Software & Downloads

Description

This utility modifies the behavior of the drive to wait longer before positioning the heads in their park position and turning off unnecessary electronics. This utility is designed to upgrade the following hard drives: WD RED 3.5" Drive

CAUTION: Do not attempt to run this software on any hard drives other than what is listed above. Please make sure that the computer system is not turned off during the firmware upgrade. Doing so may damage the hard drive beyond repair and your data may be lost.

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows x86
• Windows x64
• Linux x32
• Linux x64

Instructions

1. Important: Please ensure that any important data is backed up from the hard drive and that the drive is removed from the RAID array (the array is offline) before updating the firmware.
2. Download the WD5741utility update.
3. Extract the file and place in a known location
   Windows:
   1. Open a command line window.
   2. From the command line, navigate to the directory containing the utilities.
   3. Execute wd5741 -? <-- this will type out some terse usage instructions.
   4. Execute wd5741 -d? <-- this will type out a list of drives.
   5. Execute wd5741 -d# <-- this will update drive with same # in previous list.
   6. Execute wd5741 -dall <-- this will attempt to update all listed drives.
   Linux:
   1. Open a terminal window.
   2. From the command line, navigate to the directory containing the utilities.
   3. Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -? <-- (## = 32 or 64) terse usage instructions. (the above command will prompt for an administrator password)
   4. Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -d? <-- list of drives. (subsequent sudo command will not prompt for password, it remembers)
   5. Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -d# <-- update drive #.
   6. Execute sudo ./wd5741x## -dall <-- update all drives.

   Note: sudo refers to superuser/root access.

   Critical: Please make sure that the computer system is not turned off during the firmware upgrade. Doing so may damage the hard drive beyond repair and your data may be lost.

4. Once completed, a message will be displayed that the firmware has been updated.

Note: If you are having issues updating the firmware of a drive connected to a PCI Serial ATA controller or Serial ATA RAID controller, please install the drive into a system with Serial ATA connections directly on the motherboard (Onboard Serial ATA controller) and try again.