Updating hard disk firmware & parking hard disk

From: Gijs Hillenius
Date: Wed Jul 13 2005 - 03:59:26 EST


>>>>> Frank Sorenson writes:

> Martin Knoblauch wrote:
>> Download is simple, just don't use the "IBM Download
>> Manager". Main problem is that one needs a bootable floopy
>> drive and "the other OS" to create a bootable floppy. It would
>> be great if IBM could provide floppy images for use with "dd"
>> for the poor Linux users.

> You may be able to use this process to avoid using either a
> floppy drive or "the other OS":

> 1) Download the appropriate firmware exe from
> http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-41008
> (in my case, this looks like fwhd3313.exe)

> 2) Find a freedos disk image (I used one that came with
> biosdisk - http://linux.dell.com/biosdisk/)

> 3) Create a disk image for the firmware executable: cp
> /usr/share/biosdisk/dosdisk.img /tmp/fwdisk1.img mount -oloop
> /tmp/fwtemp.img /mnt/tmp cp fwhd3313.exe /mnt/tmp umount
> /mnt/tmp

> 4) Create a blank disk image for the extracted contents: dd
> if=/dev/zero of=/boot/fwdisk.img bs=1474560 count=1

> 5) Run qemu to extract files and write the disk image: qemu
> -fda /tmp/fwtemp.img -fdb /boot/fwdisk.img A:\>fwhd3313 ...
> exit qemu

> 6) Set up grub to boot the new disk image (requires memdisk
> from syslinux - http://syslinux.zytor.com/): $EDITOR
> /boot/grub/grub.conf title IBM Hard Drive Firmware update
> kernel /memdisk initrd=/fwdisk.img floppy

> 7) Reboot and select the "IBM Hard Drive Firmware update"
> option


> It allowed me to run the firmware update program, however it
> didn't believe my drive needed updating, so I haven't even
> successfully tried the entire process. Please let me know if
> it works for you.

> DISCLAIMER: I also provide no guarantees. Hopefully your hard
> disk won't fly off the spindle or anything else bad. If it
> does, blame someone else.

Hi Frank,

FYI I succesfully used your above method to update the firmware
for the IC25N040ATMR04-0 hard disk that came with my Thinkpad R51.

Before the update hdparm -i /dev/hda
Model=IC25N040ATMR04-0, FwRev=MO2OAD4A

and after the update
Model=IC25N040ATMR04-0, FwRev=MO2OADEA

So, thanks!

however, the firmware update did not solve the 'head not park'
issue. :-(

sudo ./park /dev/hda
head not parked 4c


Regards

Gijs

--
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
-- Steven Wright
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/