I successfully upgraded my RAID6 array without any difficulties. With the ST31000340AS drives, and the 3ware 9650SE-16ML RAID controller card, the drive firmware update did *not* cause the drive to “forget” it was part of the array. I could theoretically have upgraded all the drives at once and it would have been OK.

I did not do this, however, because I didn’t have to. What I did do was install four upgraded drives as hot spares first. I then removed the live drives one at a time for upgrade. I also verified the array after every drive upgrade, just to be sure.

Still, the process did work well – if a little time-consuming, at one drive per day.

Oddly enough, however, one of my upgraded drives failed shortly afterwards – and not due to a power cycle, either. Strange, as this array was running for over 450 days straight without any problems, and power cycling the array to R&R drives did not cause any problems at the time. Perhaps the problem drive was simply due to give out?

I will probably be testing the Seagate warranty program as a result of this, as none of these drives are anywhere near 5 years old yet. One of my hot spares stepped in, and the array was rebuilt before I even knew there was a problem, so no worries on that point.

Hope this helps someone.

Good advice re: flashing RAID drives one at a time. I was planning on doing it like that for sure.

Thanks for the help.

I had similar problems to you, in that I had no PC with a SATA controller available. I have lots of PCs, but most are in use. The one spare unit I had didn’t have SATA, and the Seagate firmware update utility refused to recognize my ST31000340AS drive using the PCI SATA adapter I had available.

After some debate, I went to the local computer shop and bought a “generic” plug-in SATA to IDE adapter. It’s a small circuit board the plugs directly into the SATA drive and provides an IDE header, which allowed me to plug the SATA drive into the mainboard IDE controller.

Believe it or not, it actually worked. The firmware utility recognized the drive and (as far as I can tell) the firmware update worked fine.

This is good news for me, as I have no less than ten of these drives – six running inside a RAID 6 server, and four loose drives that were due to be installed into that same server (for a total of 8 Tb). Now, at least, I can upgrade the drives, even though I may have to wait 24 hours or so for each rebuild of the array.

Just a word of warning: if you are running these drives in a RAID array, do not re-flash them all at once! There is a good chance that reflashing the drive will “disconnect” it (so to speak) from the array. If you do them all at once, you may have just destroyed your RAID array logical organization – and, consequently, all the data on it. If your array is virgin, this is OK, but if not you are best advised to upgrade the drives one at a time, and let the array re-build with the new unit before upgrading the next unit.

Specifications for the adapter I used can be found at:

http://www.startech.com/item/IDE2SAT-IDE-to-SATA-Drive-Mounted-Adapter.aspx

Hope this helps,
S.