Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Well, you're in luck, Felix, because this issue is understood to only affect the 15" MacBook Pros from mid-2009. Those are the only ones that EFI 1.7 applies to, and as such, the only ones the rollback tool applies to as well.

So, the problems you are seeing likely have a different root cause. But, you are in extra luck because your machine is having problems in the stock configuration -- this means Apple has no excuse not to find a way to resolve the issue (even if it means replacing your machine).

My guess is that it's either a bad hard drive or bad memory. But, really, you should let Apple take care of it to your satisfaction.

It is unbelievable what is happening.
In Brazil there is a consumer protection agency called PROCON, that recently fined and forced a cell phone company to stop selling new phones until it solved the tons of complaints from its costumers. It worked!!

Don’t you have a similar agency in US that could mediate this issue?
Apple is clearly responsible even if it claims not to be:
1.It encourages costumers to upgrade the HDs, as it states how to it inside the computers documentation.
2.It launches an upgrade that crashes consumers machines.
What else is necessary?

this is what i've got from the genius bar.
As discussed on the phone the issue with your machine / Hard Drive seems to be gone now with the installation of the Performance Update 1.0 on your machine
Article - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3901
This was with the original hard drive installed and not the 3rd party one you purchased.
This update is designed to work with the hard drives we ship with our machines, stock model or upgraded via custom configuration.
We cannot guarantee that this update with 3rd party or non-Apple supplied hard drives.
As such I would advise that you check with the manufactures of the hard drive you purchased for any updates / solutions for this problem for the drive you purchased yourself.

****, i personally swapped the stocked HDD and it was fine for me...at least it ran 24hours with no problem. and when i changed it back to WD500gb, i got the same "beachball" problem. i wonder any WD/3rd party HDD users got fine with their performance update?

fishbert wrote:
Well, you're in luck, Felix, because this issue is understood to only affect the 15" MacBook Pros from mid-2009. Those are the only ones that EFI 1.7 applies to, and as such, the only ones the rollback tool applies to as well.

both 13" and 15" mid-2009 use 1.7, not just 15".
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

I strongly suggest people go to vendor sites and post reviews reflecting your experiences. It's bad enough you have to suffer, but if people know BEFORE they purchase we can save them a ton of grief.

The 17" also uses the 1.7 EFI the 15"s an the 13"s use.
My MBP came with it!

For that reason I think the problem is not just restricted to the 15"-class.

Umm... nope... 1.7 never applied to the 17" model. The 1.7 firmware was specifically to enable SATA 3.0GB on the refreshed 15" MB Pro and the newly introduced 13" MB Pro. The 17" unibody was not refreshed (to the extent) along with the 13 and 15" machine. It always shipped with SATA 3.0 enabled just as the generation of the pre June 2009 15" MacBook Pro and 13 unibody MacBook (pre-Pro) did.

I totally agree with that, Joey, but (Ican´t c&p it for you) isn´t it true that the 17" also has the 1.7 EFI?
I´ve got the same issues with my harddrive as they are described in this giant thread. My MBP behaved like it forgot to know that it has a harddrive.
When I mirrored my os to an external fw800-hd it worked like a charm. Without any freezes or beachballs more than it needed to have.

After two weeks in service at the reseller, after on an ongoing hardwaretests that all got the same results, noone knows why this MBP does not work like it should.
Ram is fine, harddrive is fine, mobo is fine, airport-card is fine, so in the end, what is left?

Software and firmware.....

I stopped counting how often I installed SL on this machine. So Software is out!

Couldn´t it be possible that the implementation of 3.0 Sata is some kind of buggy through the whole line of MBPs?

Felix Mayr wrote:
Couldn´t it be possible that the implementation of 3.0 Sata is some kind of buggy through the whole line of MBPs?

This has been suggested by some; however, you can see here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237 that EFI 1.7 does not apply to any of the 17" MBP models which Apple lists.

This particular thread was created to discuss the firmware update (efi 1.7) which caused problems with SATA II drives (on the 13 and 15" MBP's- those which use efi 1.7). The new 13" and 15" MBP's didn't have beachballing issues with SATA II drives when they used efi1.6, which limited the controller to communicate at SATA I speeds.

Message was edited by: katmeef

katmeef:

I agree with you 100% with respect to the MB Pro Mid 2009 version with the 3rd party larger 3rd party 500 SATA // HDs like my 3rd party Seagate 500 GB HD.

ST9500420ASG:

+Capacity: 465.76 GB+
+Model: ST9500420ASG+


I have no problem now after 3 bad experiences with the "Pushed" EFI 1.7 firmware update. I have rolled back from EFI 1.7 to EFI 1.6 atthe Apple Store and have Perforance Update 1.0 installed.

I have the EFI 1.7 updater disabled by the Apple Genius.

I am now OK after *but 2-1/2 months of off and on Grief.*

I did re-install my initially supplied 250 GB Hitachi HD in an enclosure now and have it working as a Universal Boot Hard drive.

See the Apple site info at:

* http://apple.com/support/KB/HT2595*

I am finally a happy camper--but awaiting for a better resolution for this issue.

bobg

I finally got my system somewhat stable with the Patriot Torqx 1819 firmware and 1.7. After a few days, I got a complete system lockup, so I went back to firmware 1.6 and it has been rock solid for nearly a week.

Just for kicks, I benchmarked my Patriot Torqx with both 1.7 and 1.6. The 1.6 takes a HUGE hit, yet it's the most stable so I'm sticking with it:


Firmware 1.7

Results 264.82
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.2 (10C540)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD
Disk Test 264.82
Sequential 229.47
Uncached Write 246.25 151.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 299.78 169.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 131.44 38.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 412.03 207.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 313.07
Uncached Write 107.79 11.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 549.54 175.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2078.24 14.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 834.51 154.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Firmware 1.6

Results 200.31
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.2 (10C540)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD
Disk Test 200.31
Sequential 161.94
Uncached Write 172.42 105.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 170.21 96.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 113.45 33.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 237.48 119.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 262.51
Uncached Write 101.52 10.75 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 312.02 99.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2006.52 14.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 593.73 110.17 MB/sec [256K blocks]

My 2 bits worth. I had bought an expensive Intel X25-E solid state drive BEFORE I read these forums. I have EFI 1.7 on a mid-2009 15 inch macbook pro, all updates installed. I expected a horror show based on this forum topic, but it installed and booted fine. Installed SL and updated to 10.6.2 with no issues at all. SATA is running at 3 gigabit. The notebook has been running fine for weeks - speed is crazy fast - macbook boots in about 6 seconds. An SSD is the biggest speed boost I have ever seen in a laptop!

DaGangsta:

Best of luck to you!

However, the issue is with the SADA // 7200 RPM 3.0 gps 3rd party HDs--like my 500 GB Seagate:

ST9500420ASG:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST9500420ASG
Revision: 0002SDM1

I do not have any experience with the Solid State HDs.

Secondly, I assume you have a MB Pro with a SD slot.

I went to the batter's box and struck out 3 times--until I back rolled from Firmware EFI 1.7 to EFI 1.6. I also installed the Performance Update 1.0.

At least I can now use my Seagate 500 GB internal HD rather reliably and without "beach balls".

This is where the issue occurs from my standpoint.

If you read the "guts" of this thread, then you will see that this issue involves the Mid 2009 MB Pros 15 and 13 inch and these types of 3rd party HDs.

From what I understand, if you put the HD in an enclosure and there is no issue there. It is only when these types of HDs is installed in the MB Pro do issues develop.

This is why many of us had to back roll the FW to EFI 1.6.

bobg

I ordered a reman macbook pro 13 2.26 from apples online refurb store. At the same time I ordered a WD Scorpio Black and 4 gigs of ram. The day after I started reading about the Sata I, II - EFI 1.6/1.7 issues associated with this laptop. I almost returned it before even opening the package. I have had no problems with any of my ipods, iphones, macbooks, and mac pro I have purchased the past several years so I decided to go ahead. I was impressed with the speed of the laptop and drive out of the box. Installed the RAM and WD Scorpio Black 320. No problems. I noticed more vibration and little speed increase. The battery life calculations went down from 7 hours on a full charge with stock drive to more like 5 with scorpio black. I was surprised because of my past experience with 7200 drives in macbooks and 10000 raptors in my mac pro. The vibration was acceptable, but I liked the quiet, smooth 5400rpm drive that came with it. Went to bestbuy and picked up a WD Scorpio Blue 500. Installed, partitioned, boot camp, windows XP. No problems. Great performance. Very smooth. No noticable sound or vibration. Battery life calculations went up to 8 hours on a full charge, which seems to be accurate so far.

Macbook Pro 13
2.26
4 gigs RAM
500 Scorpio Blue
All current firmware/ snow leopard updates.
No probelms. I am very happy with this machine.

This is my experience. Good luck.

katmeef wrote:

syd-@69 wrote:
I wont try to upgrade to 1.7 again, even after have installed de performance update, since it doesn't seem to solve the problem according to the posts in this forum.

Really? Performance update solved it for me - and a number of previous posters. Based on the reduction of volume of posts in this thread, likely quite a few others, too... Might be worth trying, worst case you can downgrade again (and maybe even take your macbook in to an apple store to get checked out)

^^^ I cannot deny it any longer, I take this back... After discovering a newfound love for hellanzb (which manifested itself in a 100+GB newsgroup download binge over the past few days)... I no longer feel PU resolved the problem for me.

The beachballing seemed better for a while under normal usage; however, since the downloading binge it's really pronounced now.

(btw I've had hella installed for over a month, only bought a new stack of DVD+R DL last week. point being I don't think hella or macports is contributing to the problem)

Guess I'll be taking the drive out and setting back to 1.5Gb/s again, the apple store's too far away and I don't want to risk running the leaked efi 1.6 downgrade available online for any length of time...