Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

In my opinion, if you're within 14 days of your purchase, just go and exchange it. You have nothing to lose and this way you don't have to put up with the 1.7 firmware update. Based on what everyone has said on this thread, it looks like the update can't be rolled back. So even if you're not having problems now, there's no definitive way to say you won't have them in the future.

I'm going to the Apple store tomorrow night and exchanging mine. And I'll make sure not to accept the firmware upgrade when prompted this time on my new one.

Just thought I would share a link with the rest of the community. This is for the web forums on MacRumors. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=729883

Also, I contacted a product specialist today and I asked him if it was at all possible to roll back the firmware. He told me that there is no recovery disc for the new Macbooks, and as such he sent a request to the engineering team. He also included the link to this topic here, since I mentioned that many others are facing problems.

Don't sit idle! Those of you that have a problem call Apple, and tell them that others are having it as well! The more that Apple knows about this, the greater a chance it has of being fixed!

The SMC documentation is for the 2008 models it seems...

I'm having the exact same problem. All was fine until I updated the firmware.

Unlike some of you, I can't even boot. I just get to the grey apple screen, and see an ominous grey spinner endlessly.... spin.

I'm using a Hitachi 7K320. I'm having the exact same issue as reported by this guy:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2058987

I just got off the phone after an hour with Apple support. Got put through to a "product specialist", he pretty much told me nothing, and said that he couldn't do anything.

Booked into see a Genius on Thursday, here's hoping I get a replacement.

I got a call this morning, mine could be ready this afternoon, if they don't get into trouble when installing/testing it.
I keep my fingers crossed.

I also had installed an Hitachi 7k320 and I couldn't boot, same as you.

I ended up by reinstalling the 320 gig 7k500 that shipped with my mbp.
Now I'm waiting for an other firmware update. Can't do much else considering I'm not in the 14 day period.
I really don't want to talk it over with someone who's going to tell me 3rd party drives aren't supported or I'm going to get really angry.

I wouldn't count on getting a replacement. When I spoke with the genius at my Apple store, he point out blank asked me "what would you like me to do". He said there was no way for him to swap out the laptop, no way to test my ssd in another computer, and no way for him to do anything. He told me that the only way he would have the authority to do this is if it was an APPLE ssd that was not booting in my computer.

I think those of you experiencing the issue with 3rd party hard drives need to specify what steps were taken when switching out the hard drive. For example, did you just simply take out the old drive, put in the new one, and then reinstalled before doing a restore or using Migration Assistant? Those who had success with the firmware update need to state what they did as well.

I switched out my stock 250GB hard drive for a 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue hard drive (needed bigger HD space, btw) before applying the firmware update and have had no problems since (knock on wood). However, before I did the swap, I booted my MacBook Pro off the included Install DVD and used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to connect the new drive. Then I used Disk Utility to reformat the new drive and then cloned the old drive onto the new one.

I'm sure if I did what most of you did, I'd probably be in the same boat right now.

Hope you guys get this issue resolved.

I was experiencing this issue on a factory-stock 13" June 2009 model (2.53, 4GB, 250GB Hitachi). Same symptoms as reported here by others; basically 30 to 45-second beachball hangs in all applications.

I ran Cocktail's 'Pilot' mode, which runs the daily/weekly/monthly scripts, cleans the caches, repairs permissions, waves a dead chicken, etc. (Onyx does the same thing, I believe) and reset the PRAM.

The issue at least for the moment seems to be resolved. I'd get the beachballs several times per hour previously, but have now gone 12 hours without an occurrence.

Oh my holy s%#t yes! I FIXED IT! Though I suspect that some people aren't having the same problems as me. But this might be a solution anyway.

All I did was force SATA 1.5 Gbps by whatever means necessary (ON THE DRIVE ITSELF). For the Hitachi, it's a firmware setting, you need to use their DOS-based utility.

This leads me to believe that our MBPs don't entirely support SATA 3.0Gbps. Which brings into question -- why did Apple push out a firmware update that flicked that switch? Very disappointing that stability would be sacrificed in the name of PR.

So, for those of you with a Hitachi:

Download the Hitachi Feature tool: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

For me, I had to boot this from a PC, the internal and external keyboards plugged into my MBP weren't recognised.

Force SATA 1.5Gbps by going to Features> SATA settings. Choose SATA 1.5Gbps and disable spread spectrum clocking - does anyone know if this works?

Then save with Alt+X and power down.

This is interesting news. If you can throttle the speed on the Hitachi, there must be a way to do it on other drives as well? Anyone know of such a utility for intel drives?

At this point, I would honestly rather have my older firmware back than this crap I've been dealing with.

It really shouldn't matter what order you do anything in at all. You guys are all doing voodoo magic crap essentially to get things to work when all you really need os an updated firmware from Apple when they decide to admit wrongdoing.

I can feel for both parties, throtteling down isn't funny and you didn't buy a faster disk/ssd to do so, but a practical non-working MBP isn't what I'm looking for either.

BTW, my MBP that is in repair should have been ready on friday, but they fubared it, so they got another replacement today, but they hadn't got to it yet. I'm going to keelhaul this genius-dumbo.

Looks like the WD 500gb Blue might have a way to force 1.5gbps on it with the jumpers. I am actually going to try to do this tonight if I get a chance and see if my MacBook Pro will accept it again. Since the firmware patch, it hasn't liked my drive at all. Works wonderfully in a USB enclosure though.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=1679&pcreated=#jumper

holly guacamole!!! isn't it a little bit premature to go that route? Apple must be somehow taking notes, perhaps it is worth waiting for an Apple solution with perhaps another firmware update? After all it's only been a week or so since the firmware. What I'm wondering is why the firmware update hasn't been pulled yet. Perhaps it's not as bad as it's sound when reading the boards?