Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[fzabkar]

I have no doubt you could forcibly flash Lenovo firmware to a retail drive, but I have no idea whether this is safe to do.

As an example, if you flash Barracuda 7200.11 SDxx firmware to a 7200.11 drive that has CCxx firmware, then you will brick it. Seagate warns you of this possibility, and I've seen such a disaster at HDD Guru.

In any case, you first need to extract the LOD file from the Lenovo firmware distribution.

[eyeland]

ok

First, I cannot extract the LOD from the Lenovofile like I could from the dell release (probably me being stupid) anyone wanna give it a try?

Secondly, I am confused

Does the dell pack not install a dellspecific firmware? Or does it detect the present firmware and install retail if the drive is retail?

Either way, shouldn't the Lenovo update be capable of the same?

This leads back to one of my original questions:

Should I just use the aforementioned dell (fail,dos, holliday fix?

Do you think the dell 005dm1 differs from the Lenovo 005dm1

[fzabkar]

I can't offer any opinion on the differences between the Dell, Lenovo, and retail firmware releases.

I have tried to extract the individual files from the CD ISO, but have not had complete success, probably because I am still using Win98SE.

Isobuster extracts a 2MB FAT16 hard disc image, but cannot see the FIRMWARE directory.

http://www.isobuster.com/

On my machine, PowerISO can extract the files from the hard disc image. It can see the FIRMWARE directory and its subdirectories (SEAGATE, et al), but not the files therein. PowerISO does not support virtual drives in Win98SE, but perhaps it will work better in Win2K and above.

http://www.poweriso.com/

If you search for "mount CD ISO", perhaps you will find a better utility:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mount+CD+ISO%22&btnG=Search

Message Edited by fzabkar on 01-02-2010 08:05 AM

[eyeland]

ok, so I finally did a backup and succesfully upgraded from 0002 to 0005 using the dell iso

Only thing is, it did not solve my problem of my harddrive always spinning regardless of powersettings and use..

I am getting tired of this now and I am on the verge of spamming seagate with hatemail.. I miss my old momentus 5400....

Gonna try some of the apps that ppl recommend here, but I'd really like an app that can monitor the drive realtime, rpm and such..

Any suggestions or general advice?

[fzabkar]

I could be wrong, but I would think that any application that interrogated the hard drive on a regular basis would necessarily need to wake it up, thereby defeating the purpose. One exception is the ATA Identify Device command, but I don't know whether it returns the information that you require.

I would think that if the drive is not spinning down during idle periods, then there may be some background task that is accessing it from time to time.

I would monitor the SMART data at 1 hour intervals, say. I would first record two SMART reports immediately after each other to determine the overhead of each SMART request. I would then call for one more report 1 hour later and compare the attribute values.

The Raw Read Error Rate attribute reflects the number of sectors read.

The Seek Error Rate attribute records the number of seeks in the lower 32 bits.

Start/Stop count and Load/Unload Cycles would show whether the drive remained spinning.

Attribute 241 is Total LBAs Written.

Attribute 242 is Total LBAs Read.

[eyeland]

ok, will do, what program should I use?

Will HD tune pro do?

Sisoft Sandra? 

[fzabkar]

I'm using HD Sentinel V2.90 on a Win98SE box.

If you select Configuration -> Advanced Options -> Detection Frequency, you can monitor the changes every 30 seconds, say. Assuming no other tasks are running, this should tell you the overhead of each SMART request. Then set the slider to one hour and wait for the next update.

[eyeland]

ok, will try that, thanks

Is there any way to monitor the hd rpm?

(btw, why do you use win2k? ) 

[fzabkar]

A drive reports its design RPM (5400/7200) via the ATA Identify Device command. Any drive that reports 0 RPM is a Solid State Drive (SSD), ie it has no moving parts, only flash memory plus a controller.

AIUI, software can measure the actual rotational speed by reading the same sector twice in succession and timing the interval between reads. Caching would need to be disabled, both in the OS and on the drive.

I use Win98SE, not Win2K. My next OS will be Linux, unless I die first.

I prefer Win9x because it lets me get closer to the hardware. One major annoyance, though, is that I keep running out of resources.

[Quad5Ny]

If you love the Windows 9x versions, check this site out - http://www.mdgx.com .  Specifically this http://www.mdgx.com/98-5.htm#KRM9S

Its basicly mixing Windows 98SE system files with Windows ME's to create a whole new better beast. =)

Other than that, the rest of the site is alot of fun too.