PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Updating Drives with Foreign Firmware

Don’t assume that you have to update your drive with firmware supplied by the drive maker. We know that sounds very strange. After all, installing, say, ASUS firmware on an ABIT motherboard is a fast way to render the motherboard useless. So who in his right mind would install, say, a Sony firmware update on an HP CD writer? Well, there are times when it may make sense to do exactly that.

For example, HP decided at one point not to issue updated firmware for its 8100i CD writer to support 80-minute CDs. As it happens, the HP-8100i drive is made by Sony, and is nearly identical to the Sony CRX100E drive. One of our readers decided to try updating his HP 8100i drive with the Sony CRX100E firmware, which did support 80-minute CDs. He ran the update. Sure enough, his drive accepted it and he was able to use 80-minute blanks. He now has a drive which is for all intents and purposes a Sony. The operating system says so, the CD writer software says so. The only thing HP about that drive now is the name on the bezel.

Such shenanigans are useful only for relabeled drives. For example, your new Brand-X CD-R522452 CD writer may actually be a relabeled Sony CRX220A1. But Brand-X may decide next month that Sony charges too much for its mechanisms and start buying Yamaha mechanisms instead. Most companies that sell relabeled drives are not very good about providing firmware updates for older models. When you visit the Brand-X web site, you may find that there ...