Source for Lenovo version of Intel Optane M10 Latest Firmware (K4110440)?

[mattlach]

As in title.

Has anyone found a source for this?

Previous M10 drives I bought on eBay have all been non-OEM all Intel drives, but the latest batch I picked up for a project look to be Lenovo drives (based on the LEN P/N and FRU printed on the label)

They have the older K4110420 firmware on them, but before deploying them I’d like to bring them up to the latest K4110440 firmware.

On my previous Intel proper drives, the Intel MAS GUI updated them without a problem, but this software refuses to touch the Lenovo OEM drives.

I have wasted more hours than I care to admit fishing around the Lenovo website looking for the proper firmware to no avail. I have found firmware packs for SSD’s, but none of them seem to contain the firmware of the Optane M10 drives (which were used as cache drives at the time)

At this point, even if I can just find the .bin file for the firmware (from a reliable source) I can just flash it using nvme tools in linux. Though I am of course also open to using an executable firmware flasher from Lenovo.

So I guess, does anyone know where I might find it?

Much appreciated,
Matt

 

[napalm_atx]

Im also searching lenovo branded fw. I extracted binary file from intel MAS and copared it with dell branded fw. Files have something like digital signature

 

[mattlach]

So, were they the same?

I've never quite figured out if the refusal to update OEM drives in IntelMAS wasjustIntel being pedantic, or if there are actually differences between the drives from Intel and those from the OEM's.

 

[napalm_atx]

Files are same, difference only in 512 bytes. I tried to flash this files in my lenovo branded m10 with nvme-cli, files are downloaded successfully, but not committed

 

[mattlach]

Files are same, difference only in 512 bytes. I tried to flash this files in my lenovo branded m10 with nvme-cli, files are downloaded successfully, but not committed

It was suggested to me that maybe the firmware for these drives was embedded in the Lenovo specific Intel RST driver packages on their site for the models that had Optane M10 drives in them (like the Thinkpad E480) and I spent some time disassembling the installer and all the various cabs inside of it looking for a contender for the firmware, but wasn't successful.

It might be in there, but if it is, it isn't easy to find. Extracting the installer required actually installing it, as neither 7zip nor binwalk (I did this in a pre-snapshotted VM) which revealed more files in the installer, and then I went through and extracted cab and msi files looking for it.

In the end I spent a lot of time looking but never found the firmware binary. It might still be in there though. It is challenging, as all of the filenames are seemingly turned into random gibberish strings of letters making it very difficult to figure out what is what.

 

[mattlach]

I haven't tried, but maybe if I reach out to Lenovo support, they might help, de3spite these drives being leftovers from EOL systems...

Edit: Well, that was useless.

 

[mattlach]

I wonder if I use PCI passthrough to expose the Optane drives directly to a VM, and then run Lenovo's "System Update" tool inside that VM, if it will work, or if it will fail because the VM is not a Lenovo system...

 

[mattlach]

Some further google results suggest that the Intel RST suggestion might be correct.

The firmware update might be hiding in Intel RST 16.8.0.1000 or newer after all.

The question is if I'll ever find it digging through that cryptic mess.

 

[mattlach]

Files are same, difference only in 512 bytes. I tried to flash this files in my lenovo branded m10 with nvme-cli, files are downloaded successfully, but not committed

How large were the binaries you wound up with?

It was suggested to me that the firmware for OEM drives was unified, so I took a different approach and tried to extract the binary firmware from the more readily available dell firmware updater.

Unfortunately they hid the binary firmware inside of a dll file, and it is tricky to figure out where it starts and ends.

I'm attempting to extract it, but knowing how large of a binary I am looking for would be very helpful.

Though I am starting to think the file may be compressed and/or encrypted inside of the DLL, which means this might not be successful.

 

[nexox]

If the DLL contents aren't compressed or otherwise obfuscated then searching for binary portions of the Intel firmware may help locate it, given the report that the Dell firmware almost matched the Intel binary.

 

[mattlach]

If the DLL contents aren't compressed or otherwise obfuscated then searching for binary portions of the Intel firmware may help locate it, given the report that the Dell firmware almost matched the Intel binary.

Yeah, but then again, it may not validate. :/

It is really surprising to me that this is not already out there somewhere. Lenovo sells about 65 million computers in a year. These Optane M10's were included in new computers (at least as an option) for a few years.

There must be millions of them out there.

And it's been 5 years since the K4110440 firmware was released.

It's just really surprising to me that in that time, none of the millions of people with these things has solved this and posted about it already...

 

[nexox]

It's just really surprising to me that in that time, none of the millions of people with these things has solved this and posted about it already...

I suspect it's a combination of only using them in the original system with the Lenovo update package or just not bothering to update firmware.

 

[mattlach]

If the INtel RST Driver installer updates the firmware as has been suggested, I may try installing the lenovo optane drives in my workstation, passing them through to a windows VM using PCIe passthrough, and trying to install th eLenovo version of the Intel RST driver package.

It may choke, claiming that the requisite intel chipset is not present, but at least it is worth a try.

 

[mattlach]

I suspect it's a combination of only using them in the original system with the Lenovo update package or just not bothering to update firmware.

True, but if even 0.1% of users - say - ran Linux instead of Windows, or something like that, 0.1% of millions is thousands of people.

There were like 6-8 models they sold withthe Optane M10, and each probably sold between 1.5 and 3 million units. Thats ~18 million units, and 0.1% of that's some 18,000 people.

The numbers game suggests that someone somewhere should have posted about this before, yet I find nothing

 

[nexox]

I wouldn't be surprised if loads of Linux users either didn't know the M10 was there (probably even got it configured into the default LVM vg with the main storage device by the redhat installer or whatever,) or just booted into Windows if they felt the need to mess with the firmware. I'm using Rocky Linux on a Thinkpad at work and I haven't thought at all about the SSD firmware since I unboxed the thing, come to think of it I don't even know what model it is or if it's TLC or QLC, just some Samsung something.

 

[mattlach]

I wouldn't be surprised if loads of Linux users either didn't know the M10 was there (probably even got it configured into the default LVM vg with the main storage device by the redhat installer or whatever,) or just booted into Windows if they felt the need to mess with the firmware. I'm using Rocky Linux on a Thinkpad at work and I haven't thought at all about the SSD firmware since I unboxed the thing, come to think of it I don't even know what model it is or if it's TLC or QLC, just some Samsung something.

That is fair, but the bug in the Optane K4110420 firmware was pretty serious and related to drive corruption. I figured that might have prompted more people to follow up on it. Even if only a small percentage.