Samsung 2TB HD204UI Firmware

[DBee]

I'm looking at buying a 2TB Sata HDD.

The 2TB Samsung seems pretty competitive on the price front, but I see there's a firmware upgrade to apply.

Has anyone any knowledge re this firware upgrade and if it does sort out the reported data loss problems ??

David

[Skinleech]

As far as I know it does - I just got one delivered today and will be upgrading tonight - but it's a DOS solution only so make sure you're able to and comfortable with flashing via DOS.

[DBee]

As far as I know it does - I just got one delivered today and will be upgrading tonight - but it's a DOS solution only so make sure you're able to and comfortable with flashing via DOS.

I received one last week and flashed it without too much trouble.

I found someone who had already made an ISO which just needs to be burnt to CD which made life even easier.

Just disconect your old HDDs from the motherboard (don't want any disasters !).

Plug in the new 2tb samsung to flash update

Boot from the CD you burnt and follow run the flash updater, only took a few seconds. it doesn't update the firmware ID on the drive btw !

here's the link to the ISO

[dirky]

Does it wipe the data on the drive?

[dirky]

Grr double post, damn 3G!

[Splash]

Shouldn't do, but as with anything like this there's always the risk of data loss, so backup your data first

[DBee]

Does it wipe the data on the drive?

no, but I'd back up first anyway !

[dirky]

Thanks, might flash mine. Have a few in raid5

[DBee]

Thanks, might flash mine. Have a few in raid5

Just do them one at a time and you should be fine then

[jonathan_phang]

I bought 2 of these recently and applied the fix no problem. Have to admit that I wont know whether or not it has solved any data corruption issues, as I hadnt experienced any (they were done before formatting), but thought it was a good idea to do it anyway.

[Skinleech]

I updated last night without too much hassle. The first PC I tried was an old Athlon 64 build and it didn't like that at all. Kept on giving me an error about the command only being available in ATA mode or something. I tried all the avarious SATA port options in the BIOS but it refused to flash & there look to be several other people with the same issue.

Next I tried my desktop, which would have been fine but has an issue with making any changes to BIOS and it won't boot, so I wasn't able to change the boot drive to my USB stick.

Finally, I took my HTPC apart to get at the primary SATA port - as noted above within a few seconds it was done and dusted and seems to be working fine.

[jonathan_phang]

...Kept on giving me an error about the command only being available in ATA mode or something...

in the bios, the drive will probably be set to AHCI (Cant remember the exact name, probably differs from BIOS to BIOS too. When I was reading up about it, a lot of posts did mention that the AHCI should be changed to IDE mode to run the update - although I'm sure that I didnt have to...

[Halk]

Shouldn't do, but as with anything like this there's always the risk of data loss, so backup your data first

That's pretty much it for mechanical drives. Solid state drives are slightly different, in that they have wear levelling and so forth which means they write to the drive differently, which could be borked by a firmware update.

The OP should flash the firmware before using the drive though, there's no reason not to.

[Skinleech]

in the bios, the drive will probably be set to AHCI (Cant remember the exact name, probably differs from BIOS to BIOS too. When I was reading up about it, a lot of posts did mention that the AHCI should be changed to IDE mode to run the update - although I'm sure that I didnt have to...

I thought that, but I have them running in IDE mode anyway. Think it's something to do with the age of the chipset really, and there's no AHCI setting in the BIOS that I could see. I tried all SATA options to no avail. But, it doesn't matter - I got it working in the end so if I ever get another one I'll just go straight to using my HTPC.

[Brewster0101]

If this refers to the f4 eco drive then the 2.0 firmware is also meant to make the drive quieter and improve performance - so I believe.

[Anteries]

I received one last week and flashed it without too much trouble.

I found someone who had already made an ISO which just needs to be burnt to CD which made life even easier.

Just disconect your old HDDs from the motherboard (don't want any disasters !).

Plug in the new 2tb samsung to flash update

Boot from the CD you burnt and follow run the flash updater, only took a few seconds. it doesn't update the firmware ID on the drive btw !

here's the link to the ISO

Great link thanks