Firmware Upgrade for WD Ultrastar Drives

TrueNAS General
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New to TrueNAS - looking to upgrade firmware on new WD Ultrastar HC580 drives before adding them to a VDEV.

There is a .deb package available from WD to upgrade drive firmware:

It is available here (although not checksum verified) that various sources confirmed working e.g: here

.deb packages are not possible to install on TrueNAS scale from what I understand so far. As I am running TrueNAS as a Proxmox hosted VM I would have the option to passthrough the HBA to another VM and upgrade from there, but wondered if there are other preferred methods or best practices, docker on TrueNAS for example?

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Two possibilities:

  1. Recommended - Download a Debian LiveUSB image, add the firmware update .deb package and boot from it.

  2. Put TrueNAS Scale into development mode, add the package and then reinstall TrueNAS to take away the development mode and switch back to normal mode.

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Those packages also look to have a Windows executable.

If you “need” to do this, I would recommend using a LiveCD (I like Ubuntu myself), on bare metal, no Proxmox to burn drive firmware (or any firmware for any hardware).

You can also use TrueNAS in developer mode, however an easier way to do it is it “Clone” your current boot environment, Activate the new boot environment, reboot, then go into Developer Mode, do all you work, and to finish up, Activate your original boot environment, reboot, and then delete your development mode altered boot environment. This returns you to they way your system stared out, except hopefully the hard drive firmware was updated without screwing the drives up. But I still prefer the Ubuntu Live CD on bare metal, or using Windows as most people are comfortable with it.

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thanks both, some good options, don’t need to do it per se, but why not start with the latest updated firmware before filling up new drives…

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I would see what the firmware change improves or adds.

A similar topic, there is a reason I never upgrade my ZFS pools when an update is available. The updates do not add any benefit to my home use NAS. It also limits me on how far I can revert to a previous version, if at all.

My point: Read what the improvements are, what was fixed. If it is something you really want to do, that is fine. And you have likely seen something from the Motherboard manufacturers about firmware upgrades: If it is working, do not upgrade as you can brick the device by accident. I too itch to upgrade, my Asus motherboard has a BIOS update out there however the system runs just fine right now, so I’m resisting.

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