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Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: June 21st, 2026, 10:53

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

Hello people.

I purchased a couple of these drives for use in my kludge-tastic home server.

They are intended to be connected to an IBM M5110 as controller flashed to be a "generic" Lsi 2308 IT mode card.

One came with firmware version ISO4, the other with ISO5.

After some fighting, and plugging them in to a Dell h200 that I also purchased (still in ir mode), I managed to get them both up to ISO5, but the "SAS_DRIVE_FIRMWARE_2DDG2_LN_ISO6_A.BIN" refuses to run on these drives.

The error it throws is simply "This update Package is not compatible with your system configuration".

Things I have tried:
Connecting them to the 2308 - same error
Connecting them to the h200 - same error
Creating a virtual machine with a spoofed Dell smbios posing as a Dell r730 with the h200 passed through to the vm running almalinux 9.8 - same error
Extracting the ISO6.fwh file and flashing with sg_write_buffer in a whole lot of variations - rejected
Attempting to update with various methods with the Seagate 003.lod - rejected

Some of these were suggested by googles search ai, but I did check sources.

The problem I am having is they seem to reset after a variable amount of time and get dropped from the bus.

The same ai suggested that ISO6 was made to deal with the droppages.

This is my first time dealing with enterprise HDDs,

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fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: June 21st, 2026, 12:08

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16974
Location: Australia

Here are the links so that people who want to help you don't need to search for the updates like I had to:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-au/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=vvjhp (IS04)
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-au/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=pnvwc (IS05)
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-au/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=2ddg2 (IS06)

_________________
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fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: June 21st, 2026, 12:25

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16974
Location: Australia

Dell's header:

Code:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000  20 20 20 20 44 45 4C 4C 39 49 53 30 36 49 53 30      DELL9IS06IS0
00000010  30 78 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  0x..............
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02  ................
00000040  20 20 31 30 30 36 34 31 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20    100641        
00000050  20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20                  
00000060  20 20 20 20 53 54 31 32 30 30 4D 4D 30 30 30 37      ST1200MM0007
00000070  20 20 31 30 30 36 38 30 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20    100680        
00000080  20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20                  
00000090  20 20 20 20 20 53 54 39 30 30 4D 4D 30 30 30 37       ST900MM0007

The above header needs to be stripped off if you want to use non-Dell methods.

Alternatively, try changing 0x39 to 0x09:

Code:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000  20 20 20 20 44 45 4C 4C 39 49 53 30 36 49 53 30      DELL9IS06IS0
                                  ^^
00000010  30 78 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  0x..............

This is the 05 header:

Code:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000  20 20 20 20 44 45 4C 4C 09 49 53 30 35 49 53 30      DELL.IS05IS0
                                  ^^
00000010  30 78 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  0x..............

_________________
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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 8:17

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

My apologies for not posting links to the updates.

I'm not super familiar with hex editing.

The first part (removing the Dell header) looks simple enough, but my unfamiliarity has left me a little confused by the second part

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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 12:08

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

Well, that was unexpectedly easy in the end. Thank you for letting me know the exact border of the Dell header.

Sg_write_buffer --mode=7 --in./ISO6-EDITED.fwh /dev/sg5 worked instantly.

Thank you your help.

Out of curiosity, would there be any advantage to flashing them as a Seagate disk with the 0003 firmware from the Seagate site? (I can't get a direct link I'm afraid, I could upload the firmware file?)

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fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 12:37

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16974
Location: Australia

I can't advise you as to the safety of "cross-flashing", ie mixing OEM and retail firmware versions. I have seen instances where people have done this with SATA drives and bricked them. Personally, I would not do it, but user @E123 would be the expert in this regard.

BTW, I use a free hex editor:

https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

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Hardcore Games

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 12:48

Joined: March 8th, 2025, 18:07
Posts: 115
Location: Canada

I strongly advise against modifying the disk OEM firmware. I use various USB enclosures and SATA disk boxes are cheap. SAS boxes are uncommon but available if files need to be moved.

The ST1200MM0007 is the standard model for Seagate based on their literature. This class of disk gave way to SSD products in servers. Now Dell OEM disks should work in an enclosure but they might not work in a non Dell server in a RAID array.

The IBM M5110 is from System X which IBM supports SATA and SAS disks. These controllers are available on fleabay for $50.

Higher capacity hard disks are available but prices have spiked significantly. U.2 SSD are available up to 250TB if 44TB isn't cutting it.

_________________
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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 15:16

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

Advice Acknowledged on cross flashing.

The drives seem to work fine mechanically and as far as enterprise drives are concerned.

However they seem to spin down and become inaccessible after a certain time (smart to -a and other commands return a failure, sdparm --all returned "MODE SENSE(10) failed, device not ready"). This was the reason for updating to ISO6, but they still seem to exhibit the same behaviour.

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fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 16:28

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16974
Location: Australia

You could use smartmontools (smartctl) to view the drive's internal error logs.

Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/zhubv2/interpreting_sas_smart_data/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

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Hardcore Games

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 16:58

Joined: March 8th, 2025, 18:07
Posts: 115
Location: Canada

If the disks are spinning down it suggests the disks are experiencing faults. Changing firmware will have no effect on this. Instead check the power on hours on the disks and if the are very high it could be they are worn out.

_________________
Orico DS500C3-US-BK 5-disk 3.5" SATA, iTGZ 4x M.2 2280 Thunderbolt enclosure NVMe/SATA, etc. etc.

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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Yesterday, 18:18

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

fzabkar wrote:

You could use smartmontools (smartctl) to view the drive's internal error logs.

Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/zhubv2/interpreting_sas_smart_data/

im not particularly experienced with smart data, but i THINK these are ok:

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               SEAGATE
Product:              ST1200MM0007
Revision:             IS06
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        1,200,243,695,616 bytes [1.20 TB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate:        10000 rpm
Form Factor:          2.5 inches
Logical Unit id:      0x5000c5007dff31cb
Serial number:        S3L0ST1X
Device type:          disk
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-4)
Local Time is:        Mon Jun 22 23:13:05 2026 BST
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Enabled
Temperature Warning:  Disabled or Not Supported

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature:     45 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        60 C

Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 63928:03
Manufactured in week 40 of year 2014
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  10000
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  78
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime:  300000
Accumulated load-unload cycles:  2797
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
  Blocks sent to initiator = 1863997383
  Blocks received from initiator = 2025387004
  Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 2315512278
  Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 380999265
  Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 146

Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information
  number of hours powered up = 63928.05
  number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 45

Error counter log:
           Errors Corrected by           Total   Correction     Gigabytes    Total
               ECC          rereads/    errors   algorithm      processed    uncorrected
           fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors
read:   3773297794        0         0  3773297794          0     464459.324           0
write:         0        0        18        18         18     256003.806           0
verify: 12323876        0         0  12323876          0          3.618           0

Non-medium error count:        2

SMART Self-test log
Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background short  Completed                  64   63866                 - [-   -    -]
# 2  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 3  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 4  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 5  Background short  Completed                  64       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 6  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 7  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       6                 - [-   -    -]
# 8  Background short  Completed                  48       4                 - [-   -    -]

and

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               SEAGATE
Product:              ST1200MM0007
Revision:             IS06
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        1,200,243,695,616 bytes [1.20 TB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate:        10000 rpm
Form Factor:          2.5 inches
Logical Unit id:      0x5000c5007dff31cb
Serial number:        S3L0ST1X
Device type:          disk
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-4)
Local Time is:        Mon Jun 22 23:13:05 2026 BST
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Enabled
Temperature Warning:  Disabled or Not Supported

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature:     45 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        60 C

Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 63928:03
Manufactured in week 40 of year 2014
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  10000
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  78
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime:  300000
Accumulated load-unload cycles:  2797
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
  Blocks sent to initiator = 1863997383
  Blocks received from initiator = 2025387004
  Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 2315512278
  Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 380999265
  Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 146

Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information
  number of hours powered up = 63928.05
  number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 45

Error counter log:
           Errors Corrected by           Total   Correction     Gigabytes    Total
               ECC          rereads/    errors   algorithm      processed    uncorrected
           fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors
read:   3773297794        0         0  3773297794          0     464459.324           0
write:         0        0        18        18         18     256003.806           0
verify: 12323876        0         0  12323876          0          3.618           0

Non-medium error count:        2

SMART Self-test log
Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background short  Completed                  64   63866                 - [-   -    -]
# 2  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 3  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 4  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 5  Background short  Completed                  64       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 6  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 7  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       6                 - [-   -    -]
# 8  Background short  Completed                  48       4                 - [-   -    -]

they spin up and accessible again if i run

Code:

sudo sg_start --start /dev/sg*

also, they have no data on them yet as the first thing i did was run a smart test, and found they reset during testing.

googling this had the ai (i know) tell me that the sas driver might be getting a timeout of inactivity while the disk does something in the background and ISO6 was supposed to help, and it also gave me some commands/configs to extend the timeout.

this could be incorrect of course. i will try writing some data to them and test their read/write

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Kernelfergus

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Today, 11:02

Joined: June 21st, 2026, 10:19
Posts: 6
Location: United Kingdom

i wrote data to both drives, almost to capacity, with no errors.

"smartctl -a" gives this for one:

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               SEAGATE
Product:              ST1200MM0007
Revision:             IS06
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        1,200,243,695,616 bytes [1.20 TB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate:        10000 rpm
Form Factor:          2.5 inches
Logical Unit id:      0x5000c5007dff31cb
Serial number:        S3L0ST1X
Device type:          disk
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-4)
Local Time is:        Tue Jun 23 15:50:50 2026 BST
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Enabled
Temperature Warning:  Disabled or Not Supported

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature:     52 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        60 C

Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 63944:41
Manufactured in week 40 of year 2014
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  10000
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  81
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime:  300000
Accumulated load-unload cycles:  2800
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
  Blocks sent to initiator = 2835228570
  Blocks received from initiator = 4149471905
  Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 2414814652
  Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 382649282
  Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 146

Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information
  number of hours powered up = 63944.68
  number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 21

Error counter log:
           Errors Corrected by           Total   Correction     Gigabytes    Total
               ECC          rereads/    errors   algorithm      processed    uncorrected
           fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors
read:   663374276        0         0  663374276          0     464956.595           0
write:         0        0        18        18         18     257091.385           0
verify: 12323876        0         0  12323876          0          3.618           0

Non-medium error count:        2

SMART Self-test log
Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background short  Completed                  64   63866                 - [-   -    -]
# 2  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 3  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 4  Background long   Aborted (device reset ?)   64   63840                 - [-   -    -]
# 5  Background short  Completed                  64       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 6  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       7                 - [-   -    -]
# 7  Reserved(7)       Completed                  48       6                 - [-   -    -]
# 8  Background short  Completed                  48       4                 - [-   -    -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 8400 seconds [140.0 minutes]

and this for the other:

Code:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               SEAGATE
Product:              ST1200MM0007
Revision:             IS06
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        1,200,243,695,616 bytes [1.20 TB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate:        10000 rpm
Form Factor:          2.5 inches
Logical Unit id:      0x5000c500717ecb33
Serial number:        S3L055K3
Device type:          disk
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-4)
Local Time is:        Tue Jun 23 15:52:57 2026 BST
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Enabled
Temperature Warning:  Disabled or Not Supported

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature:     48 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        60 C

Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 36647:12
Manufactured in week 04 of year 2014
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  10000
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  59
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime:  300000
Accumulated load-unload cycles:  1664
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
  Blocks sent to initiator = 3337334440
  Blocks received from initiator = 596105458
  Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 185720872
  Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 1012258103
  Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 265

Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information
  number of hours powered up = 36647.20
  number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 0

Error counter log:
           Errors Corrected by           Total   Correction     Gigabytes    Total
               ECC          rereads/    errors   algorithm      processed    uncorrected
           fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors
read:   3060109606       25         0  3060109631         25     625598.846           0
write:         0        0        11        11         11      85306.297           0
verify: 3123592830        3         0  3123592833          3     200039.215           0

Non-medium error count:       49

SMART Self-test log
Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background short  Completed                  48   36538                 - [-   -    -]
# 2  Background short  Completed                  48   36537                 - [-   -    -]
# 3  Background long   Completed                  48   36536                 - [-   -    -]
# 4  Background short  Completed                  48       3                 - [-   -    -]
# 5  Reserved(7)       Completed                  32       3                 - [-   -    -]
# 6  Background short  Completed                  48       1                 - [-   -    -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 8400 seconds [140.0 minutes]

they seem to stay active as long as they're being accessed/not idle. i do want them to spin down, but it seems, according to what i have managed to find, theyre not entering standby but stop.

they can be recovered if they do drop out by running

Code:

sudo sg_start --pc=3 /dev/sg2

which brings the drive back and it works fine again.

Top

fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Today, 14:29

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16974
Location: Australia

Perhaps you could disconnect the data cable or leave the drive powered up in your BIOS setup menu. If the drive spins down, then this would suggest an internal idle timeout setting.

The histories of the drives suggest that they were deployed in a server environment with about 20 hours between successive load/unload events.

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Post subject: Re: Dell/Seagate ST1200MM0007 cannot update to ISO6

Posted: Today, 17:10

Joined: March 8th, 2025, 18:07
Posts: 115
Location: Canada

The power on hours are > 60K hours so these disks are well past their best before date.

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