Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Just downgraded to 1.6 on my uMBP 13" 2.26

Sorry I can't post any useful usage info other than my confirmation that it has worked, for what it's worth. I saw that file posted a few days back on a forum while Googling but completely ignored it as a possible hoax!

Once my ram arrives today I'll pop my WD Scorpio Blue in and do some testing.

I just did the downgrade to my brand new 15" MBP and then installed my 256 GB SuperTalent SSD which I had cloned my original HD to via Firewire and then installed the SSD inside the MBP. So far it works perfectly. It is so much faster than the stock 5400RPM drive, even at the 1.5 Gbps rate.

I have only run it a short while but I do feel confident this will continue working. Thanks for the input and advice of the 1.6 downgrade software!

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...

unknown-user wrote:
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...

I'm sure they have tested it... but that doesn't mean it will work for everyone - this firmware issue appears to be rather hit-or-miss. But if you want to go spend SSD-level money on something that you're basically rolling dice on, be my guest. And that's all you'll be doing, as nothing that any drive manufacturer does will address the broken interface in firmware on the Apple laptop.

If the road is full of foot-deep potholes that can bring your car to a standstill with annoying frequency, changing from a Ford to a Toyota isn't going to pave that road.

also want to know if this downgrade is working with the Mid2009 17" Macbook Pro?

I have dealt with Apple Specialists for about 8 weeks on this issue. After that Apple engineering came back with the unhelpful result of Apple only shipping SATA I drives hence not fully supporting SATA 2. While enabled by the EFI 1.7 update, The controller does not fully support SATA 2 standards hence the issues we are all seeing.

I had then a call from a not so friendly Apple Specialist telling me that "This is the end of the rope in terms of a solution to my problem" and that I can not expect Apple to fix this as they never sold any SATA 2 drives.

Needless to say that I am speechless and disgusted at this result as:
1) My 2008 MBP supported SATA 2 flawlessly
2) How can a manufacturer get away with not properly supporting a Industry standard ???
3) There is not even an option to buy an Apple SSD drive after the initial purchase of the MBP.

I am ******!

mcitaly wrote:
also want to know if this downgrade is working with the Mid2009 17" Macbook Pro?

no

its not possible or is there no existing downgrade firmware?

Oliver F wrote:
I have dealt with Apple Specialists for about 8 weeks on this issue. After that Apple engineering came back with the unhelpful result of Apple only shipping SATA I drives hence not fully supporting SATA 2. While enabled by the EFI 1.7 update, The controller does not fully support SATA 2 standards hence the issues we are all seeing.

I had then a call from a not so friendly Apple Specialist telling me that "This is the end of the rope in terms of a solution to my problem" and that I can not expect Apple to fix this as they never sold any SATA 2 drives.

Needless to say that I am speechless and disgusted at this result as:
1) My 2008 MBP supported SATA 2 flawlessly
2) How can a manufacturer get away with not properly supporting a Industry standard ???
3) There is not even an option to buy an Apple SSD drive after the initial purchase of the MBP.

I am ******!

This may be of interest...

Right now, Newegg lists 44 laptop hard drives with a SATA II interface... and only 11 with a SATA I interface.
Newegg also lists 97 solid state drives with a SATA II interface... and only 5 (five!) with a SATA I interface. Oh, and max capacity on those SATA I SSDs is an insulting 32GB.

This is the selection that's out there for what Apple identifies as a user-upgradable part on their *less than 3 months old*, top-of-the-line laptops. It's going to be pretty hard to find any hard drive that my Apple laptop will play nice with before I'm even a third of the way through the warranty period!

Explain to me again how Apple is a leading technology company...
Tell me once more why I am paying top dollar for this bull...
Show me why, as the trusted "tech guy", I should recommend Apple products to my family and friends...

Oliver, see if you can get that specialist to put what he said down in writing for you. That's something you may wish to have a record of, and if that truly is Apple's position on the issue, then he shouldn't have a problem doing so.

mcitaly wrote:
its not possible or is there no existing downgrade firmware?

correct

MBP 13" and Crucial M225 now working after rollback of EFI 1.7. I have been through 3 different SSD's and wasted just about a working week. I am from Denmark(5 million people), which in apple terms translate to lowest possible service. Apple has now lost my company as customers in the future. We have been through exploding batteries which needs 2 weeks of repair time instead of an on site replacement. Failing Nvidia GPU's, broken SATA2 support and harddrive vendor lock´in. And to top this off we just killed most open source programs by installing a rushed 10.6 OS. Well - 3 years ago we shifted from MS world to Steve world as back then things actually worked or at least had a high quality support, had visions and integrated to open source.
What we need now is a call from an Apple layer threatening us with a lawsuit for using their EFI firmware repair tool without going through the 2 week repair time.

I'd like to report success at applying the EFI rollback patch (as documented in [this link|http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=729883&page=13#305]) to my MacBook Pro 15" Unibody (CTO, July 2009), 3.06GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB 7200 RPM Seagate ST9500420ASG, Mac OS X 10.5.8.

My machine had not been altered with any aftermarket parts, and I was experiencing the periodic system lockups with the spinning beachball several times per day in a variety of load & temp settings. I believe the symptoms started after I applied the [Apple MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7|http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBookPro_EFI_Firmware_Update_1_7] (around June 22).

The roll-back procedure went as advertised. In System Profiler, the NVidia MCP79 AHCI SATA controller is now reported as operating back at the "1.5 Gigabit" speed, as it was when I originally received the machine from Apple. After applying EFI 1.7, this field displayed "3.0 Gigabit". Apart from noting the SATA controller speed, I don't know of any other means to check what EFI firmware revision is active. Anyone know if this is reported anywhere directly?

Now I have rolled back to 1.6, I will post an update in a day or so to report whether my system lockups have been cured. Thanks to all contributors on this thread.

I might add a little extra info about the HDD Apple shipped with my CTO. It's a Seagate ST9500420ASG (500GB, 7200 RPM) in the Momentus 7200.4 family. The product literature documents the interface as "SATA 3Gb/s with NCQ & command ordering". So, from an interface perspective, the drive should be compatible with Apple's EFI 1.7 firmware upgrade which runs the NVidia SATA controller at 3.0Gb/s.

I had to dig a little deeper to find the media transfer rate specs of this drive. The product manual specifies the "Internal transfer rate" as "1.23 Gb/s (Max)". This means for your average IO, you'd expect less than this. This confirms the comments by many on this thread that for many (winchester) drives, the maximum media transfer rate is just below the SATA-1 1.5 Gb/s interface limit. Thus running your SATA interface at 3.0 Gb/s is not expected to improve data transfer speed by any measurable amount.

Given this, and the controversial side effects of the EFI 1.7 update, everyone is cautioned against blindly applying it (like I did ) without doing further homework to ensure you're eligible to get a tangible performance improvement. I, for one, won't be in any hurry to apply any new EFI patches from Apple in the future, unless I get a faster HDD.

Of course, those with drives that can exceed 1.5 Gb/s media transfer rates, should theoretically gain advantages by running the interface at SATA-2 rates. The issue is still with Apple to resolve - an EFI firmware patch that runs the SATA controller at full speed without any deleterious side effects.

Nico-Apple:

I have the same setup with the 15.4 inch Unibody MB Pro with the SSD slot--MC118LL/A. *We had the Mac dealer install a Seagate internal 500 GB HD--ST9500420ASG*. I received he MB Pro on July 18, 2009. We ran the software update--everything was fine.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,4
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.53 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP53.00AC.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.49f2
Serial Number (system): (Purposefuly removed for this post)
Hardware UUID: 961058BB-22A8-5F4C-A2DE-386511CF01C1
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled



We ran the Firmware 1.7 Update as directed by Apple. The Mac froze. We could not get a reboot--just a question mark and a folder with a circle and slash through it. We tried nearly everything to get it accessed even with a Firewire xfer to an iMac. No Luck here!

We returned it to the dealer who replaced the logic board. The MacBook Pro worked with the new logic board. However then we updated the software through the auto updater. The MacBook Pro obviously still worked.

We updated the 1.7 Firmware as directed by Apple--not knowing that was the issue. *The MacBook Pro froze once again!*

The dealer checked the Apple site and others and found these issues with the larger HDs on this vintage of the Mac Book Pro.

He replaced the larger 500 GB Seagate drive (ST9500420ASG) with the stock 250 GB HD that was shipped with the MacBook Pro. *Now it works OK--except a few beach balls--but it starts up and works OK.* Most of those were resolved with a restart into a "Safe Mode".

Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02:

Capacity: 232.89 GB
Model: Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02
Revision: PB2AC60Q
Serial Number: 090617PBC200QSH51NKH
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:
RJG MBP:
Capacity: 232.57 GB
Available: 65.28 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

Only problem is I am not using a 500 GB HD which cost me nearly $200 (US) to have in the MacBook Pro until this issue is resolved.

Now if I can rollback the 1.7 Firmware to the working 1.6 Firmware at the Apple Store or though my supplying dealer, I would be happier--but not completely satisfied.



bobg

I'm hoping that, with this firmware downgrader so simple and straightforward to use, maybe people will be more willing to test out their drives on both 1.6 and 1.7 to draw up their own compatibility lists without fear of being stuck at 3Gb/s.

Regarding your own drive, I also have a Seagate (5400rpm though) and don't seem to have any problems with it despite it being a SATA2 drive (apart from the model number, the fact there's a jumper setting for 1.5Gb/s is a clear giveaway).

As you have the stock 7200rpm Seagate, have you also tried this:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/HardDrive_Firmware_Update_20

It's to stop the constant beach-balling problem that's caused by the drive's built-in motion sensor and the MBPs built-in sensor clashing with each other (your drive model number ends in G for G-Force protection).

If you haven't, that would help narrow things down a bit. Also, I'm not sure if Apple's Seagate drives are shipped with the 1.5Gb/s jumper already set. Does anyone know if they are?