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Patrick
Asked: 2015-04-18 07:13:45 +0800 CST

Wrong firmware on Ultrium LTO4 1840

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A client has an old MSL6030 Tape Library with a pair of LTO4 Ultrium 1840 tape drives in the back. Both have failed.

We have procured identical replacements (same part # anyway) and have been unable to get the library to recognise them. I've installed LTT and everything looked great until a colleague pointed out that the firmware for the new drives is 'B63D/Standalone' compared to the failed drives which are 'B63W/MSL Library'.

I've got a copy of the B63W firmware but I cannot get any of HP's firmware tools to recognise that this firmware needs to be installed on this drive.

Further reading suggested that this drive needs installing into the library, and the library needs to push the updated firware, however I cannot get the library to recognise the drive (probably because of the standalone firmware!?).

I've since created firmware tape but I don't understand the mechanism for writing that firmware back to the drive once the tape is created... HP have this detailed and useful page but that doesn't help.

Anyone know if I can do this or am I wasting my time.

hp

2 Answers

  1. Send it back as whole to HP to get it fix. Both failed, but where I work I often send unit to get repaired. They can clean it and remake them work as intended.

    You will get anyhow a estimate when they will receive it, more good than triing to fix thing inside of it.

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  2. Best Answer

    I cross posted this to Reddit and this was the best reply there, which is the closest to an answer I got:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/337n7v/any_hp_tape_drive_knowledge_here/

    Note: I have never done this, so do this at your own risk, but my google-fu turned up: http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=mmr_kc-0114372

    Looks like you use the LTT utility to create the FUP tape with the specified firmware, then load it into the library, and initiate a firmware update from the front panel. The library should recognize the FUP tape format, and use that tape to initiate the firmware upgrade.

    They emphasize that you should really really make sure you have correct firmware because using the FUP tape has no validation or version protection built in.

    Credit to /r/multiball for the comment

    Both methods in the document linked failed, and on further investigation it is apparent that a standalone drive is unable to be flashed with MSL compatible Firmware. Aka you cannot replace FW series BxxD with BxxW.

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