Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Has anybody had any problems with new MacBook Pro after yesterday's firmware update with third party hard drive? I got a MacBook Pro 13" recently, swapped the 320 GB hard drive from my old MacBook. After reinstalling the OS for new hardware drivers, everything was working fine.

After the firmware update yesterday, the machine has started freezing randomly; the spinner comes up sometimes when reading or writing to the drive. The hard drive, a WD Scorpio Blue, supports SATA II. My suspicion is that there are intermittent data errors when using the SATA 3 Gbps interface. It could be an incompatibility between the controller and drive or the ribbon cable isn't good enough for newer SATA.

Does anybody know of a way to force the drive or the controller to use SATA 1.5 Gbps? Can I revert to the old firmware?

MacBook Pro 13", Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 23, 2009 10:08 AM

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1,980 replies

Oct 15, 2009 9:58 AM in response to wdbutrym

i tried to do the apple Performance Update 1.0 update but when i double clicked the pkg file it says "This computer does not need this update." "Your computer does not have eligible hardware." why is it saying this and what should i do? just so you guys know i have a intell macbook pro 15" and ive been have overheating problems that disconnect me from the internet when it overheats and then i have to restart the computer to fix, and also my computer is real slow with alot of hanging beachballs since i upgraded to snow leopard.

Message was edited by: johnpalley

Message was edited by: johnpalley

Message was edited by: johnpalley

Oct 15, 2009 10:14 AM in response to zzz99

thanks for the reply but i still cant figure out how to solve the problem. this is what the link says.

If you receive the message "This computer does not need this update," your computer is not eligible for this update.
A Software License Agreement window appears. Click Continue.
To agree to the terms, click Agree.
A standard install window appears. Click Install to install the performance update.
Enter the administrative password for your computer at the prompt. Click OK.
A dialog appears informing you that you will need to restart your computer after the installer finishes. Click Continue Installation.
An "Installation completed successfully" window appears. Click Restart.
Your computer should restart. If your computer does not restart, contact AppleCare for more information.

the only button that appears for me after the message comes up is a "close" button. theres no other options?

Oct 15, 2009 10:19 AM in response to wdbutrym

wdbutrym wrote:
Mazda3s wrote:
Well, I just tried Apple's recently released "Performance Update" on my system with a 128GB Patriot Torqx. It didn't do a ****** thing -- I'm still beachballing with the 1.6 firmware (I can't even boot with the 1.7 firmware with my Torqx).

It also locked up in the exact same place it did before -- I was doing a time machine backup, then went to open up my Windows 7 image in VirtualBox. It started counting down the time left to finish opening the image and got to 0:00 and then started beachballing.

I never have that problem with the stock 160GB HDD. Seems like it freezes when it's processing a lot of data at once -- only in my case, the whole system gets taken down instead of a 10 second to 20 second pause.


I have had the same thing happen to me, same drive, and same computer. It is really frustrating. I guess we are left waiting still for an update to the firmware on the computer or for Patriot to change something on the drive hardware. Apparently Indilinx has a firmware update that I am still waiting for Patriot to implement on the Torqx drives. From the OCZ forums it appears that it may help as they have implemented the new firmware. These drives are nearly identical. This is not how this should work.


The problems you are having go beyond any EFI 1.7 issue.

You both should make an appointment at a nearby Apple Store, contact Apple support, and contact Patriot to see about a replacement unit.

Oct 15, 2009 10:51 PM in response to Gregory Mcintire

How can you tell if the Performance Update installed correctly? On one machine, a MacBook 13 aluminum from earlier in 2009 I ran it and it installed and I now show a .B06 in Profiler, but with my MBP 13 June 2009 I still show .B03. Software Update lists it as installed. I am assuming it isn't a firmware change and that's why no change in .B03, but when I ran the installer again it installed and didn't give me a message to the effect that it was already installed. So is there another way to verify that?

Oct 16, 2009 6:45 AM in response to Jkam

Well, this 'Performance update', being an improved AHCI disk driver for OS X, can't fix analogous problems in Windows or Linux, if they run through bootcamp. By the way, I haven't seen anybody reporting such 'hourglassing' problems in other OSes, just under Mac OS. Did I miss these reports, or just nobody cared about Windows, or simply it has its own proper AHCI drivers for this chipset from the beginning?

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Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

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