Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

For **s and giggles, I decided to upgrade my firmware to 1.7 just to see what would happen. I mean, I've been getting complete system freezes with 1.6 and my Patriot Torqx SSD so what could be worse?

I upgraded to 1.7 and my machine wouldn't even boot afterwards. The Apple logo would show up, then a circle with a slash through it. I tried resetting the PVRAM to no avail. Luckily, I had made the bootable USB drive with the 1.6 firmware on it and restored back to 1.6.

Now everything is back to where it was before... I'm just wondering how long it will be until I get another spinning beach ball followed by a complete system freeze.

Say what you will about PCs, but I never had any kind of hardware problems like this over my many years of PC usage. This is really beginning to sour my first Mac experience (this is my first Mac computer ever).

im in the midst of getting both hard drive and logic/motherboard replaced. i will be attempting to update it to firmware 1.7 and test for problems. worse comes to worse i will downgrade once more...

Three months in and apple has not released a statement, this is absurd. Ive been an avid fan of their products since 2004, ive bought 1 macbook pro every year since....

Its saddens me to say this, but if apple doesn't come up with a solution for this problem chances are i will not be buying another mac machine again.

Back to the PC world again i guess.

I have this issue with a Crucial 256GB SSD and a mid-2009 MBP 17". Hope this clears up any question about the 17" being affected.

We cant rule out that the 17" are having problems, just that the problem 17 inchers are having have nothing to do with the firmware update.

Its starting to look like this is a controller issue, like the 9400 was specifically manufactured or somehow managed to be corrupted so that it would not be reliable at 3.0 gbps speeds.

Its likely the reason why apple isn't (and likely wont release a fix or comment) is because, if this indeed is a controller issue, the only solution would be swapping out all logic boards, or a product recall...

But then again how would they have not seen this in the pre production stages.

What really ****** me off is all the time we (including myself) have wasted documenting, troubleshooting, helping, concerning this issue.

Ive been to the apple store about 4 times now, at 50 kms each time, that makes roughly 200 kms.

Whos going to refund me my time and gas?

Apple Fix this please.

For what it's worth I just got off the phone with level 2 support at Apple. Guy was very nice but in the end told me that:
1 SATA II is not supported on apple macbook pros
2 While Apple must've known about this (see the EFI 1.7 release note) it is still not an officially recognized issue 'by us'
3 I can try going to genuis bar for help - they might test against their own SSD
4 Maybe I can find the same model SSD Apple sells
5 Apple doesn't support SATA II because it is new and not reliable enough for their premium systems as it is 'new technology'

I have to imagine he didn't actually believe all of that... but I figured I'd share was I was told

is this similar to the problem i'm having with my "new" (3 month old) mbp 13"? i get freezes and the beachball thinking thingy at random times. its frustrating because it happens several times an hour. i am careful to close open programs that i'm not using and this happens in the middle of things that usually don't require thinking such as scrolling down on a web page. i have no idea what caused it, its been happening for about a month or so now, but it seems to be getting worse. i have on occasion had to shut down my computer because it would totally freeze and become completely non-responsive and the only way around it was the power button.

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
Its starting to look like this is a controller issue, like the 9400 was specifically manufactured or somehow managed to be corrupted so that it would not be reliable at 3.0 gbps speeds.

Its likely the reason why apple isn't (and likely wont release a fix or comment) is because, if this indeed is a controller issue, the only solution would be swapping out all logic boards, or a product recall...

But then again how would they have not seen this in the pre production stages.

This is not a controller issue, as the chipset in the current line of MacBook Pros is the exact same one that was used in the late 2008 MacBook Pros, and they supported SATA II just fine.

My responses to your level 2 support guy...

RamAM wrote:
For what it's worth I just got off the phone with level 2 support at Apple. Guy was very nice but in the end told me that:

1 SATA II is not supported on apple macbook pros

Then why was a firmware update pushed out to the masses to enable SATA II speeds? Are you telling me that Apple pushed an update to my grandmother that specifically enables an unsupported or experimental interface standard by default?

2 While Apple must've known about this (see the EFI 1.7 release note) it is still not an officially recognized issue 'by us'

Ignorance is bliss, eh? (or at least cheap)

3 I can try going to genuis bar for help - they might test against their own SSD

This is not support. This is "go away".

4 Maybe I can find the same model SSD Apple sells

So you're saying that Apple crippled the capabilities of the 9400M chipset in order to sell more Apple drives? That's real shady, and possibly illegal anti-competitive behavior.

5 Apple doesn't support SATA II because it is new and not reliable enough for their premium systems as it is 'new technology'

This is the real kicker...
a) Apple supported SATA II just fine in the 2008 MacBook Pros.
b) Apple pushed an update to everyone that specifically enables SATA II by default on the current MacBook Pros.
c) Apple specifically calls out 3.0 Gb/s SATA II support in the Mac Pro ... is this not a premium system? I'm sure all these industry professionals would be very interested to hear that their hard drive interface is not "reliable enough" for a premium Apple system.
d) Are you really trying to argue that Apple avoids new technology in their "premium" laptops?! Doesn't that, by default, make the line anything but "premium"?!?!
e) If SATA II is considered too "new", why does the SATA laptop hard drive selection at Newegg (a popular online computer components retailer) consist of 80% SATA II drives (40 SATA II drives, compared with 11 SATA I drives). That would seem to imply that SATA II is industry standard technology, not some new-fangled thing that still needs the bugs worked out of it (can anyone say Mini DisplayPort?).

I have to imagine he didn't actually believe all of that... but I figured I'd share was I was told

If he did believe all that, he should be demoted as a level 2 support professional due to lack of understanding of subject material. If he did not believe all that, Apple's reputation for excellent customer service must be called into question due to his bald-faced lies to a "valued" customer.

Elisabeth Hogrefe wrote:
is this similar to the problem i'm having with my "new" (3 month old) mbp 13"? i get freezes and the beachball thinking thingy at random times. its frustrating because it happens several times an hour. i am careful to close open programs that i'm not using and this happens in the middle of things that usually don't require thinking such as scrolling down on a web page. i have no idea what caused it, its been happening for about a month or so now, but it seems to be getting worse. i have on occasion had to shut down my computer because it would totally freeze and become completely non-responsive and the only way around it was the power button.

Next time it freezes, be patient. Let it sit for 5 minutes, and see if it recovers. If it does recover, you may be seeing this issue. If it does not recover, what you see is probably a different problem.

All I can say is, that while I had experienced all of what you guys are going through. Fortunatly, I have no issues for close to a week now:

1) Full SATA II speeds for my Summit 256GB SSD (Over 200MB/s reads,Over 100MB/s writes)
2) No Beachballs with heavy usage (VMWARE, Timemachine, iMovie)

I had Logic Board and the black ribbon HD cable replaced back in July and did a careful (everything but power disconnected) re-upgrade to 1.7 as the new Logic Board came with 1.6 again. I only dared to do this last week as the "rogue" upgrade tool was available in case I would have to go back again.

Given that two people tried a re-upgrade to 1.7 and did not have much success does indicate that there is most likely a hardware related issue.
Apple might very well have re-spun the logic board or had a bad batch of components during manufacturing. This is certainly not out of the question and hardware re-spins are not unusual in the HW world.

I also would suggest you carefully examine your black SATA ribbon cables for any bends or deformations as this is a rather sensitive piece of cable which easily gets dented if one is not very careful while replacing the drive.

Don't give up hope. I was close to give up on this and sell the Macbook Pro, but thank god it works now.

I really hope more of you will have success in getting it fixed.

Get a question for you all the "geniuses" in here. I have a Hd 5400rpm inside my MBP working not so bad with 1.7 (with a few beachballing once in awhile, but not that much). I also have a 7200rpm not working at all except in USB.

My question is : should I rollback my EFI to 1.6 to use my 7200rpm or should not do it and keep my 5400rpm with 1.7 ?

Otherway to ask it : is it better to run a 5400rpm with 1.7 or 7200rpm with 1.6 ? Is the speed difference really worths ?

Thanks in advance for your lights !

Oliver (and others),

You can determine the age by decoding your serial number here: http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html

If you don't want to use that link you can also decode it yourself here using information from TUAW here: http://www.tuaw.com/2005/04/14/when-was-your-mac-born/

I'd like to start seeing people post some information on the date the replacement logic boards were manufactured. I believe a serial is tied to a logic board. My mac is a week 30. It runs fine with 1.7 and the stock drive.

valid request:

here is my info.

Factory: W8 (Shanghai China)
Production year: 2009
Production week: 23 (June)
Production number: 9073 (within this week)

Interesting Tool ! However, when Logic Boards get replaced they come with an <empty> serial. The Apple Store then uses a tool to burn the original serial number back in. I know as they forgot to do this on my MacBook at first and it showed something like "<serial#>" instead in "About this MAC" until I went back and they replaced this text with my old serial. SO in this case probably not a reliable way to find out the actual build of the board as it would just reflect the original build date.

Production week of my original board was Week 24.

Ollie.

I bought a Runcore pro IV 256 SSD (Mac Edition) thinking I would be immune from the 1.7 problems as I revision 1.6 of the firmware. Alas after install all I get is a folder with a question mark. The odd thing is everything works fine when the SSD is connected as a USB device.

Any suggestions?