SmOn95HLr ... 24TSaFOyUk

If you have a Lenovo's Toshiba enterprise-class drive, you can extract FW image from ThinkSystem FW package, then update it with my modded updater. Details described below:

1. Find if your drive has an updated firmware.
Go to Lenovo site and find lnvgy_fw_drives_all package. Open the .chg file for changelog, Ctrl+F to search your drive model, then you will see the updated version number.
https://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/us ... me=Storage

2. Download the FW package and extract it.
EXE package can be extracted by itself, and bin (Linux) package can be extracted with 7-zip.

3. Go to extracted folder, open flashdrv.bin with Notepad, Ctrl+F to search your drive model, then you will see the updated version number and corresponding FW file (*.ftd for Toshiba).

4. Download my modded Toshiba updater and extract it with WinRAR or 7-zip.

5. Put your FW file into extracted folder, open TFMUpdate-config.xml with Notepad and you will see the updater config.
Just modify it referencing my explanation, then save and close it.

6. Turn off your antivirus/HIPS software (since the updater needs to temporily register a boot driver), then run update.bat.

7. Accept the license, choose your drive and confirm. Your PC will be rebooted.
Before the logon screen appears, it will boot into updater and begin to flash.
It will show your drive model and update progress “97%……100%……”, then a FAIL message. Don't worry.
After reboot you can detect your drive with AIDA64/CrystalDiskInfo/Hard Disk Sentinel or whatever you like - to see if update is successful.
Since the drive itself does not accept an incorrect FW image, a FAIL message does not mean your drive bricked.

[fzabkar]

Thanks!

[frontwing]

modded TJ84 has been uploaded to Files corner: http://files.hddguru.com/download/Firmw ... s/Toshiba/

[napalm_atx]

Here is TJ85 https://support.lenovo.com/ru/en/downlo ... or-windows

[frontwing]

modded TJ85 is here: https://mega.nz/file/9ZMFyRbI#a0GZ1diKv ... T3bYFgoVzo
and Files corner. TJ84 link removed.

napalm_atx, thanks for notifying!
I found TJ85 can be normally updated on TJ84 with SUCCESS message, while TJ84 always gave a FAIL message on my three TJ82 drives (but they did updated). Interesting...