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How to update the X25-E SSD firmware in a Dell PowerEdge 2900 with aPERC 5/i RAID controller? In other words, how to make the two SSD's visible to a firmware boot disk as such, when the RAID controller is presenting them as one RAID 1 volume?

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I updated the X25-E firmware by temporarily removing each SSD from its drive carrier and Icy Dock adapter, and connecting it as follows:

Data - connect the data interface of the SSD to the onboard SATA-A port of the PE2900 system board using a standard SATA data cable.

Power - connect a Molex-to SATA power cable from a spare Molex connector to the power interface of the SSD.

In BIOS, enable onboard SATA and enable the SATA-A port. Boot to the boot-CD containing the Intel firmware updater.

After the update completes, restore the orignal Icy-Dock, drive carrier, backplane configuration and restart the server.

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Download and use the Dell Server Updates Utility (SUU).

http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R236931

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Unless you have 500 of these machines, I'd say the easiest solution is probably to pull the drives out and install them in the nearest convenient desktop machine for updating.

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Agreed. Even if the OP succeeded in loading a driver for the RAID controller on a boot disk, it could easily still not work. The firmware update programs often rely on ATA command pass-through, and other less used corner areas of the ATA / AHCI interfaces, which many controllers / drivers don't implement correctly. – Jesper Mortensen Sep 1 '09 at 0:56
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