Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

What is the best way to test the speed of a new hard drive that has been installed in macbook pro?

changed the Harddisk with the SSD and my feeling is, that the ssd is 1.5 times faster, even the SSD is not fully charged with the efi 1.6. **** this is even faster than the raptor disks that i have in my Desktop :)^^ If you have questions how to, dont hesitate to ask.

bet&pitt wrote:
Hey, this sounds great!
Seems to be the first time somebody from Apple admit this issue with the FW 1.7 and talks about an incoming 1.8.
So let's hope....

Don't hold your breath... Italy is pretty far from Cupertino; the guy was probably just guessing.

Doriangaensslen: Well that's fairly good news. I'm getting my OCZ Vertex 250GB SSD tonight, and can't wait to pop it in and feel the blazing increase in speed. I'm interested in which SSD model you have? Also can you post your results from AJA System Test? If you don't have it you can get it here:
http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJASystem_Testv601.zip
Do the test using all the defaults, but change File Size to 1.0GB. Let me know what you get for read/write speeds and we'll compare. I'm also running on firmware 1.6, so capped at Sata 1 speeds.

Ok, missed that post thanks for the post Gregory!

I am having the same problem everyone else is having. After installing the 1.7 firmware, I experienced crashing, beach balls, etc. I was also unable to reboot, or recover from sleep, without clearing the PRAM. I have a Stock hard drive, stock everything.

After reading 90+ pages of this post, I scheduled an appointment with a genius tech at the Northpark mall Apple store here in the DFW area. (Texas) The genius tech, Lucinda, would admit to no knowledge of the problem, and would not look at this post when asked to. The supervisor, Lucinda, also professed ignorance of the problem. Both of them denied that this was a known Apple issue, and refused to perform a firmware downgrade, claiming that it was not possible for them to downgrade the firmware, and Apple had a policy that prohibited them from even trying.

After wasting several hours with them, I downloaded the file linked above in an earlier post, restored it to a newly formatted usb drive, and was able to reboot from it, (after a pram clear). We will see if that fixes the problem. I will update with additional information as available.

My confidence in Apple has declined sharply. I am not happy with the way Apple has handled this issue. In addition to being unhappy, I am also an attorney, and if this continues to be an issue for me, I may consider taking legal action. I'm not there yet, but there appear to be a significant number of people having this problem. Apple needs to fix this.

Finally, now were talking, as a law student myself, i dont believe much else will get things moving. As for me, with all due respect, it seems we wont be seing a solution in the immidiate future.

Whichever way you look/spin/poke at it there are only three possible outomces to this:

A) Apple releases a fix somehow/ or has massive recall if it is a firmware issue.

B) Apple sits on this and does absolutely squatt.

C) Apple goes the "Nvidia 8600 way" Does nothing about the issue itself, but promises to replace/ repair any "hardware problems" associaed with the chipset or sata controller.

< Edited by Host >

For those interested, here is how my story ended happily. I convinced an apple tech to replace the MB (don't ask for the case I don't want the guy to get in trouble), they did and with that roll of the dice I lucked out and now the crucial SSD works fine under 1.7. and 3 MB/s MBP53.00AC.B03

I am glad to have a working laptop but still just as strongly apple needs to fix this for everyone. Also after this I am extremely wary of running any apple patch and will leave the machine as-is. Not a good finish

Litigo- I don't know why the people at the Apple store gave you such a hard time. To say they don't know about it... I went to an Apple store in a small city, and even they knew what I was talking about in a minute. They even were on the phone with people in California as they had trouble initially getting the boot disc ready. Once California called back, they were able to do it.

I was able to install my new drive and it's running fine as ever. I never had any issues with beach balls, etc. but I wanted a larger and faster drive, both of which I got.

Bryan

Litigo wrote:

After reading 90+ pages of this post, I scheduled an appointment with a genius tech at the Northpark mall Apple store here in the DFW area. (Texas) The genius tech, Lucinda, would admit to no knowledge of the problem, and would not look at this post when asked to. The supervisor, Lucinda, also professed ignorance of the problem. Both of them denied that this was a known Apple issue, and refused to perform a firmware downgrade, claiming that it was not possible for them to downgrade the firmware, and Apple had a policy that prohibited them from even trying.

Wow. Two Lucindas?

Seriously, it bothers me that some people are having success getting Apple Store employees to acknowledge the problem and downgrade the firmware, but other have not. Of course, it concerns me even more that Apple hasn't stepped up to the plate and admitted that there's a problem - they've done it in the past.

I'd be curious to know if anyone who's downgraded to 1.6 still has the problem.

coolas wrote:

Flipside_edispilF wrote:
Just tried this out from this other thread in regards to beach ball lagging, http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2077220&start=75&tstart=60 and it's seemed to work so far.

iamsilou wrote:
FIX!!! i was doing some searching for days to fix this problem and i finally found one, been a few days without a hitch.

so what you will have to do is:
-Open finder> Macintosh HD> System>libary>cache...
or you could use the finder/search bar to get there.

Then Drag the cache folder to the trash can(or just select to send to trash).
after this RESTART.
After the restart the Osx should create a new cache folder that is infact uncorrupted by whatever is creating this issue, either after the start up or when you open safari.
Whatever the issue with this firmware update is, it seems to be flash based and i hope they fix it so tohers wont have to go through ** because it seems to get worse with time.

It's been about 2 hours and no hangups. The apple store said they could replace the hard drive on monday but if just clearing the cache fixes things then I'll just leave things be. They couldn't find a firmware downgrade at the genius bar so I'm still using 1.7.

I am thinking this does not fix the 3Gb hard drive beachballing as everyone would be saying "YES! this works!".... or does it fix it?... anyone else tried it?

Has anyone tried this?

Did it fix your problem?

I have the low end 13" MBP (2.26 ghz) with 2gb ram and the stock Hitachi HTS545016B9SA02 HDD

With EFI 1.6 I got 25 mb/s read & write

After EFI 1.7 I get 32 mb/s read and 32 mb/s write with AJA.

Is this "normal" for this config? Or is it slow? I saw some peoiple posting figures of 50 or 6p mb/s

Is the the longest ever discussion thread?

Litigo wrote:
After reading 90+ pages of this post, I scheduled an appointment with a genius tech at the Northpark mall Apple store here in the DFW area. (Texas)

The Northpark Store can be obtuse when they are busy. The only time I've been able to deal with them
when I have an existing case number from Apple customer support. Otherwise, I usually get a runaround. Except once when a genious there gave me a $600 break on fixing my 2007 Macbook Pro video cars that was notorious for crapping out. Two days later Apple issued a statement and I got the $300 I paid back, so I'm not sure if it was really a break.

I usually go to the Southlake store.

Wan Chai Man wrote:
I have the low end 13" MBP (2.26 ghz) with 2gb ram and the stock Hitachi HTS545016B9SA02 HDD

With EFI 1.6 I got 25 mb/s read & write

After EFI 1.7 I get 32 mb/s read and 32 mb/s write with AJA.

Is this "normal" for this config? Or is it slow? I saw some peoiple posting figures of 50 or 6p mb/s

Thank you for starting your own thread about this question.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10221402