Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

To cut a long story short, I'm on my 4th June '09 MBP.

I'm taking it back to Apple today for a full refund. I'm convinced this generation of MPS are all affected and I'm staying well clear.

I've been looking on the Refrub Store and Jan 09 17" model seems to fit my needs but will it also have the SATA issues?

Also, is there anything about this notebook/generation that I should be aware of? I want this to be the last MBP!!! (well, at least for a couple of years).

Is there much difference between the Jan 09 model and the June 09 17" model? From what I can gather, not much...

Thanks in advance.

fishbert wrote:

coolas wrote:
fishbert - I'm sorry to say that a new firmware is not going to fix this, so you will have a long wait. You need to get your MBP swapped for a unit that has the newer hardware, which fixes the 3Gbps fault.

CaLciD wrote:
Coolas - May I ask where you get the info that there are 'new hardware' that's gonna fix this problem?

Although I am not affected...I would like to know how do I check whether I have these 'New Hardware' just to make sure....if there is any?

There is no 'newer hardware' that fixes the broken EFI version 1.7 firmware.
He's either honestly mistaken, or he's a troll. Either way, it's incorrect.

fishbert - I can answer my own questions, you don't own this discussion.

calcid - Purchased a June09 MBP 13" and it came with EFI 1.7. Swapped hard drive for a Seagate 500GB 7200rpm and had the beachballing. Called Apple and they offered to swap for a unit with a newer motherboard, which now works with Seagate drive and EFI 1.7.

Obviously, there was something wrong with the hardware on the board, but if fishbert wishes to beleive it is the EFI at fault then fine.

No need to get offended coolas, your two sentence post did seem shady at best, even at this point, i dont think a whole machine swap would be necessary, maybe a logic board swap, not a machine exchange.

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
No need to get offended coolas, your two sentence post did seem shady at best, even at this point, i dont think a whole machine swap would be necessary, maybe a logic board swap, not a machine exchange.

The possibility of a hardware fault is starting to worry me now that this has dragged on so long.. I am wondering at what point one should be demanding a logic board swap in search of one of that may magically work with 1.7, or is Apple likely to do a recall within the one year warranty period? As I mentioned before this is my first MAC and I'm unaccustomed to this 'behind the shadows' style of business...

Thanks,

look i cant talk on behalf of apple, but i can talk to you on behalf of myself, Oliver (has posted a few pages back) reportedly got his logicboard swapped and is working very good with 1.7 EFI, which is what im about to get done myself, i think it is the best bet.... if the first logic board doesnt work, the second one will be put, if the second one doesnt work, a third one will be put, if a third doesnt work.... you get a new machine.

The only thing we can lose here is time.

Wether or not it is a hardware issue... we cannot judge yet, personally, it coudl be either hardware OR firmware issue. but thats just my opinion.

coolas wrote:

fishbert wrote:

coolas wrote:
fishbert - I'm sorry to say that a new firmware is not going to fix this, so you will have a long wait. You need to get your MBP swapped for a unit that has the newer hardware, which fixes the 3Gbps fault.

CaLciD wrote:
Coolas - May I ask where you get the info that there are 'new hardware' that's gonna fix this problem?

Although I am not affected...I would like to know how do I check whether I have these 'New Hardware' just to make sure....if there is any?

There is no 'newer hardware' that fixes the broken EFI version 1.7 firmware.
He's either honestly mistaken, or he's a troll. Either way, it's incorrect.

fishbert - I can answer my own questions, you don't own this discussion.

calcid - Purchased a June09 MBP 13" and it came with EFI 1.7. Swapped hard drive for a Seagate 500GB 7200rpm and had the beachballing. Called Apple and they offered to swap for a unit with a newer motherboard, which now works with Seagate drive and EFI 1.7.

Obviously, there was something wrong with the hardware on the board, but if fishbert wishes to beleive it is the EFI at fault then fine.

1) From the very beginning, this SATA II issue has been shown to be a hit-or-miss affair. That you (or anyone else) had luck after the logic board was replaced or the laptop as a whole was replaced can certainly be attributed to just that; luck.

2) The only difference that has been shown to exist between "old" logic boards and "new" logic boards is which version of firmware is pre-loaded into EFI ROM. Not saying there isn't a more substantive change in there somewhere; but I am saying that nobody has shown one.

3) It is not "obvious" that the SATA II issue is a hardware problem. It's a possibility, but certainly not understood as fact or as "obvious". That the late 2008 MacBook Pros (that share the same chipset) work just find with SATA II could even be considered a point against this 'hardware problem' theory.

So, unless you have some real evidence that the logic board hardware has changed between June and today in such a manner as to fix the SATA II issue, what you are asserting as truth is _nothing more than speculation_... and, really, that speculation is based more on blind "belief" than anything I've said.

I should add that if what you are saying is shown to be true, I would welcome it very much because that would mean that the root cause of the issue has been identified and that a real solution has been found. But so far, nobody has shown any such thing.

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
look i cant talk on behalf of apple, but i can talk to you on behalf of myself, Oliver (has posted a few pages back) reportedly got his logicboard swapped and is working very good with 1.7 EFI, which is what im about to get done myself, i think it is the best bet.... if the first logic board doesnt work, the second one will be put, if the second one doesnt work, a third one will be put, if a third doesnt work.... you get a new machine.

The only thing we can lose here is time.

Wether or not it is a hardware issue... we cannot judge yet, personally, it coudl be either hardware OR firmware issue. but thats just my opinion.

The problem is that, before the rollback tool was available, many Apple Stores had been turning customers away, saying that they don't support 3rd party drives. My local store wouldn't even submit a ticket to engineering because the hard drive was not original equipment. They said it would only get rejected (due to the hard drive)... I said what's the harm in at least trying... they said they would not, as it was an abuse of the system to submit tickets that they know will be rejected. Good luck getting a store like that to replace a logic board solely on faith.

Now that the rollback tool is available, I think the chances of getting Apple to replace your logic board are reduced even further.

Add me to the list. I have a mid-2009 17in MacBook Pro (with the stock 500GB Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02) and I still get the freezes and beachballs. I'm not sure what version of the EFI firmware I have, but I am assuming it is 1.7. In System Information, my SATA device is listed as follows:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

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

Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02:

Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Model: Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02
Revision: PB4AC60Q
Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 5400
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Now, I've been reading that people are having issues with the freezes with 3rd party SATA II drives and that Apple doesn't ship any SATA II drives. I looked the drive up on Hitachi's website (http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/products/travelstar/5K500.B/) and it says the SATA interface is 3Gb/s.

Are these freezes being cause because EFI 1.7 is broken when it comes to drives that use the 3Gb/s SATA interface?

Brad DT wrote:
Add me to the list. I have a mid-2009 17in MacBook Pro (with the stock 500GB Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02) and I still get the freezes and beachballs. I'm not sure what version of the EFI firmware I have, but I am assuming it is 1.7. In System Information, my SATA device is listed as follows:

The current 17" MacBook Pro only has one version of firmware. All the 1.6 vs 1.7 firmware talk only applies to the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros. Some are saying that they see the SATA II issue on 17" MacBook Pros, though. I would highly encourage anyone with a 17" MacBook Pro who is seeing this issue to contact Apple Support and be persistent in working with them toward a solution.

Brad DT wrote:
Now, I've been reading that people are having issues with the freezes with 3rd party SATA II drives and that Apple doesn't ship any SATA II drives. I looked the drive up on Hitachi's website (http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/products/travelstar/5K500.B/) and it says the SATA interface is 3Gb/s.

Apple ships the Hitachi drive with their own custom hard drive firmware (not to be confused with EFI firmware on the laptop). Apple has apparently said that they do not ship 3.0 Gb/s drives, so that leads one to the conclusion that Apple's custom hard drive firmware on those Hitachi drives limits the drive itself to 1.5 Gb/s (regardless of what Hitachi's website says).

I also want to give an update with my Corsair X256 SSD Drive

I successfully downgraded to EFI 1.6. After that I done an reset of SMC, PRAM and NVRAM. Then tried a clean install of Snow Leopard and Leopard and all went fine. After all that I tried doing disk intensive tasks like installing Adobe CS3 Suite and simultaneously duplicating/copying large files to the SSD.... after a couple of minutes the disk freezes. All tests done on a Macbook Pro 15" Mid2009 (nvidia sata II controller).

Another test on my Macbook Pro Early 2008 with an intel ICH8 sata I controller the drive shows the same issues. So I guess the drive is crappy, I will return it.

Gladly, today arrived a brand new Intel Postville 80GB SSD drive and all tests in both Macbooks went fine and the drive is performing very well, whatever EFI 1.6 or EFI 1.7. Yes, the drive performs very well with EFI 1.7.

So I think the Corsair X256 is a very crappy drive or incompatible with the Macbooks, but why?

Ok so I've been happily running my WD Scorpio Blue on EFI 1.6 without a hitch, but I've been thinking:

For those of us running fine on 1.5gb/s (i.e. most or all the mechanical hdd users, I'd imagine), should we still complain to Apple in the hope they'll take on board the number of complaints and hurry up with some sort of resolution (assuming one is forthcoming)? I was of the opinion that, in spite of the manual showing how to replace the ram/hdd, Apple were expecting you to buy your replacement ram/hdd from them and so it would naturally be 'supported'. Reason for that was I was looking at an Apple pdf file for the replacement instructions instead of the manual and it assumed the replacement has those torx 6 screws already. But the manual itself simply tells you to move the screws over from the old drive if the new one doesn't have them (I suppose it's perfectly feasible that replacement drives from Apple may not have the screws. Although I looked on their site and couldn't see any laptop replacement drives, only desktop ones).

I don't like this talk of Apple stores turning people on this thread away because they're using their own 'unsupported' drives, and my stock drive is a Hitachi that had no problems after the 1.7 update so if I were to claim it had issues and they examined it they'd most likely return it untouched, but I'd still like to help make them aware of the number of people affected (or likely to be affected if they replace the hard drive with an unsupported model).

I get the same problem with my stock drive, not as often. But I've gotten a few 30 secs beachballs on it when doing nothing special.

Another update on my situation. Visited the Chandler, AZ Genius Bar today for the second time. This time, I alerted them to this thread when I made the appointment. They had the rollback CD waiting when I arrived. The Genius I was working with - who was the some person as last week - hadn't used it before. It went smooth-as-silk on top of a fresh install of 10.6 (updated from 10.5.8 last night). System Profiler reports 1.5 Gigabit and Software Update offers to install EFI update 1.7. Performance-wise, all seems good right now. We will see if it stays that way. With luck, this will work until Apple comes up with a real fix.

That's a shame, but it's as fishbert said - people with the same drive models are getting different results. Is yours the 160gb Hitachi? Have you tried this program from Apple's site:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartutility.html

It lists SMART information for your hard drive to tell you how the drive is doing. Someone on the comments section for an article on the 1.7 problem reported lots of CRC errors after installing the firmware update but they had an SSD drive so I'm not sure if that was why. My drive has no errors (450 hours usage so far) but that could be because it was completely unrecognised by the Macbook with 1.7 firmware so there were no opportunities for freezing, beach balls, etc, and now with 1.6 it's not freezing anyway.

Anyone else reading this who's in the know - is SMART information a reliable way of guessing if your drive is having problems with 1.7 that you may not notice yourself?

bilals,

I ran SMART Utility (2.0.2) when I was trying to figure out what was going on after problems appeared. It did not report any problems.