Samsung F4EG Firmware Update *1.5/2TB*

Just followed zpos's instructions and it worked for me, kinda.

Booted off the stick fine, loaded up fine, but won't detect my F4, or one of my F3's.

Ran estool and same thing. I'm thinking it's because the 2 drives neither program can find are on ports 4 and 5, after my dvd drive on port 3 (drives on ports 0,1 + 2 are detected fine), don't feel like dragging the box out again to move sata cables about after spending 3 hours reorganising it all yesterday though, so stuff it.
 
Just updated my 2 new 2Tb F4s and thought I would post a quick addition to what people have been saying so far.

Formatted a usb drive using USB Boot with FAT32 sys files, then stuck the F4EG.EXE file on it.

Booted with this (using system in sig) and ran the exe, didn't detatch any other drive in my system. Seemed to run something and gave a list of addresses/ids etc. on the F4 drive, reported that the firmware was not available to the other 4 drives it found. There was NO message saying it was updating or that it had been sucessful hence I was sceptical it had acually applied anything.

Tried the same routine again only switched from AHCI to IDE, exactly the same result.

Ended up running it from a spare p31 board I had with only the F4 attached. This time it confirmed it was updating the firmware and I got a success message after about 5 secs.

under hardware ID in the drive properties, however, it still says

IDE\DiskSAMSUNG_HD204UI_________________________1AQ10001

which I'm pretty sure hasn't changed from before. Reading around the boards a lot of people are confirming this update doesn't change this value so I'm not too worried.

So, in conclusion, looks like you have to unplug all your other drives for this to take effect, or find another board if you don't want to have to do this.

Hope this helps.
 
zpos said:
Ok, use the link that rupert88 provided above, i.e. http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

You need to download two lots of files. There are links for it on that page. One is:
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8 and equates to a file called SP27608.exe

The other are the MSDOS files which are needed to get the boot files. On that page, they are referred to as "Windows 98 System Files". This equates to a file called win98boot.zip

You need to extract all the files in win98boot.zip to a folder and remember that folder.

Next, you need to install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool using the SP27608.exe file you downloaded earlier.

Once you have installed it, run it and you will be presented with a screenshot shown in the link provided by rupert88.

Change Device: to your usb stick
Set File system to FAT32
tick Quick format
tick Create a DOS startup disk
and then click "using DOS system files located at:" and point it at the folder you extracted the windows 98 files.

Click start.

This will format your usb stick so it can boot into it.

You then need to copy the F4EG.exe file onto the stick.

You can now boot into the usb stick making sure you select switch the boot order accordingly.

Hope that helps?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice (and thanks to everyone who has posted above).

I am trying to use the HP tool. I get stuck at this point:


http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/5880/hpdevice.jpg

I select the HPUSBFW - i presume this is the for windows version.

Then I get to the screen you see - it is not possible to select any device from the drop down menu.

I click on "start" figuring it will detect any devices i have plugged it.

It basically stall at this point any nothing happens.

Any help or advice would be really appreciated. Is ther any alternative to using this HP tool?

note - i have tried downloading the tool twice and tried two different usb keys.
 
I've updated my drive many times because the FW version number doesn't change from 1AQ10001 to 1AQ10003. I've tried with HP USB Format Tool and FreeDOS along with F4EG.EXE.

I have no idea whether my HD204UI has been patched as I can patch it again and again and again. I have tried patching it on its on as SATA 1 drive and with other SATA and IDE drives connected and the result is the same, FW ver doesn't change and I can still patch.

I have been patching with ACHI off as motherboard is Asus P5N-D which doesn't support ACHI.
 
Last edited:
I use FreeDos myself on the USB stick.

My fw version still says 1AQ10001 however...

I see the update fixes this issue: "It stops the potential data corruption/errors if an identify command is send to the drive."

How likely am I do lose data if I'm still running the old firmware? What causes the identify command to be sent to the drive?
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I use FreeDos myself on the USB stick.

My fw version still says 1AQ10001 however...

I see the update fixes this issue: "It stops the potential data corruption/errors if an identify command is send to the drive."

How likely am I do lose data if I'm still running the old firmware? What causes the identify command to be sent to the drive?
Click to expand...

I'd like to know this too.
 
Not sure if I should bother with this or not. I've been using a load of F4s for quite a few months now while running a SMART tool (Hard Disk Sentinel) and I've had no issues or data loss. Hmm...
 
Though I'd post my findings to add to the mix. :)
Flashed my set of 2tb f4's on a p45 asus p5q deluxe (my WHS m-board). Kept in the AHCI mode it always runs in that mode.

They were 1AQ10001 and after flashing via a usb floppy drive they were still at the same version. I have no idea why they thought it would be a good idea to not change the revision number. :confused:


As for what causes the drive to twig, monitoring and diagnostic tools that send and ID command i.e apps like seatools and hdparm is one known way to cause it to happen.

If you turn off the write cache/buffer in the drive properties in windows you can avoid having to flash it at the expense of a big hit to performance as the problem area will be avoided.
 
zpos said:
EdwardTeach, you're running the correct exe so I'm not sure why it can't locate your usb keys. I take it the usb keys show ok in Explorer?

Try Lord Alibaski's technique.

Or, an alternative alternative method: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036634545&postcount=189
Click to expand...


Thanks, I followed the advice in that link and have used unetbootin to install freedos on my USB key. I have moved the f4eg tool into the root directory.

I am having problems however booting from my USB.

I bring up the boot menu, select USB-hd (I have tried selecting USB-floppy, USB-cd and USB-zip as well)

The next thing that happens is that I am told that bootmgr is missing.

I presume it is failing to find the USB?
 
EdwardTeach said:
Thanks, I followed the advice in that link and have used unetbootin to install freedos on my USB key. I have moved the f4eg tool into the root directory.

I am having problems however booting from my USB.

I bring up the boot menu, select USB-hd (I have tried selecting USB-floppy, USB-cd and USB-zip as well)

The next thing that happens is that I am told that bootmgr is missing.

I presume it is failing to find the USB?
Click to expand...

USB is sneaky like this. Your bootable USB key will actually show up under the normal Hard Disks menu.
 
Any thoughts guys?

I am very keen to get this sorted today, I have owned the drive for a few weeks and I have been scared to transfer any data onto it!

Would it be easier to put the F4EG.exe onto a CD/DVD?

Will that work? do i just need to use something like Daemon Tools to mount it on a CD? Do I still need to use freedos?
 
EdwardTeach said:
Any thoughts guys?

I am very keen to get this sorted today, I have owned the drive for a few weeks and I have been scared to transfer any data onto it!

Would it be easier to put the F4EG.exe onto a CD/DVD?

Will that work? do i just need to use something like Daemon Tools to mount it on a CD? Do I still need to use freedos?
Click to expand...

I use freedos on a USB stick myself... It seems to work. Get it booting first then just bung the EXE file on it...

As for being scared, I've lost no data so far, I don't think it's a huge bug myself, but I'd quite like to hear from people who have lost data and how exactly it happend!
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I use freedos on a USB stick myself... It seems to work. Get it booting first then just bung the EXE file on it...

As for being scared, I've lost no data so far, I don't think it's a huge bug myself, but I'd quite like to hear from people who have lost data and how exactly it happend!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply mate, but I have been trying to go the USB route with no success.

When I try to boot from the USB I get an message stating:

bootmgr not found
 
Sounds like freeDOS isn't working properly... I made my stick so long that I cannot remember how I did it,

Here's a listing of my USB stick, i hope it helps:

Directory of H:\

12/09/2009 02:50 <DIR> Autobuild
02/11/2004 16:05 46 autorun.inf
12/09/2009 02:50 <DIR> BCDW
12/09/2009 02:19 2,048 bootsect.bin
12/09/2009 02:50 <DIR> CMDCONS
19/04/2009 13:23 2,034 dban-Grub4dos.ini
12/09/2009 02:51 <DIR> minint
12/09/2009 02:56 <DIR> images
12/09/2009 02:56 <DIR> isolinux
12/09/2009 02:19 1,458 menu.lst
12/09/2009 02:56 <DIR> programs
12/09/2009 03:03 <DIR> syslinux
12/09/2009 02:17 0 win51ip
12/09/2009 02:17 0 win51ip.sp2
04/08/2004 13:00 47,564 ntdetect.com
04/08/2004 13:00 260,272 ntldr
12/09/2009 03:03 173 winbom.ini
02/02/2010 13:56 233,332 034.jpg
23/09/2008 20:51 64,064 BOOT
02/02/2010 03:26 61,432 115.jpg
22/09/2009 02:06 1,983,221 aa1.zip
24/09/2009 13:25 45 fi.txt
22/09/2009 02:06 34,579 IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext.zip
10/09/2009 18:26 74,943,783 MacOSXUpd10.6.1.dmg
30/07/2008 16:50 1,048,576 zg5ia32.fd
30/07/2008 16:49 463,662 FLA****.EXE
11/12/2009 15:22 729,612,288 UBCD4WinBuilder.iso
02/02/2010 01:43 37,240 14.jpg
03/02/2010 01:49 <DIR> pmagic
02/02/2010 01:08 120,499 59.jpg
16/02/2010 02:04 3,708,898 newest.zip
12/02/2010 00:46 <DIR> BIOS
13/02/2010 04:15 <DIR> Chameleon-2.0-RC1-r431-bin
15/02/2010 17:00 <DIR> usb stick builder
23/12/2010 16:13 <DIR> SAMSUNG
23 File(s) 814,551,091 bytes
13 Dir(s) 291,147,776 bytes free

EDIT: It looks like I'm using Syslinux on my USB stick. This is a nice windows program that builds bootable USB sticks...
 
Huzzah I managed to get it to work!

I managed to get the HP tool to work for me and used the HP tool with some Win 98 files.

I did have to plug in an old ps/2 keyboard as it would take input from my USB one.

Thanks to everyone who tried to help!
 
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