Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Jumpering pins 1 and 2 on the Seagate, to set the drive to 1.5Gbps, worked. I usually have freezes every few minutes when intense HD activity occurs (downloads with Firefox or using TM). I've been working straight now for 4 hours with no freezing. After so many months of this... I'm so happy I could cry.

Careful those tears do not fall into the keyboard and shortout the motherboard. LOL. Glad you got it working.

I guess I'm getting a replacement machine. Hopefully one that isn't effected somehow.

This is the last word from support:

"I discussed the situation with our engineer further and have been authorized to replace your computer. In order to do this, we will need to set up the replacement over the phone. This process should be significantly faster than setting up a repair. As we are particularly concerned with the firmware on this computer, I am still investigating the issue such that we would not reproduce it in the replacement computer."

Hi guys,
I am new to the Mac community. Unfortunately, I purchased a MBP 13" last week without any knowledge of the dreaded 1.7 update. Thanks to the updates from MikeyUSC and billypaulson about a possible rollback. However, I read in another topic about how it will decrease the SATA capabilities by half. What does that mean?

Thanks!

Hi, the update allowed the Mac's serial ATA 2 (or SATA2) controller to run at its full speed of 3Gb/s instead of the old SATA 1 speed of 1.5Gb/s. It's really for people with solid state drives (SSDs) as regular hard drives don't reach those sorts of speeds, more like 0.6Gb/s and even then I think that's with the really fast desktop hard drives (someone correct me if this is wrong, and also I'm using Gb/s instead of MB/s to avoid confusion).

Even though most of our normal laptop hard drives don't reach those super duper speeds, the problem now is that people with hard drives that support the 3Gb/s speed (even though they aren't running at that speed really) are having lots of problems and we think it might be to do with the really thin cable connecting the hard drive to the Macbook inside. Also, whereas these 3Gb/s SATA2 drives work in old SATA1 mode (and I doubt they'd be any the worse for it) so everyone was fine, now that they're running in 3Gb/s mode they're experiencing problems.

In short, the MBPs were released with 1.5Gb/s maximum SATA speed but now they've been unlocked to the full speed via the update but Apple has said they don't support drives of that speed.

Message was edited by: bilals

If you have a Hard Drive in your laptop, vs a Solid State Drive, you won't notice a difference, the drive can't perform as fast as the controller anyway. Most likely we'll see Firmware 1.8 in the near future to correct the issue anyway, as AppleCare is becoming aware of more & more people with this issue.

Hi folks...

I found this article:

http://www.patriotmemory.com/company/news/newsp.jsp?source=179

I contacted them, about some questions concerning compatibility under EFI 1.7. They forwarded my question to the senior engineer and he told me that their SSD has been also tested in the mid-2009 MacBook Pro under EFI 1.7 without any problems. They did full installation, copy large files to/from disk with no issues at all.

Has somebody experience with this drive?

Thanks...

Could you let me know if you've got the 500Gb 7200RPM Seagate in yours? Mine's got the ST9500420ASG (from system profiler), and I'd like to try the same jumpering as you...just want to make sure I've got the same drive. Thanks.

I'm going to jumper the pins on my Seagate, too, but I'm wondering whether to just use the machine for a while anyway to see if it really is affected while my OSX install is still new and I have nothing to lose by formatting.

Mind you, I don't want to keep opening and closing the Mac like I've been doing, and I have some ram arriving tomorrow so maybe I'll just jumper it and be done with it. As it stands my 250gb drive will be the same as the old one (or maybe a bit quicker) so I'm not losing anything, and if they release a 1.8 update addressing this (ideally we'd have an option in System Prefs to simply choose between the speeds with the default being 1.5Gb/s) I'll swap the Seagate for the external WD Scorpio and enjoy slightly quicker usage.

Or maybe Apple will take their sweet time with 1.8 so when it does appear, hard drive prices will have dropped a bit!

I have the ST9500325AS, which is a 5400 RPM drive - BUT it was experiencing the same freezing symptoms after the 1.7 update. Try the jumpering fix - it won't hurt to try (details on the seagate site). Good luck!

My problem is with a new SuperTalent 256GB SSD that was working fine in my 2006 MacBook. I put it in my brand new 15" MacBook Pro and it is unreliable to the point of unusable.

I called Apple Support this morning and the guy, Jami, had not heard of it but did look up and find the link for the 1.6 restore firmware on the Apple Support site. The one for the iMac and 2007 MacBook and some server. He suggested I burn a CD, try it, and then if it fails restore my 1.7 firmware via a CD that I also should download and have on hand.

I asked if that might get me into trouble bet he said "not in theory". I wonder if anyone here has tried that? I think I will as I am a bit adventurous.

Greg

The problem is that you can't roll back the firmware by just downloading and burning an older firmware (or else this thread would have a lot less pages!), it needs to be performed by the Apple repair technicians. Apparently they just have special software to do it that hasn't been released to us. But if you try, it'll simply tell you your firmware is up-to-date and not do anything.

I notice the one you found is for the iMac and 2007 MB so I imagine it'll probably check your machine first and stop before it even bothers looking at the firmware.

Alternatively, it may actually work (highly doubtful but hey, you're adventurous!) due to some weird reason or other but I guess there's no harm in trying it just to see what happens (I imagine the most you'll lose is a blank CD or two)

Message was edited by: bilals

http://9to5mac.com/macbookunibody

can't thank them enough for helping to get the word out on this issue.

Any UK MacBook Pro owners here suffering this issue? I'm heading down the the Apple Store in Bristol tomorrow - has the firmware rollback fix hit this side of the pond yet?

This is a brand new 15" 2.8GHz MacBook Pro with a stock ST9500420ASG 500GB drive as a build-to-order option, with the fateful 1.7 firmware version.

More new people are showing up, so I'm reposting this again

fishbert wrote:

EuroKRN wrote:
Well hmm.. am I posting in the right topic?

My issue is with a new MBP 13" patched with the EFI 1.7 firmware update but I get the same 30 second beachball lockup but with the stock 160GB Hitachi drive (which is supposedly SATA-I).

It sounds like you may be in the right place.

Here's a (probably imperfect) checklist...
1) you have a 13" or 15" MacBook Pro from mid-2009 with the SD memory card slot.
2) you have installed the EFI 1.7 firmware update from late June, or you have a machine that came with it pre-installed.
3) you experience beachballs that last anywhere from 30-90 seconds before the system recovers -- you may get an error message if your system was syncing an iPod or something at the time, but other than that your system does recover.
4) if you move your drive to an external firewire (or USB?) enclosure and boot from that (hold the "Option" key at the power-on chime to select), the beachballs are gone.

There are other symptoms (CRC errors, question mark folder at start up, etc.), but that right there is a simple first-level diagnosis.

Also, check out http://vimeo.com/5854152 -- this is an example of what the issue looks like on my machine.
(has some good audio snips between the hangs -- "watch this" and "worth every penny", haha)