How do I get a hard drive firmware upgrade?

I've never heard of a hard drive firmware update.  I think nVidia is just passing the buck.  I have 2 160GB Samsung drives on my XPS600 and they work fine.

Have you contacted Dell?  I'd run the Dell Diagnostics too.  Your drive might just be dying.

Dave

Just because you haven't heard of firmware upgrades for hard drives doesn't mean they don't exist. :)

Maxtor and Seagate have both admitted to this severe problem and they both have issued firmware upgrades to try and solve the problem. Actually, Maxtor has danced around admission but has issued a firmware upgrade to address the problem. Seagate has actually stated that their drives are not compatible with nForce4 mobos if NCQ is turned on. The thing is that the Seagate upgrade only addresses the extremely long boot times for XP if a Seagate drive with NCQ and nForce4 mobo are present. So, if the read/write errors reported in Event Viewer are only occuring during boot (as they do for some users) then the patch fixes it. Maxtor's patch also only fixes part of the problem. In fact, currently, Maxtor drives are no-no if you have a Dell XPS 600 (and that is a real shame as the seek time on the Maxtors is much better than on Seagates). Many, like myself, are not getting the errors on boot nor do I have unusually long boot times. (Of course, that may be coming as this problem just gets worse and worse for many). I am getting the errors at random and according to all the many boards, and extremely long threads, I have read on this issue this problem is fixed completely ONLY by turning off NCQ. That is not acceptable. NCQ was something we paid good money for to get and being told to turn it off permanently is not a solution.

As for nVidia's passing the buck, yes, of course, they have been doing that but they have evidently fixed the problem for nForce5 mobos with a new controller. They probably will extend the fix eventually to the nForce4 mobos but not to earlier mobos. I am going to try the beta drivers for the nForce5 mobo if I can get assurance they are for AMD/Intel X16. A mod from one of the nVidia forums is calling Samsung today to pressure them for a fix but even if Samsung has a hard drive upgrade for this, I got this Samsung drive through Dell not direct from Samsung so it isn't clear to me if I can just go to Samsung if they put up new firmware and get it or if I have look for it on Dell's site, etc.

After many hours of research, I do not believe the errors are due to a dying drive. Of course, one of the first things I did was run Dell diag full diag and everything was ok. I also ran chkdsk /f and no errors were found. And no, I haven't called Dell about this....yet. I didn't have these errors until suddenly. I got this machine first of February and got the errors the first time on June 15. I only have entries about 4 times so far and not many for each cluster but I gather this will just get worse and I will eventually have the boot errors also. Perhaps, I will be lucky and only have them sporadically as currently but even that I want fixed. What nForce4 drivers are you using?

Why does this forum log me out while I am composing my post? That is the most irritating aspect of posting here. You cannot write a thoughtful post without getting logged out because you didn't write a post that only took a minute or two to compose. :(

Then to answer your original question, no, Dell doesn't not have firmware upgrades for hard drives.  You'll have to contact Samsung.

Dave

It's not the drive so much as it is the nVidia controller. Seagate and Maxtor have issued firmware upgrades because nVidia, who is the REAL culprit, is passing the buck like nVidia likes to do so much with so many issues.

The Seagate drives have a seek time of 11ms+. They are very slow and have gotten very poor reviews. The Samsung has an average seek time of 8.9ms. I was impressed with my Seagate on my 8300 because that was the world's first SATA drive but I would not buy a Seagate Sata2 even with a 5 year warranty. Maxtor is a much better SATA2 drive but their firmware fix only addresses one aspect of the nVidia nForce4 controller problem and doesn't fix the rest so...that leaves only the major manufacturers Samsung and Hitachi and Western Digital.

I agree that WD Raptor that you have is outstanding but it is expensive and there is no guarantee, unless I can get in writing, that it will work properly with the nVidia controller. nVidia has told me to install the Vista beta drivers because those will work on nForce4 and there is a brand new controller which solves these problems. But I'm leery of beta drivers so I haven't yet tried them. Plus, I am not positive they will work correctly on nForce 4 intel x16.

i would put the (2) seagate in port 0 & 1 (do you hv raid setup?), and the wd as my 3rd storage drive.

I would do the above and then reinstall windows on a clean slate. but make sure to go into bios and turn off the 3rd drive and then after installing the OS, go back into bios and turn on the 3rd drive.

Make sure to delete and  reformat the 3rd drive in administrtive tools before turning it back on in bios.

Sometimes different brands of harddrives create a conflict... if you continue to hv problems, you may have to install a 3rd seagate as your 3rd drive.  One other note, try to use the hardrive software to reformat and partition before installing the OS system as well.

PS - my nvidia controllers and/or MOBO are not giving me any problems what so ever....

rraallpphh13

XPS 600 3.8 677MHZ 2 GB / X2 10K RPM raptor RAID 0  80 GB w/3rd storage raptor drive 160 gb 10 k rpm   

 

Message Edited by rraallpphh13 on 07-09-200602:17 PM

Message Edited by rraallpphh13 on 07-09-200602:19 PM

Sorry, I developed a more pressing problem (dying optical drives) and so I haven't been back here until now.

The error you are getting in Event Viewer is different from mine. Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 6/26/2006
Time: 7:51:39 PM
User: N/A
Computer: MELE
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

The error I get would generally indicate a dying drive but in the case of an nForce4 mobo with SATA2 hard drives and NCQ this usually indicates a controller problem not a dying drive...but I might have a dying drive as that is still a possibility.

I have only the one internal drive at this point so I don't really know much about the error you are getting but I would look on the many nVidia boards for help. As for NCQ, It's the SATA RAID driver that you need from the 6.86 (or the 6.85 I have) nForce drivers. When that is installed in Device Manager under SCSI and RAID controllers you will see the nVidia driver and under it is a box to enable/disable command queuing on your hard drives that have the ability. The RAID driver did not come installed on my XPS600. I too did not know where to look to see if NCQ was enabled. I learned from reading various nVidia boards that this is where you look and I didn't see anything so I installed the RAID driver even though I don't use RAID yet. There may be another way to tell on Dells and I wonder why Dell didn't install the driver at the factory if needed for NCQ to be enabled so I am still puzzled about this.

I am wondering if your problem is due to drive incompatibility because your primary drive is 10,000rpm and those Seagates are 7200? This is just speculation on my part but rraallpphh13 has no problems and note that his drives are both Raptors at 10,000. I think I would try what he suggested.

I called XPS tech support the other night for the first time and I was just stunned by what I was told. The tech said that because my XPS did not come with RAID enabled that I can never use RAID as that will void the warranty! That sounds like utter nonsense to me. Plus, contradicts what my XPS manual says. He also told me that I can buy hard drives anywhere I wish (not just from Dell) and that will NOT void the warranty...that also makes no sense as traditionally you have to buy hardware from the OEM while your computer is under warranty as buying elsewhere will void the warranty. He told me I could install Vista beta as my OS and remove XP Pro and that would not void the warranty but moving to a RAID array that was not setup at the factory but that comes available on the XPS will void the warranty. He also said that if I had chosen RAID0 to be set up at the factory and later I wanted to go to RAID1 that this was forbidden as that too would void the warranty! I was so UNIMPRESSED by this supposedly cream of the crop tech that I just dread having to call them about my optical drives problem. If I were you, I would google for answers to your problems and post at the various nVidia boards, hardware boards, etc. and don't seek help from Dell techs unless you have hardware failure under warranty and have to deal with Dell.

mele,

dell tech support todl me the same thing, however, you can install raid 0 or 1 as per the manual. this is exactly what i did, i bought the computer with out raid, and then installed the raid driver and set up my raid o drives.

dell tech is great, but sometimes you wonder?

rraallpphh13

XPS 600 3.8  677 MHZ 2 GB MEMORY  X2 80 GB 10 K RPM RAPTOR W/3RD STORAGE 160 GB 10K RPM DRIVE

 

 

 

 

 

rraallpphh13,
So what are you going to do when you need to get warranty support and you are told that your warranty is voided? I have the last of my three year next business day, in house repair, warranty transferred from my 8300 (the XPS is a replacement for that system) to the XPS. I am planning on extending the warranty for two more years. I was advised by Dell employees on another website that I should remove the Samsung drive I have and put it in a safe place. Then purchase two drives same size, same manufacturer and setup RAID 0 and then when I have to call Dell support on a warranty issue I was told to hook up the original drive and remove the other two so that as far as Dell is concerned I would not be violating the warranty as there would no RAID installed when I would call. That will be a hassle as I know from bitter experience that Dell's hardware falls apart very rapidly and I will need a lot of hardware support. Plus, that drive becomes unavailable for use except when I call Dell. UGH. That means I will need to buy three drives instead of two. The advice was to do this not because the warranty requires it but because Dell XPS techs evidently think it does.

I don't have a copy of the warranty and the warranty I presently have refers to the 8300 anyhow so I can't tell anything from reading a warranty and I understand I will be extending the current warranty which is not like warranties you buy today with Dells ....I will pay to extend the terms of the OLD warranty...so this so confusing. One Dell board where I posted this incident a former Dell tech support employee and a current Dell employee both told me to call Customer Service and demand that the tech who said that to me be immediately fired. They said that it is absolutely horrible that a tech in Dell's finest support for home and small business users would even think something like that much less actually say it to a customer. They said I had an obligation to get that person fired so they would not spout nonsense like that to other customers. They also commented that it says a lot about Dell's hiring and training procedures since the XPS techs are supposedly their finest.

I was also advised by these current and former Dell employees to not call tech support for anything other than failed hardware under warranty. But that still means a lot of contact with Dell support because this new machine already has two optical drives that appear to be failing (although I am hoping it is just the data cable..but it could be worse and might be the mobo). I don't know a single person, home or business in Hawaii, who will ever purchase a Dell again. The hardware failure rate is so extremely high and the tech support is so extremely poor. Use to be very different when Dell was a young company and my Dell that is over seven years old now is still working perfectly and only has had one hardware problem...the floppy drive had to be replaced a couple of years ago. My 8300 was a nightmare though and the Dell field tech says that the failure rate on Dell hardware is much higher than on HP's which he also services. So, I can't afford to ignore what the tech said although I believe it to be nonsense, however, if this is what tech support has been taught then they will try to enforce those terms even if completely wrong.

Message Edited by Mele20 on 07-10-200602:15 AM