New firmware version on my 9th 4tb seagate NAS drive

migit128

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I have an 8 drive raid 6 array full of seagate NAS 4tb drives on my areca raid controller. They are all firmware version SC43. It's filling up again so I ordered a 9th drive for the array. It came with firmware version SC44. Seagate support said it's impossible to downgrade the new drive's firmware to SC43, and I remember reading somewhere that you're supposed to keep the firmware version consistent, though in the past I've had all sorts of random drives in a hardware raid without too many problems.

Why do you want the firmware version to be the same? What issues can arise from having this drive as a new FW version?
 
Since I don't know what changes they've made it's hard to say but my guess is it's UNLIKELY you'll have an issue. It's probably just one of those precautions they spit out.

I've had RAID0 and RAID1 arrays with different firmwares and no issues. In fact, I've had different SSD's even.

Your alternative is to upgrade your existing SSD's.
 

migit128

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Can you update the firmware without wiping the drives? I'm using hard drives, not ssds (not sure if this matters)