.: Flash
CD or DVD Burner
Drive Firmware
For
the most consummate burning experience, savvy PC users often have to under
take the activity of upgrading dvd burner drive firmware as a convenience
either to fine-tune its write strategy or to augment support for a wider variety
of media or to simply fix identified bugs/glitches.
Typically vendors manufacturing the drives themselves (i.e. OEM’s),
make available the downloadable copies of firmware updates of their products
on their official web sites. Among the manufacturers out there are vendors
such as AOpen, BenQ, LG Electronics, Lite-On, NEC, Pioneer, Plextor, and Ricoh.
End
users possessing drives from any other vendor then the ones listed above are
actually owning a ”rebadged” drive, meaning a retail package of
hardware that’s manufactured by another vendor. Drives from vendors
such as Alera Technologies, I/O Magic, Iomega, Memorex, Pacific Digital, and
TDK are rebadged types and usually these vendors are less conscientious about
providing firmware upgrades.
For
a layperson, the prospect of revising drive’s flash memory is scary.
After all, tinkering with the device will void your drive's warranty or in
worst case can render optical drive inoperable. So we strongly discourage
readers from proceeding any further if they don't know what they're doing
or if they aren't sure if they should be using the stuff here.
Probable
pitfalls that can lead to corrupted firmware while flashing
Flashing
firmware is not a trivial operation as it involves re-writing the memory containing
routines that tells the drive how it should accomplish its different tasks,
like playing a CD Audio, reading a DVD movie or ejecting the disk. Thus one
has to assume the risk that if those routines get corrupted, you won't be
able to write the flash memory (the firm ware) ever again! But then the task
isn’t as frightening as it sounds and you don't need to be a rocket
scientist to achieve it— but you will need to take some precautions
so as to make the upgrade procedure relatively safe and painless.
- First and foremost before you start to look out for the firmware of your
drive, you need to know precisely weather your drive is IDE or SCSI (or
something else, like USB). There is a very efficient way to tell what type
of drive you are using Windows' Device Manager. Then identify the model
of your optical drive. The best way to know is to extract the drive from
its bay, and find the information written on (or in) it.
- Don’t
use a patch that isn’t listed for your drive or something that is
close but not the same, from the same manufacturer; otherwise you’ll
ruin your hardware. Visit the Firmware Page and browse for the type of drive
(Combo, DVD-ROM, and so on) and then look for updates which really applies
to your drive.
- A power outage during a flashing operation is fatal! Don't attempt to flash
a firmware if your facility experiences frequent power failure problem or
during a storm or if your system is unstable (i.e. freezes or crashes without
warning). A similar danger lurks if you attempt to flash on an overclocked
PC. So set the CPU frequency back to normal prior to flashing.
- Avoid placing the downloaded firmware files on floppy disks as they are
awfully unreliable. Access the upgrade files from the hard disk partition
instead. E.g. C:\FIRMWARE\ is a good choice. Just create this directory
and put all the files in it.
- Don’t fiddle with burner drive’s controls or start any new program
while the flash memory upgrade operation is in progress.
- If you're making a bootable CD, NEVER EVER copy the firmware files on the
CD, and attempt to read them from the drive you are planning to flash. This
will most likely render your drive inoperable.
REQUIRED
tools that you MUST have BEFORE attempting to flash!!!
- CDVDInfo (most recommended) / DriveInfo
You are required to install the Adaptec ASPI32 layer for Windows before
you can run either of these utility. Both these utilities inform about the
manufacturer's identification information, and the current firmware revision
and region information of your optical drive unit.
Beware that whatever information the manufacture has burnt in to the drive’s
firmware is shown by CDVDInfo or DriveInfo to identify the unit. Some manufacturer
give only partial information regarding the model, or, worse, you might
not even be able to find out who the manufacturer is.
- A
Windows DOS Bootdisk, or the "Firmware Flashing Bootdisk"
Usually manufacturers also make Windows based flashing utilities having
more intuitive interface. However, flashing in Windows can sometimes lead
to errors, due to the fact that at any given time, there will be a multitude
of other processes in the background, which may cause an error during the
flash. While this is an absolute worst case scenario, it has been known
to happen!
In
case a window based upgrade tool is not provided by the manufacturer, you
will need to be able to boot in DOS mode.
Please note that booting in DOS mode is NOT equivalent to opening a DOS
window (or command prompt) in Windows! To do that, you must either use a
Windows 95; Windows 98 Boot disk or Windows Millennium Edition Boot disk.
Win Me is the boot disk of choice as it is fitted with the additional utilities
that greatly ease up the flashing process.
- The IDEDIAG DOS utility
for finding the IDE configuration i.e. weather it's connected as Primary
Slave, Secondary Master or Secondary Slave on the IDE bus. To run it, simply
boot in DOS mode (it won't work in a DOS window) and type IDEDIAG at the
command prompt. In the reported device list simply look up for your Model
ID, and then look at the CHANNEL / DEVICE information. This will then allow
us to indicate the proper parameter to the flashing tool.
- The SCSI DOS drivers for your SCSI adapter if it is not
recognized by default with the DOS Bootdisk that you use.
- An NTFS DOS driver in case the files needed to flash is placed in NTFS partition.
Simply boot in DOS mode and manually run NTFSDOS.EXE and your NTFS partition
will be available for reading.
Most
of the time, once you have retrieved the firmware and flashing tools, you
end up with the following files:
- A .hex or .bin file
This is the actual firmware file, which will be written in the Flash memory
of your drive.
- A .com or .exe file
This is the flashing program. It can be either a DOS program (the most common
case, in which case you need to boot in DOS mode) or a Windows (or any other
Operating System) program. If they’re missing then you need to download
the flashing utility as well. It's usually listed on the same page as the
one where you downloaded the firmware.
If you can't find any, then try the manufacturer site, in support or download
section.
- A README.TXT file where you will find valuable explanatory
notes that you need to run the flash utility.
Flashing
an IDE drive in DOS mode
These steps describe how you should proceed if you downloaded the DOS flashing
utility for your drive.
- Boot in DOS mode, using the boot disk.
- Change to the directory (on your hard drive) where you put firmware and
the flash utility.
- Type the command that you've picked up from the readme file and pray.
- WAIT as flashing a firmware can take many minutes, during which nothing
appears on screen, so just wait patiently until the flash program reports
something
- You need to reboot for the new firmware to take over.
Back
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