Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

as stated in my post waaay back on page 1, I tried using the jumper to limit to sata 1.5gbps on my seagate 7200.4. it significantly reduced the problem but it's still there.

I have the Macbook Pro 13.3" 2.53 ghz. I swapped the 250 gig HD that came with it with a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (500 gb @ 7200 rpm) that i ordered from Dell. I applied the EFI firmware update as soon as it came out and thus far, I haven't had any problems and it has been a couple of weeks.

My MBP13 post the EFI update works fine with my Apple sourced Seagate 320 GB 7200.3 drive. To help explore this situation, I have now cloned that working drive onto a Samsung 500 GB 5200 RPM drive using SuperDuper. That Samsung is now installed in my MBP13 to see if I get problems with this definitely, non-Apple drive


NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

SAMSUNG HM500LI:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: SAMSUNG HM500LI
Revision: 2TF00_00
Serial Number: S1PTJ10Q71xxxx
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
MBP13 HD:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 350.57 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

SAMSUNG HM500LI:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: SAMSUNG HM500LI
Revision: 2TF00_00
Serial Number: S1PTJ10Q715674
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
MBP13 HD:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 350.57 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

This is going to be a short test... but not for the reason you might expect. I can't believe how much slower and noisier spinning this Samsung 5200 RPM is compared to the Seagate 7200.3 I don't think I'll be able to stand this drive for very long.

Well thus far no beach balls. More after a hard day's use.

Just wanted to chime in that I too am having problems with my Seagate Momentus 500gb, 7200rpm, 16mb buffer hard drive with 3gbs support installed after firmware 1.7 update. My macbook pro (purchased June 20,09) is currently running off the original 250gb drive from a usb external enclosure for now which is fine. The seagate drive is installed in the laptop. I can't even clone the drive using CCC or Super Duper as I believe it tanks through the 3gbs firmware. It just burns me to think the firmware was to allow the 3gbs sata drive to work at is full potential, not to have errors. Wasn't that the whole point of the firmware update? I'm still in the 14 day purchase period, but I don't see those "mac geniuses" at the store giving me an exchange so I hope apple fixes the problem soon for all of us concerned.

I too have had this problem. MBP 15" w/ WD Scorpio Black 320 Gig / 7200 HD.
Swapped back in the original HD and no problems...

Someone please ding me if I'm incorrect, but you don't need to worry about those "Mac Geniuses". They have no say if you can or can not return a product with in 14 days. They may not exchange but you can certainly return it for a refund. I would tell them the problem though so it will go to Apple that there are issues going on that need to be addressed. They may charge you a restocking fee, which I know they can wave it if you talk to the right person while (make sure you speak with honey). Then you can turn around a buy a new one without the update. Then you'll probably have no troubles... Until 30 days later they come out with a better fix EFI 1.8, they push out the update and with out you knowing you let the updates do its thing... only to find that the new update update was worse than the first one and hosed you again but this time you're out of your 14 day window.

I had a long chat with my Genius today and it looks like it isn't a question of not wanting do the 14 days return, but they aren't allowed by Apple anymore. In the old days (about 9 months/ a year ago) they didn't had any trouble returning the affected computers, but after a review Apple Netherlands developed a new policy that was much more restricted.
But after the repair my MBP 13" is working like a charm again. I just won't install EFI 1.7.
It does show up in the software update, but I'm not gonna click it 😀

Ran the Integrity test of Intech SpeedTools and after 615,050 MB of data transfers, no errors were detected on the Samsung drive. It is definitely a SATA2 drive.

I wish I had a known "bad" drive to clone my image onto and test.

Just wanted to add my experience. I have a WD3200BEVT from OWC. I have to do a PRam reset every time I power-up my mid-2009 uni-body MBP. After waking from sleep the MBP stops responding as soon as I do something that accesses the hard drive. Other than that it works great.

On the phone, the Apple tech asked me to take it to a Genius. I did so and they offered to swap my drive with the Apple original drive (which I sold). They said they couldn't do anything for me in my case.

I tried finding jumper settings to force SATA I, but there aren't any such settings for my drive. I tried anyway. Didn't help or hinder. Tried flushing caches with Cocktail in Pilot mode. No help or hindrance. I'm just preventing my system from sleeping and hoping for a real fix real soon.

I also have the problem, that the MBP don't boot after efi update with my WD3200BEVT inside(tm). The HDD works fine in my white MB.

Users with non Apple HDDs which are late models have not the same problems. My HDD is actualy build July 2008.




sorry for my english!

@Noraa Haras : You've got the same drive as me, although as well as having to do the PRAM reset, I also get the slow down and eventual death that others have been experiencing.

According to the WD Website, this drive does have the pins to limit it to 1.5GB (across pins 5 - 6) and I was going to try this tonight. Does you're drive not have these pins?

That website showing jumping pins 5-6 is for the WD Caviar drives, which are 3.5" desktop drives, not 2.5" notebook drives. There are no jumpers to limit the speed to 1.5Gb/s on the Scorpio drives.

Mine has 4-pins. I think you might be looking at another model's information.

Yes, your both right. It appears that we only have the option to change the RPS and SSC settings via jumper pins. Darn 😟

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=2670&pcreated=#jumper