Seagate Barracuda 500, 750 and 1000GB 7200.11 SATA HDD Firmware Upgrade for HP Workstations

The files in this package constitute a utility to upgrade firmware on some Seagate 7200 rpm SATA HDDs that 
shipped on HP Workstations. The new firmware fixes a well-publicized issue that could render the drive inoperable 
after a power cycle. Although the combined probabilities of all the required conditions for a drive failure are very 
small, HP recommends that all appropriate HDDs be upgraded as a preventative measure.

This HP26 firmware does not support (boot time) ATA Drive Lock Password Protection. If you have a Drive Lock 
Password set you will need to disable the password before downloading the new firmware. If you try to download firmware 
when the drive is locked, the firmware download will abort. Once this firmware is instaled, the drive will no longer 
support Drivelock Password protection.


The utility included in this package upgrades the firmware on the following Seagate 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive that 
shipped on HP Workstations:

Seagate Model Number: 	HP Part Number:
ST3500620AS		461123-001
ST750630AS		460315-002
ST31000340AS		464263-001

NOTE: The included utility checks to ensure that an affected hard drive model is installed before upgrading the 
firmware. If the correct hard drive model is not found, the firmware is not upgraded.


The utility is designed for the DOS operating system environment. 

This package contains a utility that will create a DOS bootable USB key that will contain all the necessary files 
to update the identified hard drives.  You can also simply copy the update utility files to a bootable medium you 
already have. 

Please follow the detailed instructions in the MAKEIT.TXT file at the top level of the installed folder tree, 
in order to create or modify the bootable medium.


NOTE: It is STRONGLY recommended that you perform a system backup prior to installing this update.

NOTE: The firmware update utility cannot upgrade drives that are members of RAID arrays. However, it is possible 
to temporarily take the system out of RAID mode, perform the upgrade on the target drives, and then put the system 
back into RAID mode. Because the firmware upgrade does not affect the data contents of the drives, including their 
RAID membership data, the array will operate normally when the RAID mode is restored. In all the supported 
workstation models for this update, the SATA controller mode can be managed via options in the BIOS F10 Setup 
interface. For specific instructions, see the manual for your computer model. This mode management does NOT involve 
deleting or creating RAID arrays.

When using the USB key method on the HP Workstation xw9400, it is 
necessary to disable the SATA Option ROM in order for the utility to successfully scan the SATA bus. Some of 
these temporary changes reduce the number of active SATA ports. If many target hard drives are present, they 
may need to be temporarily connected to lower ports for the upgrade.


To perform the update:

1. Boot the target system to your DOS-bootable medium.

2. Change to the folder containing the utility files and execute the appropriate script:

HP26_500.BAT for 500GB drives. 
HP26_750.BAT for 750GB drives
HP26_1TB.BAT for 1000GB drives

If you copied the files to a bootable medium that you provided, then navigate to the location you selected.

The utility will skip any drives that are not targets. It only updates drives that have the affected model string. 
It will re-update target drives that already have the correct firmware but no harm is done in that.

3. When all drives have been updated, you must POWER CYCLE the system to ensure that the drives are fully updated.
