

Ask HN: Have you ever upgraded your hard drive's firmware? - DanBC

I&#x27;ve just been bitten by a firmware bug in an old hard drive. (I had backups, and it&#x27;s an old drive, but still it&#x27;s annoying).<p>That made me wonder: do you upgrade the firmware in your HDs? Do you do it for all of them, or only if the changenotes are scary?<p>Do companies with very many HDs upgrade the firmware? (EG Backblaze, Google, Amazon, etc etc).<p>(I was able to fix the bug by using the Seagate diagnostic port; a USB to serial adapter, and instructions linked in this years old SE answer http:&#x2F;&#x2F;superuser.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;365999&#x2F;how-do-i-recover-data-from-my-presumably-dead-hard-disk )
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Someone1234
SSDs I do, because for whatever reason SSDs often contain buggy firmware or
the updates provide performance improvements.

HDDs I do if I have a specific issue. But often HDD firmware updates wouldn't
be available which I put down to how mature that technology was, at some point
they just run out of stuff to add or break.

I do have a laptop HGST drive right now with a bug in it and no firmware
update. I'd happily apply it if I could.

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sbellabes
updates are meaningful only if you are affected by a bug, as you described.
(security updates are mandatory because each security bugs are affecting your
code)

