Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

RamAM wrote:
Thanks for your response fishbert.... read-on

fishbert wrote:
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?

In all fairness... if your grandmother installed her own HDD upgrade then she is not as tender a target as mine. If she didn't install her own HDD the point is moot.

I am continually surprised be all the old farts (wow, they censor "farts"?) waiting in line at the genius bar here. Old people seem to like their Macs. As far as old people replacing a hard drive... authorized service centers are more than happy to upgrade hard drives for grandmothers (or other technophobes), and many grandmothers have kids or grandkids who may pop a bigger hard drive in her laptop to hold more family pictures, videos, etc.

Ok, trotting out dear old grandma is a bit dramatic, but the point I was trying to make is that hard drive upgrades are one of the most common upgrades done to a laptop, even those laptops owned by technophobes... and the most innocent of these technophobes have no trouble hitting a button when Software Update pops up with a shiny new EFI 1.7 firmware update.

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...

Yep.

a) Apple supported SATA II just fine in the 2008 MacBook Pros.

Unofficially?

b) Apple pushed an update to everyone that specifically enables SATA II by default on the current MacBook Pros.

With a release note that says 'we know it will not be good for some of you'

Yeah, if they have to put out a release note saying "you know that really common laptop upgrade that many of you have probably done already... good luck with that", then they do not need to be pushing the firmware.

I don't mind it if Apple says "we don't support SATA II interface speeds on our laptops". They should have made that more clear to consumers up front (especially after SATA II worked fine in the previous generation), but they can certainly define hardware specifications of their products as they see fit. But you can't publicly release firmware whose sole purpose in life is to enable SATA II interface support, then claim you don't support a SATA II interface.

Take the criticism of the lack of SATA II on the chin... don't try to hide from it by rushing a firmware "fix", then turn your back to all the people whose machines are adversely affected by saying, "woah, that's your fault for trying to use a feature we enabled... nothing we can do about it".

This is why I keep pushing people to make noise about this -- Apple apparently follows the path of least customer backlash.

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.

Citation please! (no really, citation please)

http://imgur.com/r0gOj.jpg

Peter: It came with 1.6.

i see thank you for the reply, 2 last wuaesiotn has the 1.7 update been treating you well now? the satab cable you are replacing it donnects the logic board to the hard drive correct? Lastly, can you describe how you updated back to 1.7 again? (software auto updater, apple website, did not have the ac power plugged in etc)

Please and thank you.

Hi Peter,

I had not a single beachball at full SATA II speeds since my 2nd upgrade. The cable is the thin black ribbon cable going from the logic board to the Hard Drive.

I took extra care for my second 1.7 upgrade:
1) Booted a fresh Snow Leopard Install with all updates (besides EFI 1.7) applied
2) Only connected to Power - disconnected all USB, Firewire, Monitor, etc...)
3) Ran autoupdate which prompted to reboot.
4) Macbook actually shut off
5) Pressed the power button and did not touch anything until it finished after probably about 3 minutes. It does go black for a while, but that is normal
6) Shutdown and reset the PRAM
7) Using it problem free ever since

Try it and good luck ! Fingers crossed it works for you too. Worst case you can use the downgrader to go back to the old FW.

best regards,

Ollie.

Hi All

I have a 15" MBP/320Gb/4Gb/2.53GHz - October 2008 - 10.5.8. My 320Gb HD died on 20th Aug 2009 and I replaced it with a WD 5000BEVT (sadly, I didn't have time to wait four weeks on Apple replacing it under warranty so coughed up the cash myself). Prior to the HD dying, I was having lots of serious (10/30 min+) beachball issues which I put down to the bad HD.
The new 500Gb WD HD was formatted and a Time Machine backup installed - went like clockwork and back to work in no time.
Over the past few weeks, I've had fairly constant beachballs (30secs mainly). Checking the System Profiler, it says that the NVidia MCP79 AHCI: Speed: 3 Gigabit - I assume this to mean the interface is set to run at 3 Gbit. I don't see any mention of the firmware version 1.7 in the Profiler.
I downloaded the "Aluminum Macbook Pro Recovery" file and installed it on a usb key drive - booted and chose the orange USB key - however, all I get is a grey "no entry" sign. The key is formatted correctly and the s/w was also restored - I've tried re-downloading the file and using different keys - same result each time.
It's becoming EXTREMELY annoying, it nearly became a frisbee yesterday :-)))
Anyone else have an issue downgrading to EFI 1.6 ?

TIA

Neil

iGull wrote:
I have a 15" MBP/320Gb/4Gb/2.53GHz - October 2008 - 10.5.8.
I don't see any mention of the firmware version 1.7 in the Profiler.
I downloaded the "Aluminum Macbook Pro Recovery" file and installed it on a usb key drive - booted and chose the orange USB key - however, all I get is a grey "no entry" sign. The key is formatted correctly and the s/w was also restored - I've tried re-downloading the file and using different keys - same result each time.
It's becoming EXTREMELY annoying, it nearly became a frisbee yesterday :-)))
Anyone else have an issue downgrading to EFI 1.6 ?

EFI 1.6 and 1.7 only apply to the mid-2009 13" and 15" MacBook Pro laptops.

In previous post I mentioned the issue I had with my new Mac Book Pro with the 3rd party Sata II Seagate 500 state of the at HD that was installed. When I ran the software update, all was OK. I repaired permission. Then I ran the FirmWare EFI 1.7 updater which was "pushed by Apple" to my MB Pro--and I installed the updater. The updater completely froze my MB Pro which worked perfectly prior to the update with the same 3 rd party drive. It displayed a Grey screen with a folder icon with "?" on it and a circle with a slash.

I took the computer back to the dealer who replaced the Logic Board and the MB Pro was OK once again. I ran the software updater and repaired permissions. All was OK until I installed the EFI 1.7 FW updater again and it did the same thing again--and locked up the computer. Same symptoms.

I took it back to the same dealer and they check the Apple Discussion Board--and saw the issue that was occurring with the 3 rd party HDs. The temporary resolution was to remove the 500 GB Sata II drive and replace it with the 250 GB factory supplied Hitachi drive that came with the unit. It worked OK--but some beach balling still occurred. At least I could use the computer thanks to my dealers effort.

I watched the Apple discussion boards on this topic and at that time there were 88 pages of discussion on this from all over the world.

Finally someone found a way to roll back the FW EFI 1.7 updater which was written to the logic board. Later Apple apparently picked up word on this and found out that it was far simpler to do the back-dater to a previous version of Firmware that was unaffected by the 3 rd party drives rather than replace the logic boards again. They issued an "Apple Approved Firmware back-dater" to the Apple Stores.

Since my Snow Leopard Disk arrived, I checked with the local Apple Store to see what was required for this update, and could they could do the Firmware back-dater as it was far more convenient for me to have it done there rather that at my supplying dealer. I waited for 1.5 hrs patiently to see if I could get in by a cancellation or something. I was the last person they handled!

I want to thank "Rex" the Apple Genius for the extra ordinary effort that he employed in my particular case. He heard of this Firmware issue only remotely and recalled that they had he an Apple suppled Engineering Department Bulletin and work around from Apple. He advised me that i was the only second person who had this issue that came into their store to his knowledge.

He tried to get it to work on my Mac Book Pro but some file corruption may have occurred as he tried to run the back-dater from a separate back up HD which could not be partitioned successfully. Then he tried using the back-dater from a iPod Nano as an external Hard Disk. For some reason that did not work. He tried it from a newly burned disk and that did not work. *He worked 1 hr after closing in trying to resolve this issue for me.*

As this was not successful--he advised me that he would check back with Apple Engineering and get the issue resolved. He took my e-mail address at home and at work.

*On the next after noon, he indicated by e-mail that they got the back dater working and already tried it out, and had scheduled an appointment form at 8:15 PM for me..*

I called my MB Pro dealer and advised him that I could get the back-dater completed with minimal effort and that when I was ready, I could come in and get the new 500 GB HD re-installed in my firmware back-dated Mac Book Pro.

*I showed up at the Apple store, and the next available Apple Genius worked on the Mac Book Pro and backed up the updater. We had a few other issues which they helped resolve and I left the store at 9 PM completely satisfied after I confirmed I had no issues apparently with my MB Pro.*

*I told Rex that I would post this super effort by the him-- and the Apple Genius bar group-- at the Apple Store. They were simply great!*

By the way my Mac works fine now and I will later have the 500 GB HD re-installed by the supplying dealer--when my replacement power supply from my LaCie 3/4 TB Time Machine d2 Quadra HD gets delivered. Then, and only then, will I be a happy camper--after Snow Leopard is installed.

Hi,

I'm the manager of an french apple authorized service provider since 6 years.

I recently purchase for my own usage a Macbook Pro 13" june 2009 (macbook pro 5.5 serial number ended with 66D)
It worked perfectly with the stock (but slow) fujitsu MJA2160BH drive.

After a backup, I then decided to replace the stock drive with a 2 month old 250GB OCZ vertex SSD which was previously installed, and run flawlessly, in a 2006 black core duo MacBook.
I did the hard drive installation with an antistatic mat and wrist strap.

I could boot 1 time MacOS 10.5.8, then tried to upgrade to 10.6 but the installation took 4 hours and the new macbook pro 13" was unable to reboot : hang on the grey screen with the crossed circle.
things got even worse : I booted to windows (I have bootcamp installed on this drive) and could even not install the new bootcamp drivers because the computer freezed after 30 seconds of use : and this was repeated 3 times until it didn't even boot.

so I got two working OS, on a working drive, destroyed by this computer.

I then replace the stock fujitsu drive and the macbook pro worked normally again.

I tried to test the SSD in a MacPro and saw that my main hfs partition had become unreadable. but I was able to reformat the SSD with no problem (guid partition) and reinstall MacOS 10.5.8 on it without any hassle and with a reasonnable speed (45 minutes).

I then put back the SSD in the 13" macbook pro (june 2009), and did a test with SMART utility and founded that there were a lot of CRC errors, more than 1 by second !
I tried to get my datas back on the SSD from my backup (usb external drive) but it took 6 hours to transfer 67 GB without endind succesfully (the macbook pro eventually ended with freezing, no response on the caps lock key on the keyboard)

I booted on an external USB drive an ran SMART utility again and found that the SSD had counted 27000 CRC errors !

Even if my macbook pro shipped with the last firmware, I could get the firmware back to 1.6 thanks to the post on macrumors.com.
I tried again to boot on the SSD drive but still got some CRC errors..

I swaped again the stock fujitsu drive, restored 130 GB of datas from a backup and it still counted 0 CRC errors, all is working fine (abeit slowly once you get used to a SSD)

I repair 2000 computers a year and never saw a computer behaving so dangerously for datas like this !

came back to the thread hoping for a response from apple.. This is a sad day, Has anyone email Jobs with this?

Hello,
after a first try in july with a 15' MBP that did not work properly after the EFI upgrade, i got a refund. I have ordered today a 13' MBP. I will set an OCZ Vertex SSD in it and i will report here if everything is ok now.
Manu

fishbert wrote:

RamAM wrote:

fishbert wrote:
My responses to your level 2 support guy...

RamAM wrote:

[[snip]] the point I was trying to make is that hard drive upgrades are one of the most common upgrades done to a laptop, even those laptops owned by technophobes... and the most innocent of these technophobes have no trouble hitting a button when Software Update pops up with a shiny new EFI 1.7 firmware update.

Agreed because these are Apples - the premium price should bring a premium experince ("it just works").

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...

Yep.

b) Apple pushed an update to everyone that specifically enables SATA II by default on the current MacBook Pros.

With a release note that says 'we know it will not be good for some of you'

Yeah, if they have to put out a release note saying "you know that really common laptop upgrade that many of you have probably done already... good luck with that", then they do not need to be pushing the firmware.

For completeness... they were slightly bullied into this - that's not a reasonable defense as I would not be slightly bullied into doing the wrong thing. This might even be their rationale for [trying] not doing the write thing now. Time may tell.

I don't mind it if Apple says "we don't support SATA II interface speeds on our laptops". They should have made that more clear to consumers up front (especially after SATA II worked fine in the previous generation), but they can certainly define hardware specifications of their products as they see fit. But you can't publicly release firmware whose sole purpose in life is to enable SATA II interface support, then claim you don't support a SATA II interface.

Totally agree.

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.

Citation please! (no really, citation please)

http://imgur.com/r0gOj.jpg

Solid on 3.0 Gb/s. However I have an MBP and I can find no such mention.

Good news for me, not for you all. I really tried to help, but I got lucky.


After waiting because of this thread (and the Intel G2 firmware problem), I decided I would just jump in and go ahead and battle with Apple phone support (fishbert's suggestion is really the right thing, phone support is expensive and a single issue generating calls gets noticed) if I had a problem. (Un)fortunately, everything worked fine. I know this isn't evidence, this thing is hit and miss. My upgrade went like this:

I bought a 15" 2009 MBP with a 500GB drive from Apple. I applied the 1.6 firmware update a long time ago. I've stressed the system in various ways, done tests with 'dd', copied large files, done long reads, long writes, etc. With dd, I get >220MB/s reads and >70MB/s writes. I haven't seen anything like the lock ups described in this thread in a week of use.

what just happened?

Do you think that this result of an "+Aja System Test+" is a good performance with EFI 1.7 :

Write : 61.8 MB/s
Read : 74.6 MB/s
(File size 128 MB)

Will I get a better performance if I rollback to EFI 1.6 and use a 7200rpm Drive (which actually doesn't run with EFI 1.7)

------------------------------
My actual hardware (5400rpm) is as follows :

Fournisseur : NVidia
Produit : MCP79 AHCI
Vitesse : 3 Gigabits
Description : AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02 :

Capacité : 465,76 Go
Modèle : Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02
Révision : PB4AC60Q
Numéro de série :
NCQ (Native Command Queuing) : Oui
Profondeur de la file d’attente : 32
Support amovible : Non
Disque amovible : Non
Nom BSD : disk0
Gestionnaires Mac OS 9 : Non
Type de carte de partition : GPT (Tableau de partition GUID)

------------------------------

Is there any web site with some charts showing comparison perfs?

Thanks.

Has anyone found that an SSD, or other non-compliant EFI 1.7 hard drive, works better or worse, if it is partitioned into more than a single volume when using the EFI 1.6 roll back?

I felt that my SSD worked better, and in fact maybe perfectly with EFI 1.6 before I partitioned it into 3 volumes.