Does anyone know if the “WDxxxxYS drive firmware upgrade utility” should be used for a “WD5001ABYS” drive. WD support seem to think that it’s the correct update for this drive, but I’m not so sure as it says the following on the download page:
“This utility is designed to upgrade the firmware of the following hard drives: WD1600YS WD2500YS WD4000YS WD5000YS CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above.”
That only leaves the remaining RE2 Drives as follows:
WD3200YS
WD4000ABYS
WD4001ABYS
WD3201ABYS
WD5000ABYS
WD5001ABYS
WD7500AYYS
How do you know which of the 4 exe utilities to use with these models.
Is there any way to check what the last firmware revision number was for the WD5001ABYS and I can check this against the current revision on my drive ?
After unpacking the 160GB update, it can be seen that it is identical to the 250GB update.
C:\>fc /b WD2500YS.exe WD1600YS.upx
Comparing files wd2500ys.exe and WD1600YS.upx
FC: no differences encountered
If we examine the 500GB/400GB update with a hex editor (eg HxD freeware), we find the following text string:
“WDC WD?000YS-??MPB?”
I’m not certain, but this suggests to me that the updater is screening out unsuitable candidates. The “MP” in the model number suffix is the “family identifier”. If my interpretation is correct, then this would suggest that “WD5001ABYS” would be rejected by the updater.
A better way to confirm whether your drive is unsuitable would be to retrieve its existing firmware modules using SeDiv:
I followed your instructions for bios settings etc. and now have SeDiv detecting the drive. However, I am not quite sure how to save the modules to a file for upload. How should I do this ? I got as far as this screenshot:
BTW - The current firmware revision on the the drive is numbered ver. 59.01D01. Since this number is higher than either of the other two Revisions (20.06C06 and 09.02E09) then it would also suggest that this firmware is unsuitable.
I really appreciate your help and expertise on this.
Sorry It took so long, but I was having trouble doing this on my P55/ICH10R machine. It kept getting CRC errors when reading the modules and would bsod before the end of the test. Even though I was running in IDE Compatible mode. I suspected it was because Intel ICH10R is not a native IDE controller…so I dug out my old Pentium 875p/ICH5R machine and tried it there and it worked no problem. So here are the modules - let me know what you think.
If we analyse the WD5000YS firmware update, we find that the firmware modules are of the older type (pre-ROYL). For example, the following header is from the same module 17h.
In short, the two drives are completely different, and you cannot apply the YS update to your WD5001ABYS-01YNA0 drive. I have no idea why WD’s web site is telling you otherwise. You might like to inform WD of their error (I don’t bother anymore because my bug reports are never actioned).
Fzabkar - you are infinitely more helpful than WD Support - Thank you so much. They should be paying guys like you instead of the trained (or untrained) monkeys that they currently employ. Firstly they took a month to even respond to my support request. And then, they kept insisting that this was the correct firmware for my drive. I was concerned that if it wasn’t the correct firmware that I might brick my drive and so that is why I asked on here. So thanks again for solving this for me.
The only reason I was thinking about updating the firmware in the first place was because I am having trouble getting these WD50001ABYS drives to work properly with some USB Enclosures I bought recently. The enclosures are “ICY Box IB-319StUS2-B” by RaidSonic.
I bought 2 of these and they seem to work fine with my WD1001FALS Drive, but they don’t work properly with either of my WD5001ABYS - (I actually have two WD5001ABYS Drives) . Both WD5001ABYS drives work fine on any direct mobo SATA Controller I have tested them with, and they pass both the “Quick” and “Extended” tests on the WD Data Lifeguard Utility. I have tried writing zero’s to the entire drives and also checked the SMART Data for any re-allocated sectors or any other signs of problems but that all looks fine. When I put the drives into the enclosures the behaviour is quite strange. It appears to copy small files OK (less than 40 or 50 MB) but anything larger and it behaves strangely…it starts to copy at first and the progress bar in Windows starts to move across but after only a few seconds the progress bar halts…it stays like that for a few minutes and then starts to move across again for a few more seconds and then halts again. This behaviour continues in this fashion untill eventually I get a “delayed write error” in windows.
Reading files gives a similar behavior, especially when streaming video for example…it streams for a while and then halts…after a few minutes it resumes streaming again for a few seconds and then halts again and so on.
If I put my WD1001FALS Drive in the enclosure, I don’t get any of this strange behavior and it all works fine. So I’m stumped about this.
Fzabkar - since you are so helpful and knowledgeable…I thought I might run this by you. If you have any ideas I would appreciate your input…or anybody else for that matter.
“I have an Icybox IB-319 (IB-319StUS2-B) (EAN 4250078184485 ) - it has a JMicron JM20329 USB bridge chip in it. When connected over either USB or eSATA, running smartctl can make the bridge chip lock up.”
I don’t know whether your particular bridge is problematic, but I have personally experienced problems similar to yours when using a JMicron JM20337 and an IDE drive.
