Hello,  The disk firmware upgrade process does not use ANY space on the individual disks.  It's programming the firmware on the drive itself.  So it is like updating the BIOS on your computer.  Whomever told you otherwise is incorrect.  There is a minimum firmware to do drive firmware updates. I believe that's 6.x, but there is no drive firmware to EQL firmware requirement.  These are updates from the drive vendor to address issues in their code, not EqualLogic.  So you can do the drive firmware updates at anytime.  Regards, Don    
Good afternoon,   My environment has quite a number of different EqualLogic SANs in it that are all behind on their firmware, about 3 or 4 versions behind. We know they need to be updated as we are getting alerts letting us know that our Disk Drive Firmware also needs to be updated.   Dell Storage Update Manager does not let you know what version of Disk firmware is needed until you have updated the EqualLogic firmware. At least one of the EqualLogics is at version 7.0.10, the rest are at 8.1.1, the current version of Disk firmware we have is TE0A.   Is anyone able to tell me what version disk firmware is needed for all the EqualLogic updates, 8.1.13, 9.0.9, 9.1.4, and 10.0.1, or if my disk firmware does not need to be updated at all? Also, if the disk firmware will need to be updated, how much storage capacity is needed on each EqualLogic to enable the Disk Drive firmware upgrade?   Thanks, Tiarna
EqualLogic PSSeries Firmware Updates - Disk Firmware Storage