How to update firmware on Dell branded Intel SSDs w/o a Dell?

[mrbee]

Hello Datafoo, Thank you for the great writeup. It has helped significantly. I have a Dell branded Intel SSD DC S3610. This monster is a 1.6tb, but the issue I have is that this thing has suffered the "Assert" issue that seems to have plagued the older firmwares. This one is on DL2B, trying to get it to DL2D. The problem is that the firmware update tool does not see it, because it seems to be presenting Device ID 00000. The firmware is expecting a 6 digit (not 5) and is expecting 103979. Any idea how I could inject this into the check, or force the firmware to match and update? I'm not sure what else I can do here... other then desoldering the memory chips and selling the parts... :-( I really just want to use the drive

 

[Terry Kennedy]

The problem is that the firmware update tool does not see it, because it seems to be presenting Device ID 00000. The firmware is expecting a 6 digit (not 5) and is expecting 103979. Any idea how I could inject this into the check, or force the firmware to match and update? I'm not sure what else I can do here... other then desoldering the memory chips and selling the parts... :-( I really just want to use the drive

The Dell DUPs generally have several scripts, some helper utilities, the flash utility and the firmware. The scripts and helper utilities have a bunch of checks to make sure that they are operating on the correct device. I don't know about the Windows (.EXE) versions, but the Linux ones usually have command-line arguments like "-force" to override some (but not all) of the checks. I've occasionally had to hack away at the scripts to disable several checks. Note that this is probably a lot easier with the Linux ones, since they have an "-unpack" command-line argument to just extract the contents of the DUP but not install it. For Windows, you'd have to see if there is something similar, or find a way to look at / modify the contents of the .EXE file.

 

[nthu9280]

Windows version of DUPs also can be extracted to a specified directory and grab the payload / FW file.
Here is the link to the Doc. DUP CLI

 

[JediGhost]

BEST SOLUTION: after many hours of trial and error, I have found "Dell Nautilus Firmware Update Utility for SAS and SATA disk and solid state drives", which is an UEFI-bootable ISO and USB-stick, that takes care of any Dell SSD or HDD firmware updates on any hardware, non-Dell, non-RAID, no problem.

The one that contains the the latest DL2D firmware of said S3610 SSD drive is version A19, from 15 Aug 2017:

Dell Nautilus Firmware Update Utility A19 for SAS and SATA disk and solid state drives | Driver Details | Dell US

Here you can find the latest one as of May 2019 (version A49, which updates a different set of drives, see the Release Notes for that one:

Dell Nautilus Firmware Update Utility for SAS and SATA disk and solid state drives | Driver Details | Dell Canada

After wasting 12+ hrs on Dell Raid-cards and Dell Servers and error messages instead of successful updates, Nautilus took care of it within minutes.

 

[frogtech]

Are you sure Nautilus actually updates and recognizes non-Dell disks? I've tried using it on NetApp disks that I formatted back to 512 byte block size and it didn't recognize the disks presumably because they don't have the Dell-flavored firmware loaded on the disks.

 

[Rand__]

I think he meant that you wont need a dell hba or dell server to update dell branded drives

 

[frogtech]

Ooh okay, gotcha, that makes sense.

 

[JediGhost]

Yes. correct, only Dell HDDs or SSDs, but if you read the Release Notes of Nautilus at the link I have provided, you can find the list of HDDs and SSDs it updates.
I have edited my original post, to make it more precise.

 

[Jek123]

Hello, I have an Dell branded Intel s3700 that freezes when formatting. i want to try to update the firmware, maybe it will help
Does anyone know how to update the firmware if the Dell Nautilus Firmware Update Utility says there are no updates?

upd: one dell s3700 was successfully updated and restored, but the other ssd is getting error 8903