In an earlier post, I described how to use smartctl to see if the hard disks in your NAS were affected by the recent Seagate firmware issues.  In this post I describe the steps I took to upgrade the firmware of both drives in my NAS.  Note:  This article is not specific to DNS-323 users, as it should prove helpful for anyone upgrading their Seagate HD firmware.  (However my tests and checks use linux commands since my drives are sitting in the NAS).
The whole procedure is very straightforward, and only took about 20 minutes.

Using Seagate’s online serial number check utility, I confirmed my drive serial #’s were affected.  (No surprise there).
Note:  You can obtain the serial # for you drive in 3 ways:
a) Looking at the status screen of the DNS-323 admin web interface.
b) Through the output of smartctl (smartctl -i -d marvell /dev/sda)
c) By physically removing the drive and looking at the serial # on the label.

I was redirected to a page where I could download new firmware for the ST31000340AS model (file: MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB.ISO).

And then to a link describing the firmware update procedure:  http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmware_update_procedure.html

Here’s what I did:

Preparation

1) I burned the ISO file to a CD with ImgBurn, one of my favourite burning utilities for Windows.  (And it’s free!)
2) I disconnected all existing drives from my PC.

Important!  The sequence of the next steps are important.  You want to make sure you are ALWAYS booting your 323 with both drives inside.  Booting with only one of the two drives may have unpredictable results, like swapping HD_a2 and HD_b2.

Flashing the first drive (drive 2 of my NAS)
Why did I do the 2nd drive first?  Drive 2 of my NAS is the backup drive.  If I’m going to hose my data, I’d rather hose the backup drive rather than the primary drive.  I flash the firmware then place it back in the 323 to verify the data is intact.  Once verified, I’ll move on to flash the remaining drive (my primary drive in the NAS).

1) Power off the 323.
2) Remove drive 2 from the DNS-323.  (Left-hand drive).
3) Connect drive 2 from the DNS-323 to the PC as the only drive, and boot from the Seagate firmware upgrade CD.
4) Following Seagate’s Firmware Update Procedure, Press F10 to continue, then Press “S” to scan for drives, in my case, to verify ST31000340AS model connected w/ firmware SD15.
5) Press “C” to download the firmware for ST31000340AS to the drive.  Wait patiently.
6) Turn off PC.
7) Re-insert drive 2 from the DNS-323 and boot it.
8 ) Once the 323 came up, I simply logged in via ssh and verified I could see the directory structure on /mnt/HD_b2.  I could:
root@blinky:~# ls -lF /mnt/HD_b2/
drwxrwxrwx    5 nobody   501          4096 Feb  9 17:38 backups/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           65 Oct 27 10:37 hackbook_001b639c705d.sparsebundle -> /mnt/HD_b2/backups/TimeMachine/hackbook_001b639c705d.sparsebundle/

9) I ran smartctl to verify the drive is now operational with firmware SD1A:

root@blinky:~#  smartctl -i -d marvell /dev/sdb
smartctl version 5.38 [arm-unknown-linux-uclibc] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Device Model:     ST31000340AS
Serial Number:    XXXXXX<
Firmware Version: SD1A
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes<
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is:    Wed Feb 18 06:23:28 2009 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Flashing the remaining drive (drive 1 of my NAS)
Repeat steps 1-9 of the previous section with the other drive (drive 1 of the DNS-323, or HD_a2).

I verified using smartctl to check that now both drives are running firmware SD1A:


root@blinky:~# smartctl -i -d marvell /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [arm-unknown-linux-uclibc] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Device Model: ST31000340AS
Serial Number: XXXXXX
Firmware Version: SD1A
User Capacity: 1,000,204,886,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is: Wed Feb 18 06:38:59 2009 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Success!  The drives in my NAS are now protected from the Seagate firmware issues.