how to downgrade friendly drive firmware¶

How to downgrade firmware on UHD friendly drives?

Important Notification： Since March, 2019, many UHD friendly drive manufacturers have released new version of firmware, e.g. the firmware of ASUS BW-16D1HT has been updated to V3.10. In the latest firmware, a series of modifications are made to prohibit users to update firmware to support UHD movies via DosFlash or other tools. If the firmware version of your ASUS BW-16D1HT is 3.10 or above, please do not try the steps below any more, otherwise you will receive an error of "mtk vendor intro to master…" when using DosFlash tool to read the original firmware. The new procedure to update firmware is pretty complicated and requires professional skills. Therefore, we kindly recommend you to order a Plug and Play UHD friendly drive- CA-BW-16D1HT or Plug and Play UHD friendly drive- CA-BC-12D2HT directly.

1. Check if your drive is supported.

Make sure your UHD drive is a UHD friendly drive. You may check it out at the list of UHD friendly drive. If your UHD drive is not in the list, the tutorial does not apply to your UHD drive.

2. Preparation Tool

An empty USB drive, at least 2GB in capacity.
A desktop computer, an older operating system is preferable.
A Win7-pe ISO image file. (download win7-pe)
The software rufus. (download rufus)

3. Get Started

Please proceed as follows:

Step 1: Burn the ISO File to the USB Disk

Open the software rufus first, click the select button to select the downloaded win7-pe-x86.iso file, and then click the START button to burn the ISO to the USB flash drive. (Make sure your USB disk has no important data because it will be emptied automatically.)

burn usb disk

Step 2: Change Desktop Computer Bois Setting

Note: It is strongly recommended to disconnect your computer hard drive first to prevent a possible damage to your files.

Now please connect the UHD drive that needs to be downgraded to the computer.
Then insert the USB disk.
Turn on the computer and press Del to enter the Bois settings (The exact steps to enter the setting may vary according to your computer.), then find SATA mode selection, click and switch to IDE mode.

bois settings

For the latest operating system, you may not be able to find an option to set the IDE mode. So please try to use an older operating system.
Please change BIOS boot option in order to boot from the USB stick (NOT UEFI!)
After completing the above settings, you can save and restart the computer.

4. Downgrade firmware

When the PE system is successfully booted, you'll see the followings on your computer desktop, and there are already a lot of software we have to use on the desktop.

winpe desktop

Step 1: Dump UHD drive firmware

Launch "DOSFLASH\DosFlash32_BH16NS40.exe" software. Then click "read flash" button to dump the firmware to desktop and named as "dumped.bin".

dump firmware

Don't close the software, we need to use it later.

Step 2: Patch the dumped firmware

Launch "uhd-hex-dump.exe".

patch firmware

For the "Dumped firmware", you should choose the firmware file you just dumped(dumped.bin). The "Clean firmware" requires you to choose from the folder "Clean_NS50_compatible_firmwares" according to your drive name.

When the selection is complete, click the OK button. After the patch is completed, a firmware file with a new suffix will be generated on the desktop.

patch firmware

Important! Please copy the dumped.bin file to a USB flash drive for future restoration in case of a failure.

Step 3: Burn the patched firmware

Back to DosFlash32_BH16NS40.exe, change the task to write flash.

burn firmware

Click the write flash button, select the firmware file just after patching (dumped_new.bin). Then wait for the burn to complete.