Firmware questions for seagate

[saxleo]

Hi guys,

I have some drives that are giving a weird number for the firmware revision. I have replacement drives with good firmware as donors. I want to replace the firmware but am unsure as to which modules are the important ones to switch. Specifics for the drives...These are seagate 7200.12 family drives. Also is there a way to extract that and make a little firmware updater like seagate has in a standalone iso. I have salvation data tools to play with and obviously any free software at my disposal. Thanks

[fzabkar]

AISI, the obvious approach would be to take a good donor and dump the firmware modules, both in SA and ROM, before and after a firmware update. Then compare the two sets. Or am I missing something?

The only stumbling block may be if SeaFlash rejects your drive's package version, in which case the solution is to explicitly specify the drive's parameters on the command line.

[BlackST]

7200.12 with SD tools and free stuff = half disaster. Try to rebuild a .12 with SD and see if it works completely in all functions, same if some parts in fw got lost (even on NH2+ , try to write back ...) . Moreover, SD has his way and HEAVY limits when saving / writing . Good luck.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

7200.12 with SD tools and free stuff = half disaster. Try to rebuild a .12 with SD and see if it works completely in all functions, same if some parts in fw got lost (even on NH2+ , try to write back ...) . Moreover, SD has his way and HEAVY limits when saving / writing . Good luck.

Well BL ,
With Sd Tools i Have God you never know which wire is loose and when hell breaks loose even if you know 100% whats wrong and how to rectify it

[BlackST]

I have no problems but I know what is wrong in each case, what is doable and what not. One thing is sure : depending on what you want to do, the real alternative is make your own tool, sadly. Just discovered another annoyance on SD on Ata IV ...

[saxleo]

Hmm...This is sadly a dissapointing response. I was hoping it could be more straight forward like

module 0001 is id
module 0002 is g list
module 0003 is firmware
copy 7 modules

Obviously take none of the above as truth I just wrote that as an example of what I was hoping for. Does anyone know any module that are always used as Glist? I would like to even just start ruling out some modules. I dont want to start playing by myself until I know I have at least some information. Or does it just change with that series so it is anybodies guess everytime?

[poehere]

If you have the SD doctor start reading SD manual to find out what is what inside the HDD. Or second start to do some R&D on modules and what they do. BlackST is very correct on this one and SD tool has bugs in it and can not do some thing becasue they are using wrong codes to do it with. Sad again is the fact that on the older version a lot of this worked which now on the new one does not work. BTW there is 3rd party manuals to purchase for this if you can not figure out what SD is trying to say in theirs.

[fzabkar]

Hmm...This is sadly a dissapointing response. I was hoping it could be more straight forward like

module 0001 is id
module 0002 is g list
module 0003 is firmware
copy 7 modules

I can't answer your question as to why "some drives are giving a weird number for the firmware revision", but if you wish to determine which modules are modified by Seagate's firmware updater, then what is preventing you from following my suggestion?

Seagate's CC49 update can be downloaded here:

Barracuda 7200.12 Firmware Update [213891]:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... NewLang=en

Here is the CD ISO version:
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... L-CC49.iso

Here is the decoded configuration file:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/PH-CC49.TXT

There are 3 firmware image files, PHCC491H.LOD, PHCC492H.LOD, and PHCC494H.LOD. These appear to correspond to models with 1, 2, or 4 heads, respectively. If the updater rejects your drive, then you need to determine which of these LOD images is consistent with your drive's package version, and then use a command line such as the following:

FDL497A.EXE -m Pharaoh -f PHCC492H.LOD -i ST3500418AS -s -x -b -v -a 20

I presume that the LOD file may have a structure such as the following, but that's just wild speculation:

header / checksum
module #A
module #B
module #C

[saxleo]

Thanks Fzakbar, I see what you mean now. I thought you meant compare 2 drives so i figured it wouldn't work because glist and plist and other mod would always be different. Now I see what u mean. Will try. Thanks