Firmware update on array drives, beware Seagate util

[technome]

Performing a drive firmware update caused me a 38 hour day.

Some Seagate 10k and 15k u320 drives with firmware revision <006 have a problem, according to Seagate site . My drives are <3 months old, are maintained at 5 degrees above room temp, no media errors, random drives would be failed. Lsi u320-2 adapter

The Seagate Enterprise utility was used to upgrade the firmware.
To be safe I choose to update the firmware one drive at a time, via a standard scsi adapter attached to the backplane channel (with the raid adapter detached).
The first drive was the &quot;hotspare&quot; drive; the firmware updated successfully, all drives were OK according to my backplane diag LEDs. Upon restart, with the raid controller attached, two different drives failed. Spent about two hours trying to resuscitate the array, gave up, updated the firmware on the remaining drives, rebuilt the array from scratch. Have updated drive firmware many times before, never having this happen.

The Seagate utility will not work on raid cards.
Seagate Enterprise util will freeze your server with a raid card installed, server will need a hard shut down.

 

[technome]

Seagates reply....

&quot;Paul,
Normally a firmware upgrade does not cause any issues. Unfortunately in your case it seems to have caused more problems than it fixed. You can contact our warranty department for information on getting the drives replaced. There phone # is 1-800-468-3472 or you can set up a replacement through our website @

http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp

Robert H.
Seagate Technical Support&quot;

******
&quot;More problems than it fixed&quot;, DAH, it terminated my FSMO. Thank God I have a Sony AIT 700c tape drive. BKexec 8.6 actually restored my system state ( really unexpected on my part). Was so incredibly tired after being up more than 35 hours
Really lucked out massively. I partially seize the FSMO roles to my second domain controller before using the backup, and the fact the same name of the FSMO is used, caused some initial problems but the resurected FMSO is flying again, testing shows no errors.

My advice to any company with AD, which can afford HPs &quot;Storage works&quot; featuring &quot;one button restore&quot;, go for it.