Tag Archives: hard drive

How to flash Seagate firmware onto HP enterprise MB2000EAMZF drives

In my previous post I talked about how HP locks down their hard drives (made by Seagate) with custom firmware that is exclusive to HP and with the huge caveat that if you do not have an HP storage controller the software update package provided by HP won’t work for you at all.

I spent the past 48 hours researching and trying different things. I unpacked the official HP firmware and tried to find the binary/firmware dump from within the .scexe file provided by HP on their website to no avail.  I even contacted HP for help and they would not be willing to help if the drives were not connected to HP hardware.

After some research I discovered that the HP MB2000EAMZF 2TB drive I had was almost exactly the same (part number) as the official Seagate ST32000644NS  drive after failing to be able to flash HPs firmware using HP’s bootable Firmware Update 8.3 (injecting the .scexe files inside this live CD) – I decided I really had nothing to lose but try the method I will explain below.
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Checking for Hard drive READ and WRITE Cache (onboard) on Solaris

To check for read and write cache for your hard drives do the following:

Giovanni@server:~# format -e
Searching for disks…done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c8t0d0 <DEFAULT cyl 60797 alt 2 hd 255 sec 252>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@0,0
1. c8t1d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@1,0
2. c8t2d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A28A-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@2,0
3. c8t3d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@3,0
4. c8t4d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@4,0
5. c8t5d0 <ATA-Hitachi HDS72202-A3EA-1.82TB>
/pci@0,0/pci15d9,d380@1f,2/disk@5,0
Specify disk (enter its number):

Select a drive, lets pick 5 from the list.

Specify disk (enter its number): 5
selecting c8t5d0
[disk formatted]
/dev/dsk/c8t5d0s0 is part of active ZFS pool gpool. Please see zpool(1M).
FORMAT MENU:
disk       – select a disk
type       – select (define) a disk type
partition  – select (define) a partition table
current    – describe the current disk
format     – format and analyze the disk
fdisk      – run the fdisk program
repair     – repair a defective sector
label      – write label to the disk
analyze    – surface analysis
defect     – defect list management
backup     – search for backup labels
verify     – read and display labels
inquiry    – show vendor, product and revision
scsi       – independent SCSI mode selects
cache      – enable, disable or query SCSI disk cache
volname    – set 8-character volume name
!<cmd>     – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
format>

Now let’s do the checking

Enter “cache” to enter cache menu.

CACHE MENU:
write_cache – display or modify write cache settings
read_cache  – display or modify read cache settings
!<cmd>      – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
cache>

Type: “write_cache” or “read_cache” depending on what you would like to see, lets use write:

cache> write_cache
WRITE_CACHE MENU:
display     – display current setting of write cache
enable      – enable write cache
disable     – disable write cache
!<cmd>      – execute <cmd>, then return
quit
write_cache> display
Write Cache is enabled
write_cache>

Use the same for read_cache and to disable and enable.