$25 400GB HP/Samsung MLC SATA SSDs

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
821
383
63
45
I hope it is OK to add comment to this old thread. Two of these drives failed both at the same time when they were in raid 0 configuration. I am wondering if this is due to some firmware issue or so. Both drives are not responding and sometimes they show up in the controller bios as raw sometimes they don't. I remember that these drives were susceptible to get locked due to a bug in firmware but I am not sure.

Although I bought them really cheap, these drives are great OS drives with amazing 7PB endurance, really want to keep them if I can. I think something went awry with RAID controller and both drive got killed at the same time.
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
There was an issue with some HP SSD drives hitting an hour limit and failing (yes Samsung was part of it). They had released a firmware update to address the issue. I would advise anyone who bought these drives to find the latest firmware for these on HPE's support site and install it. It may not apply to these drives, at least for this notification, but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it either.

HPE Notification
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bert

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
821
383
63
45
There was an issue with some HP SSD drives hitting an hour limit and failing (yes Samsung was part of it). They had released a firmware update to address the issue. I would advise anyone who bought these drives to find the latest firmware for these on HPE's support site and install it. It may not apply to these drives, at least for this notification, but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it either.

HPE Notification
Thank you! I downloaded the firmware version but tool is refusing to update the firmware. I have tried the upgrade on multiple drives including bad and good ones. I found the following error in the logs:

Device Drive S0RBNEACC01376 (Generic HBA Standard SATA AHCI Controller in Slot ATTR_VALUE_SLOT_UNKNOWN) will not be updated because it does not support deferred or immediate flashing online
Device Drive S0RBNEAD200195 (Generic HBA Standard SATA AHCI Controller in Slot ATTR_VALUE_SLOT_UNKNOWN) will not be updated because it does not support deferred or immediate flashing online

The error message comes when I run cpqsetup.exe. I also noticed the both drives SSA and one of them is good with 47K hours and the other one is in "unsupported state". It almost looks like drive has a smart error. I wish there is a way to force the firmware push and/or clear the smart state.

When I check the smart values on the drive, I see this value:

ATA_READ_LOG_EXT (addr=0x11:0x00, page=0, n=1) failed: scsi error badly formed scsi parameters
....
REPORT-IOCTL: Device=/dev/sdc Command=SMART STATUS CHECK returned 1
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
See vendor-specific Attribute list for failed Attributes.

....
202 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0033 020 020 090 Pre-fail Always FAILING_NOW 128
 
Last edited:

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
Give me a picture of the drive label, I can look it up and see if it's on any lists. Knowing what firmware the drive is on would help too. HP6, HP7, HP8 etc. The drive that is dead I don't think can be resurrected by firmware if it hit that bug. at 47k hours though I'm guessing these aren't part of that problem.
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
Looks like the latest version of firmware is HPG4 (C). I don't see any advisories that have the known hour limit firmware bug. I did see an advisory for them going unresponsive and into read only mode. The firmware above should fix that. Here are the links:
Firmware

Advisory
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bert

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
821
383
63
45
Looks like the latest version of firmware is HPG4 (C). I don't see any advisories that have the known hour limit firmware bug. I did see an advisory for them going unresponsive and into read only mode. The firmware above should fix that. Here are the links:
Firmware

Advisory
Thank you very much for the help! Yes I tried to install that firmware many times on a 2012 R2 server for a healthy drive but it fails all the time. I went through the logs and I think this is the reason for firmware update failure:

"Device Drive S0RBNEACC01376 (Generic HBA Standard SATA AHCI Controller in Slot ATTR_VALUE_SLOT_UNKNOWN) will not be updated because it does not support deferred or immediate flashing online"

I don't know how to flash the drive offline. Is there any instruction on that as well?
 

Attachments

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
Thank you very much for the help! Yes I tried to install that firmware many times on a 2012 R2 server for a healthy drive but it fails all the time. I went through the logs and I think this is the reason for firmware update failure:

"Device Drive S0RBNEACC01376 (Generic HBA Standard SATA AHCI Controller in Slot ATTR_VALUE_SLOT_UNKNOWN) will not be updated because it does not support deferred or immediate flashing online"

I don't know how to flash the drive offline. Is there any instruction on that as well?
Is it in an HP server? If so the easiest way is to use one of the Service Pack for Proliant images to boot from. Otherwise you have to boot with something that has drivers for your controller (say Linux or DOS) and have the flash program that runs in that environment to push the binary to the drives in question.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bert

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
821
383
63
45
Is it in an HP server? If so the easiest way is to use one of the Service Pack for Proliant images to boot from. Otherwise you have to boot with something that has drivers for your controller (say Linux or DOS) and have the flash program that runs in that environment to push the binary to the drives in question.
I am running this on an SM server and drives are attached to the motherboards sata port.

Thanks a lot for the help, I do have a DOS and Debian based systems but latest firmwares are only for Window Server 2012 and executable they provide runs in windows mode (gui) so I am not sure if I can run the firmware update tool in DOS. I actually tried the linux version but it was not compatible to run on x64 debian.

Here web pages says something about firmware update can only be performed "offline" but it is not clear to me what offline means.

"
  • Online firmware flashing of drives attached to an HPE Smart Array controller running in Zero Memory (ZM) mode or an HPE ProLiant host bus adapter (HBA) is NOT supported. Only offline firmware flashing of drives is supported for these configurations.
  • Online drive firmware update available for Smart Array Controllers configured in systems running supported Linux, Microsoft Windows, and VMware environments. All other OSes would require an offline update using the SPP and HP SUM.
"

Thanks a lot for the help again.