Hi,

I recently acquired 4 x ST6000NM0034 drives. I already had 2 of these exact same drives. They are 6TB SAS drives.

The 2 that I already had have standard Seagate firmware on them... but the newly acquired ones have NETAPP firmware on them. I was able to successfully re-format them to 512 (they were 520), and now they are recognized, but I can't seem to overwrite the NETAPP firmware with the generic Seagate firmware.

I downloaded the appropriate firmware from Seagate and verified that it works - I updated my existing 2 disks to the newer firmware without issue. I used sg_write_buffer to do the firmware update, it worked perfectly, and the drives reflect the updated firmware.

But when I attempt to update the disks with the NETAPP firmware to the seagate firmware, it fails with some sort of "sense" error. I'm guessing that there is a check in place by the existing firmware that is preventing it from updating.

I can provide the exact error when I'm back home if that helps...

Does anyone have any advice? I'm guessing that some parameters in the .LOD file probably need tweaked so that the existing NETAPP firmware doesn't reject it... I'm hoping someone here has experience with this.

I've ready articles where some folks accomplished the reverse -- flashing a generic drive to the NETAPP firmware, but haven't found any answers on how to go back to generic.

I really need to get the Seagate firmware on them, because with the NETAPP firmware, the drive trip temperature is only 40 degrees C. With the Seagate firmware, it's 60 degrees C - SAME EXACT DRIVE - same model number and everything. In my system, the drives are a little over 40 degrees C without being utilized, so they are already past the trip temperature of the NETAPP firmware.

Any help or advice is appreciated.

Thanks

Here is the error from sg_write_buffer:

root@pve1:/tmp# sg_write_buffer -v --in=/tmp/firmware.lod --length=1662976 --mode=5 /dev/sg10
sending single write buffer, mode=0x5, mpsec=0, id=0, offset=0, len=1662976
Write buffer cdb: 3b 05 00 00 00 00 19 60 00 00
Write buffer:
Descriptor format, current; Sense key: Illegal Request
ASC=26, vendor specific qualification ASCQ=99 (hex)
Descriptor type: Field replaceable unit code: 0x3f
Descriptor type: Vendor specific [0x80]
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Write buffer failed: Illegal request, type: sense key, apart from Invalid opcode
root@pve1:/tmp#

Here is what it looks like when I flash one of the identical drives that doesn't have NETAPP firmware on it:

root@pve1:/tmp# sg_write_buffer -v --in=/tmp/firmware.lod --length=1662976 --mode=5 /dev/sg14
sending single write buffer, mode=0x5, mpsec=0, id=0, offset=0, len=1662976
Write buffer cdb: 3b 05 00 00 00 00 19 60 00 00
root@pve1:/tmp#

Here is SMARTCTL output for the NETAPP drive:

root@pve1:~# smartctl -i /dev/sg11
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.34-1-pve] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: NETAPP
Product: X316_SMKRE06TA07
Revision: NA01
Compliance: SPC-4
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000c50083aaafab
Serial number: Z4D2CZLB
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Sun May 14 13:39:00 2023 EDT

Does anyone have any advice?

Some searching... Voila!
https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=40915

Thanks. I actually did extensive searching, but did not find this. This appears to be a paid service.

Do you have the details / cost? Because if it is extremely cheap, I might consider it. Otherwise, I will simply return these 4 disks to the seller on eBay. They were advertised as Seagate drives, not NetApp branded disks.

I was hoping to find a do-it-yourself solution.

Thanks in advance.