Q: No boot condition after upgrade to 10.8.3, EFI 1.6, Mid-2009 15" MBP 2.53Ghz
Hi,
I've got a Mid-2009 15" MBP. After I upgraded to 10.8.3, my computer got into a situation where, upon waking from sleep, it became unresponsive, and then gave me the "no entry" sign after I hard-rebooted it.
I took the drive out, put it in an external enclosure, found that it booted via USB. I then put the drive back in the computer and to my surprise, it booted and worked properly -- for about a week, at which time the problem recurred.
Some more detail: a while back I upgraded the HDD to a Seagate Momentus 7200 750GB, model ST9750420AS. I encountered poor performance, spinning beach balls, refusal to wake from hibernate, etc. I came upon the EFI 1.6 monster thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2054387) and downgraded my EFI to 1.6 and kept it there. Everything worked great for more than a year, until the 10.8.3 update and no boot.
It looks like some people who downgraded to 1.6 are having issues with 10.8.3 as well, but with an HDD/SSD in the optical drive (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4895074). I can confirm I'm having issues with it when the optical drive is intact and I'm using a SATA HDD in the HDD bay. This is a supported configuration (my owner's manual even has instructions for upgrading the HDD).
The second time it happened I tried what the folks in the second thread above did and downgraded to 10.8.0, then upgraded to 10.8.2. I can say that at this time it seems to be working. So my questions are:
1) Is 10.8.2 the last Lion update this MBP will ever be able to install?
2) Has anyone who was previously running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.2 had this issue and had success with the 10.8.3 / EFI 1.7 combination (upgrading both at the same time)?
3) Has Apple or anyone else found a definitive list of HDD/SSDs that work reliably with this rather finicky logic board/disk controller?
4) Anyone else running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.3 having a similar experience? Should I be worried about the longevity/integrity of my hardware at this point?
Thanks. Please chime in especially if you have a similar configuration/experience.
Alex
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)
Posted on Mar 26, 2013 5:27 PM
A belated update on this.
A few days ago I happed to come across this document for my ST9750420AS:
In it, it states:
"Serial ATA drives are designed for easy installation with no jumpers, terminators, or other settings. It is not necessary to set any jumpers on this drive for proper operation. The jumper block adjacent to the signal connector is for factory use only."
HOWEVER, one of the jumper configurations is "Limit data transfer rate to 1.5 Gbits per second". On a lark, I tried putting a jumper into it. System (EFI 1.6 / ML 10.8.2) booted and behaved fine; Profiler confirmed 1.5G SATA connection.
I then updated EFI to 1.7. So far so good. I then updated ML to 10.8.3.
The system is now running stable for a few days, including SafeSleep.
I'm not sure about the WD drives, though. According to:
There *are* jumper settings for the WD mobile SATA drives, but they are only for "reduced power spinup" and "spread spectrum clocking". I don't know if those are relevant, but may be worth trying.
It may also be worth asking WD if it's possible to limit the WD7500 drives to SATA 1.5 via software/firmware update. That really seems to be the thing that made my MBP and this drive finally play nice.
I hope this helps someone. Thanks for all your thoughts.
Posted on Apr 5, 2013 7:40 AM