Hello: I have a WD1600AAJS-60M0A1 that the BIOS does not recognize properly. I have been told that I need to update the firmware, but I can not find it anywhere. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance. Gary

This is incorrect. Who told you this?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by incorrect. If you dont mind, what would your recommendation be. Thanks Gary

You don't need to "update the firmware". My recommendation would be to have it evaluated by a pro.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Appreciate the quick replies... A friend gave me a bunch of these and I just want to format them for windows. I dont have data that needs recovery. Thanks Gary

@ctpackship,

From your last comment it seems you may no longer care, but at least for anyone else reading this thread, then just to reinforce the comments from drc, I suggest you read this thread linked below, including the part about: "Okay, my hard drive is still dead, so how do I rewrite that firmware?"

diy-what-the-big-deal-t12671.html

I would like to add that in 99.9% of cases, "updating the firmware" is not a concept that is relevant to hard drives. I can think of two or three specific recent examples that have had firmware updates (Seagate 7200.11 family 0GB issues, few WDs that don't play well with RAID controllers) but for the vast majority of drives firmware is never "updated".

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

For retail customers, I completely agree. However in my years working in engineering for a large OEM customer of drives, most drives (especially Seagate) had at least one, if not several, firmware update(s) during their life - the bugfixes were sometimes minor (and sometimes not!).

I should have specified, for "normal people"

It seems that a lot of users think of updating the firmware on their hard drive like they would update a motherboard BIOS or something, which is simply not the case

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I see we're in violent agreement that this applies to most people (and that's why I mentioned that agreement for retail customers in my previous reply). It's just that there are firmware updates (that retail customers are unlikely to see or need), in some corporate / OEM environments, that's all.

Well, someone in these environments is probably not likely pop up here asking about how to fix broken drives with a firmware update

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Dell's FTP site has numerous firmware updates for all manufacturers and models. Samsung's SpinPoint F3 and F4 updates are another critical example.

http://ftp.dell.com/fibre-channel/
http://ftp.dell.com/ide/
http://ftp.dell.com/sata/
http://ftp.dell.com/sas-hdd/
http://ftp.dell.com/sas-non-raid/
http://ftp.dell.com/sas-raid/
http://ftp.dell.com/scsi-drv/
http://ftp.dell.com/scsi-non-raid/
http://ftp.dell.com/scsi-raid/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Try testing them with AFF Repair Station online diagnostic software:
http://hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/

Diagnosis is free.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

To make an example, how many of these are actual firmware updates for hard drives? I clicked on a random sample of ten and all I see is AHCI drivers, RAID drivers, controller fw updates, etc.

How many firmware updates can you find on WD's support page (aside from the previously mentioned RAID controller fix) or Seagate's support page (aside from 7200.11-related drives)?

Are you suggesting that users' notion of "upgrading the firmware" on their hard drives to solve problems aside from a very small number of specific and well-documented cases is a correct or relevant notion, or are you just arguing for the sake of it?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Why random? Read the TXT files. And then there are the Toshiba and Samsung updates, plus the MULTI-DEVICE updates that package all the drive manufacturers into one big download.


Some updates are critical, others are performance related. Of course I'm not suggesting that a firmware update will fix the OP's problem, although it may indeed be "firmware" related in the data recovery sense. That's something that AFF Repair Station will hopefully be able to determine.

Here is a significant list of known HDD firmware issues:
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/articles/k/ ... ssues.html

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A backup a day keeps DR away.