I have six brand new, been sitting on the shelf for 1.5 years, Seagate ST400832AS drives with firmware 3.01. They refuse to be properly recognized by my SIL3112-based controller, nor my Oxford 924-based Firewire-SATA bridge. However, the same drive with firmware 3.02 works fine. Anyone have access to a firmware updater for this drive to something newer than 3.01?

As I have a drive with the firmware I need, is there a way to suck the firmware off of it, then update my other drives?

As to why Seagate sucks, I called them asking for a firmware upgrade and was told there weren't any. I then rummaged through our stack of these drives and found one with a newer firmware, tested it and it worked. I called Seagate with the evidence in hand, and was again told no firmware update available for 7200.8 drives as they are only actively supporting 7200.9 and .10's. Plus, their firmware repository gets updated (replaced) weekly.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

I know this isn't board isn't Seagate tech support, but it galls me that I have 6 brand new drives whose sole useful purpose at the moment is as a door stop.

Help!