Realtek USB to NVMe adapter support (9210B-CG) #109
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Hi @shanewazabbas, USB attachments are always tricky as they add an extra layer of translation to work through. We have not been able to get a specification from Realtek on NVMe passthrough commands for their USB to NVMe adapters when I reached out through their support portal in the past. The only thing you might be able to do to update the firmware with this adapter is to try forcing it to use a SCSI firmware update sequence instead and see if it translates that. According to the chip listing I found here, this might be able to work since firmware update is part of the SCSI to NVMe translation whitepaper and Realtek is claiming to support all translations. |
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Hi, @vonericsen. Thank you for the quick and detailed reply. Also the above command that I ran ( |
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I ran the command to update and unfortunately it didn't work: Update firmware result
And also here is the output of the original command: childInfo output
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Just eject it and plug it back in. If you do this through the operating system's eject it will tell the drive it is being powered off. I think it will be similar to
Yes and no. The device discovery that is done by openSeaChest is very thorough and looks for more things than most USB adapters know how to reply to...and many USB adapters I've tested have issues recovering from commands that they do not know how to service.
I'm a little unsure if the output results will tell everything I need to know, but I think it will help start some changes. Do you happen to have a link to where you purchased this adapter? Seagate can look into buying it for me to test it myself since the testing could get complicated depending on what you get as a result....and that the product page says it supports SATA and NVMe, so one set of rules for NVMe might not work well for SATA or visa-versa. |
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One more thing you can try is a full buffer download in a single command. It is not used often since the transfers can be so large a bus like USB may not allow them and some OS's (cough cough Windows) does not like large transfers (anything above 64KiB is usually not allowed). |
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First passthrough command output: Details
WIthout passthrough: Details
I bought the ssd enclosure from a pc repair store. Can't find the exact link. The box legit calls it: Image of model
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Tried the full download command and this failed as well (verbose level 3 this time): Details
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I submitted a purchase request for one of those adapters and I also reached out to Seagate's USB engineering team to see if they have a Realtek support contact so I can try and get some documentation or at least ask them some questions to figure out what we can do. |
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Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Seagate support suggested I update the firmware for my firecuda to resolve crashing issues with my PS5. Hence why I bought the enclosure as I don't have a computer that supports m2 natively. |
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@shanewazabbas, I know you may not want to buy another adapter, but this one claims to use one of the USB to NVMe chips I know openSeaChest and SeaChest can support for a firmware update: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=jms583&crid=2H35Q1NUEVYFK&sprefix=jms583%2Caps%2C158&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 I was just searching I just don't want to keep you waiting too long while I work to get an answer and figure this out. |
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Hey, no worries. Its not a rush. I'm also in communication with support to try to see if I can get mine replaced since I am under warranty. I personally don't want to spend on anymore on adapters as I only really need them for this one thing. If anything I'll try to see if I can find a pc repair place thats willing to put the firecuda ssd directly in the computer. |
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Well I finally got the USB adapter in and have been playing with it to see if I can find a way to get it working. I tried a few things like forcing the download command to use SCSI commands, ATA commands, and I tried forcing 4k transfer sizes, and so far nothing has made a difference with getting a firmware to the drive. While I wait for a response from Realtek, I will play around with this and see if I can at least setup some rules to make this perform a little better with the |
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Hey, thanks for the update. From my end, I'm supposed to received the replaced ssd today. So will wait to see how that one goes. If its the same firmware version and the same issues, this will be worth it for sure to have a way to update it with that adapter. I also went to a few places and they said they wouldn't update it for me through motherboard. So here's hoping the new one works. |
Checking in initial changes that make supporting the realtek 9210 possible. This device is pretty different in behavior from previous USB to NVMe chips since it can also support SATA M.2 devices. Because of this, it required a bit more testing and tweaking to figure out the initial capabilities. The most peculiar quirk is that when an NVMe drive is attached, it will respond to an ATA identify command, however this seems to be the only command to respond and the only information filled in is the MN, SN, and FWRev. There is still more work to do for this since it may be possible to further extend capabilities, but this first set of changes helps a lot with compatibility and performance (at least getting drive info). [Seagate/openSeaChest#109] Signed-off-by: Tyler Erickson <tyler.erickson@seagate.com>
More work for supporting the realtek 9210 usb->nvme/sata adapter There are multiple paths for detecting this and a possible warning will be emitted if a user has something that MIGHT be one of these, but was not otherwise detected due to differing MN and vendor ID. This may require more tweaks going forward, but this is the best way I can figure we should support it for now. Summary is if we see this adapter by USB vid/pid or known inquiry data we check the ATA identify response to see if DMA mode is supported (This should always be true on SATA drives) and if maxLBA is zero to determine if it is attached to an NVMe device and only issue it SCSI commands. Unfortunately this adapter does not seem to support firmware updates like the original issue requested and realtek has been completely unresponsive to my emails for help on the capabilities of this adapter. [Seagate/openSeaChest#109] Signed-off-by: Tyler Erickson <tyler.erickson@seagate.com>
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Well I have tried everything I can think of to get this working and have reviewed the SCSI to NVMe translation white paper from original 1.0 to 1.5 versions for any differences that would affect the ability to update firmware and nothing has worked. I have also failed to hear anything from Realtek about how to do this as well. So the changes I have pushed will make some things work a little better, but cannot fix the ability to update firmware on this adapter. I need a spec from Realtek to do this, the SCSI translation is not complete. Here is a list of what I have tried with this adapter (from NVMe to SCSI translation whitepaper 1.5):
I also tested this adapter with a SATA M.2 drive and the SAT CDBs seem to work fine in that case to get internal drive information and do other things. There are some odd things there, but it seems to mostly work. I did not do as in-depth of a command verification as I did with NVMe since the SAT passthrough CDBs worked well enough it was not necessary. Unfortunately, there is not currently a way that I can figure out to update firmware using this adapter. I will need a specification from Realtek on how to do this, but since I cannot seem to get a response from them, there is nothing else I can currently do about this. |
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Hey, thanks for putting so much of your time into this. Really appreciate it. Thus far, the replaced ssd has been working smoothly. Luckily it already had an updated firmware version, so I don't have to rely on this usb adaptor fix yet. I would say its up to you if you want to carry on or not for your researching findings. But I'm totally cool if you want to close the ticket as well as I have no issues yet. |
vonericsen
changed the title
I have simplified the output below. Using
--usbChildInfoseems to display the Firecuda details. But for some reason I don't have the ability to download the firmware file to it. Any ideas how to solve it.The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: