Macintosh Firmware Upgrade for Seagate Laptop SSHD ST1000LM014

While I thought Samsung idea of distributing ISO booting CD images to upgrade HDD firmware, working on Mac and PC, was brilliant, I was less excited once I figured out that doing the procedure on my MacBook Pro resulted in an endless booting.

I am referring to the Samsung boot firmware upgrade for SM15 available as per today, November 25th 2013 reachable trough the link posted below.

However I noticed that, booting with the Upgrade CD image:

• On a MacBook Pro with ST1000LM014 resulted in immediate shutdown after booting in Linux
• On a PC notebook with a different HDD with Windows OS worked properly
• On a PC notebook with ST1000LM014 Mac formatted resulted in immediate shutdown after booting in Linux

I therefore concluded that the problem is the Mac formatting on the drive would not allow it to be seen by the OS, that would probably not mount the partitions, and therefore the Seagate tool aborts and the shutdown procedure completes immediately.

The thing is: mounting the partitions should not be a requisite to be able to address the drive! Seagate must change this.

I anyway managed to upgrade my Laptop SSHD drive from SM14 to SM15 in a dangerous and risky way. DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK! Before following this procedure just verify that eventually there is an updated upgrade image without this issue!

Risky procedure to upgrade to SM15

What you need:

• Another SATA drive with Windows or DOS system on it
• Seagate Firmware Upgrade CD burned from ISO image

Procedure:

1. Attach the Win/Dos SATA disk to the MacBookPro (or a PC notebook). Keep the system in a way where you can access the hard drive with the system on. I kept my MacBook Pro on a side with display lid at 90 degrees keeping a hand on the hard drive (!).
2. Boot from the Seagate upgrade CD keeping the "c" key pressed on the keyboard
3. The system will boot and this time not shut down!
4. Very carefully (!!) disconnect the Windows hard drive and plug the SSHD disk to upgrade. This is definitely not a recommended operation and the odd working position makes it even more dangerous. Be sure to be quick in the unplug replug operations and be very careful not to stress the delicate SATA ribbon cable on the MacBook Pro slot!!
5. Select option 2 to verify disk. The first time it reported several errors.
6. Select option 2 once again... this time to me it reported proper values for the drive!
7. Finally, select option 1 and the upgrade will go trough. If you are upgrading from SM11 or 12 the operation may take very long, so be prepared to fix (maybe with tape?) the drive in place and let it run for 10-20 minutes. I was upgrading from SM14 so it took 3-4 minutes. Even if the system appears to be doing nothing, just keep waiting with faith!
8. Once the process completes, you may want some gratification selecting option 2 once again to verify the version is correctly upgrade to SM15
9. Then press ESC to exit the upgrade procedure and powerdown the system
10. Finally you can fix the disk in place properly and close the MacBook for good!

Useful links:

• Seagate Firmware Upgrade for Mac procedure: link
• Seagate form to access firmware upgrades: link
• Seagate forum post on this issue: link
• Japanese blog mentioning the issue: link