Samsung hard drive firmware downgrade
First off - thanks to ash_earwig (Ashley) and NJO (Neil) from the DigitalSpy forums who persuaded Samsung to make this available.
Thanks also to Samsung, both for supplying this and allowing it to be distributed.
The problem
A number of us have recently bought Samsung SP1604N (and SV1203N / SP1203N / SP1614N) to upgrade Fusion and Thomson PVR machines from 40GB to a max usable 128GiB (aka 137GB) (though the 1604 appears to be a 160GB drive - not all the capacity will be useable). We did this because so many before us reported that this was a GOOD choice - very low power and very quiet and worked for lots of people.However those who've bought the drive recently have found it just won't work. In the Fusion this manifests itself as just getting as far as displaying "hold" at power on but it won't go beyond that. On the Thomson (no personal experience of this though) I think it just sticks at the yellow light and the box won't come alive.
After trying all sorts of things it was finally noticed (by me, but maybe others too) that
old, working SP1604N, when used with HUTIL,
would show they had firmware
while these new drives that wouldn't work reported "TM100-30". NTO and ash_earwig on DigitalSpy both contacted Samsung to ask if there was some way to downgrade the firmware in a drive to an older version and so...
The solution
Samsung were good enough to supply an older - TM100-26 - version of the SP/VxxxxN firmware and it has now been shown that if an SP1604N/SP1203N is taken back to this older version it fixes the "hold" problem in the Fusion (and probably similar problems in Thomson too)Initially Samsung said that this firmware downgrader was only for use on the SP1604N but they've since confirmed to Ash that it will work for ALL the following:
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SV 0301N SP 0311N SP/V 0401N SV 0411N SP 0421N SV 0602N SP 0612N SP 0622N SP/V 0802N SP/V 0812N SV 0903N SP/V 1203N SV 1204N SP/V 1213N SP/V 1604N SP/V 1614N |
The instructions for using this firmware updater (or should that be down-dater??), supplied by Ashley Earwaker, are as follows:
Instructions for flashing firmware to TM100-26
on Samsung hard drives
Bear in mind that this is based on my experience of doing this once-only,
so "caveat user".
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1. Create a boot floppy disk by going to bootdisk.com and following the "Driver Free Disk For Bios Flashing" link; follow instructions to create the boot disk.
2. Optional step of downloading Samsung's HUTIL utility from Samsung and copying it to the boot floppy disk. Only need to do this if you want to confirm that upgrade has been successful (but it's a useful utility to have, anyway).
3. Extract the files from sp1604n.zip and copy them to the boot floppy disk.
4. Shutdown the PC; disconnect existing HDD and connect SP1604N. The jumper setting on my SP1604N was set to "CS"; this may work for you - I think as long as the HDD is recognised by the BIOS on boot, you will be OK. If you have problems with the drive not being recognised, I suggest setting the jumpers on the SP1604N to the same settings as those on the existing HDD.
5. Boot up from the boot floppy; you may need to set your BIOS to "boot from floppy/FDD" if it is not set to do so.
6. From the A:\> prompt, type "down.bat" (without the quotes). This will update the firmware, giving out reassuring messages along the way, and then return you to a prompt.
7. I suggest doing a power-cycle on the PC: power-off, count to 10, power-on.
8. Optionally boot up from the floppy and run "hutil" from the prompt to check the new firmware level (Option > Drive Information).
9. All done. Remember to reset any changed BIOS and jumper settings back to original.