Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Guys/Gals:

In previous post, I indicated my problem with folders with a "?" and a Circle with a slash occurring after I updated EFI 1.7 FW with the SATA II Seagate 500 GB 3rd Party HD installed by my Apple dealer. Previously I had no issues starting up and with updating my software with the Apple Software update and this SATA II HD.

My MB Pro with a Sada II Seagate 500 HD later locked up two times whenever I installed the FW 1.7 update.

My dealer replaced the Logic Board the first time--and that worked until I updated the FirmWare again to EFI 1.7. That was always the "crowning blow" which locked up the MB Pro.

To get my MB Pro to work, my dealer reinstalled the factory supplied Hitachi 250 GB HD which was SATA I after initially replacing the logic board.

I took another lead from this site and got the Apple Store Genius to "roll back" the 1.7 FW to FW 1.6--and everything was OK--except I did not have the 500 GB drive that we paid purchased.

I returned the MB Pro to my dealer and he removed the 250 GB HD and reinstalled the 500 GB Sata II HD after the "roll back" to EFI 1.6 FW.

We backed up everything before hand.

Now I am happy to say--all is OK now and I am a reasonably happy camper.

These are a copies of my system profile pages:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,4
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.53 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP53.00AC.B02
SMC Version (system): 1.49f2
Serial Number (system): (XXXXXXXXX)
Hardware UUID: 961058BB-22A8-5F4C-A2DE-386511CF01C1
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Ena

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

The Seagate 500 GB HD info is listed below:

ST9500420ASG:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST9500420ASG
Revision: 0002SDM1
Serial Number: (XXXXXXX)
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
RJG MBP:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 300.86 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount

*So far very few beach balls. Everything works OK.*

I will post any unusual news later.

I can only say "Thank You" posters for helping resolve the issue and "Thank You" to "Rex" the Apple Genius who "rolled back" the EFI 1.7 FM--and especially to my Apple dealer who was very cooperative on this issue who removed and replaced this suspect HD 2 times and replaced the Logic board once.

I hope he gets paid for doing all of this work by Apple due to the EFI 1.7 mess.

Once the FW fix is issued by Apple, I will install the proper FW Update to take me past FW 1.7 to FW 1.8 or whatever.

I still have Snow Leopard to install--but "Rome was not built in one day" as the saying goes.

bobg

fishbert wrote:

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

Thanks (but no thanks) for your sarcasm.

I really cant understand guys like you

Wan Chai Man wrote:

fishbert wrote:

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

Thanks (but no thanks) for your sarcasm.

I really cant understand guys like you

It wasn't sarcasm.
I noticed that you created it after posting the same thing here… if the order were reversed, I would've complained about you cross-posting. But it wasn't, so I thanked you for starting your own thread about your hard drive performance question.

If I was being douchey, I'd have also pointed out that you already posted pretty much the same thing in here just yesterday…

Wan Chai Man wrote:

mvillarreal wrote:
Not only the beachball problem was gone, i'm having 20 to 25 mb/s data transfer rate.

I have the stock 160 HDD in the low end mac.... AJA before and after:

1.6 - Read/write 25 mb/s
1.7 - Read write 32 mb/s

So something must have changed... seemingly for the good in my case.

And, if I was being really, really douchey, I'd ask you what a millibit (mb) was.

But I didn't… because I wasn't.
You should smile more. Might help take the edge off.

SuperTalent UltraDrive ME: 128 GB Solid State Disk (SSD)


2.5" 128 GB Solid State Disk, eingebaute EDC/EEC Fehlerkorrektur, Serial ATA-300 Interface, Lesen: 260 MB/s, Schreiben: 210 MB/s, MLC NAND Technologie, 64 MByte Cache, 1.3/0.4Watt Leistungsaufnahme (Zugriff/Leerlauf), Masse: 69.85mmx100.20mmx9.50mm

Il post you the Score after the work, i have my book at home .

Hi guys,

I was interested in upgrading the drive on my brand new MBP 15" which I received yesterday. It was shipped directly from China so I am assuming it had the latest firmware etc. installed but I'm not quite sure.

Something I did notice is that it has a Fujitsu drive instead of the Hitachi that I've seen come with the units. Also it says 3 gigabit under the info page I don't know if thats just the capabiltty of the HD or what the SATA is running at.

Can someone look at these screen shots and tell me what firmware I am running as well as if i am running at the 1.5 Gb or the 3.0 GB?

Should I just wait it out till a new 1.8 firmware is released before upgrading to a 7200 RPM WD Black drive?

Screen shots:

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/3738/mac1m.png
http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/6404/mac2yz.png

Thanks

guys add me to the list of people getting this issue, and I'm on a 17 inch MBP. Are there many people apart from me who are experiencing the 20-30 second beachball issue on a 17 inch?

My symptoms are pretty much the same as others I've read... it usually starts happening when I'm playing iTunes, and then surfing the web at the same time, or saving a document. The whole mac kinda semi-locks up for 20-30 seconds (can still move the mouse, but can't do anything). I can always stop it happening for about 2 days or so by shutting down, and zapping the PRAM on boot. Then it's a brilliant machine again for a while, until it starts again...

I need this computer for work, and don't have time for downtime right now, so I'm living with it, but having to shut down is pretty annoying, especially since I run 3 VMs for web browser testing, and saving / restoring state on those in VMWare Fusion takes a fair chunk of time

Also, does anyone know if it even POSSIBLE to run the 1.6 firmware downgrade on a 17? My machine supported 3GB/s from the get go, so I'm guessing the 17 inch firmware might either be a little different, or Apple shipped the 17s with 1.7 already installed.

Unfortunately, this whole issue stinks of "we knew about this before they were released, but marketing wanted them out there", given the fact that some machines supported 3GB SATA and some didn't, and the (clearly messed up) 1.7 patch came out so quickly.

For those who don't hold out much hope of a fix, I look at the fact that the first thing that bugged me about my MBP 17 was the vsync graphical tearing issue when scrolling in Safari. I wondered whether THAT would be fixed too, and it now has been in Snow Leopard - there's a "Beam Sync" mode in Quartz Debug now which stops it happening. Here's hoping that for this issue, we don't have to wait until 10.7 of course!!!!

Come on Apple, please let us know what's happening with this! These machines are just so incredibly nice otherwise, but the silence on issues like this is deafening.

Blackmondo... You may be in be in better luck for a resolution than many of us. The firmware issue discussed here is for the new 13 and 15" models only. When these new versions were introduced in June, the 17" model was not updated. The 1.7 firmware does not apply to the 17" model. Any number of issues can result in beachballing. Unfortunately, with this thread becoming so huge, it seems to have become home to any beachballing problem. None of the new machines (13 & 15") supported SATA 3.0 on launch. The 17" did because it wasn't refreshed and supported SATA 3.0 when shipped as the previous version of the 13 MB unibody and 15" MBP.

If you haven't already done so, you may wish to start a new post with your problem just so it doesn't get lost. Your problem is not a result of the firmware issue here

thanks for that JoeyR - I'd kinda forgotten that the 17s weren't as fundamentally changed in the mid 2009 revision as the 13 and 15 models. Still, I wonder what my issue is... perhaps it's a faulty drive. As you've alluded to, at least there's probably more hope in changing the drive with some success than there is for those 13 and 15 owners affected right now.

good luck to everyone in getting it sorted!

replaced my old macbook yesterday with the a new pro 13inch. just ordered 4gigs of ram and a seagate 500gig 7200hd ST9500420AS.

without reading this whole thread am i safe to install it, or should i hold off?

hi guys,
I have been looking through this post but haven't been able to find an answer to my question.

Yesterday i bought a brand new macbook pro 13 inch. The most basic model, with the intention of installing an ssd and more memory myself.
I understand the problem that the new firmware no longer supports the use of third party ssd's.
I also understand that if you go to an apple store they can rollback the firmware to the previous version.
My question however is this, my macbook pro shipped with snow leopard and when i look at the SATA speed it reads 3 Gigabit which leads me to think that the firmware update has already been installed. Does anyone think it will be possible for someone at the apple store to rollback to the previous version or does anyone think that they will not be able to do this?
Thanks guys
Tom

CanadaPostRock wrote:
replaced my old macbook yesterday with the a new pro 13inch. just ordered 4gigs of ram and a seagate 500gig 7200hd ST9500420AS.

without reading this whole thread am i safe to install it, or should i hold off?

You are "safe" in that this SATA II firmware problem does not appear to destroy data. If you run into it, the worst you will see is frequent (and annoying) beachballs and extremely low data transfer rates (good luck doing system backups).

tom jamieson wrote:
My question however is this, my macbook pro shipped with snow leopard and when i look at the SATA speed it reads 3 Gigabit which leads me to think that the firmware update has already been installed. Does anyone think it will be possible for someone at the apple store to rollback to the previous version or does anyone think that they will not be able to do this?
Thanks guys
Tom

If you have a 13" or 15" MacBook Pro, someone at the apple store can roll back your EFI firmware to 1.6, should you want them to. Whether or not they are aware that it is possible is a different matter.

If you have a 17" MacBook Pro, there is no 'previous version' of firmware to roll back to.

thanks fishbert for the reply... i ended up going back and reading 3 quarters of this thread anyhow.
so my new mbp was already updated to efi 1.7. i've played with it a few days with the stock HD, still waiting on my new seagate 500g 7200 to arrive. i've had no issues with the stock drive that some seem to experience.
i'm gonna try my luck and try the seagate, and if it has problems i'll go to apple store and get it rolled back.
i guess i'm curious to know how small of a percentage is really affected by this bad firmware. i mean people only come to the forums to complain when things aren't working. how many people come to say things are working as intended... =D

CanadaPostRock wrote:
i guess i'm curious to know how small of a percentage is really affected by this bad firmware. i mean people only come to the forums to complain when things aren't working. how many people come to say things are working as intended... =D

That's true, but remember that it's probably already a vast minority of people who change their stock drive at all, let alone those who then do it on the most recent hardware AND come to the forums in the first place. So getting a thread of this length full of people who have stumbled across it trying to find a solution to their issue suggests that it's certainly not UNcommon if you meet the prerequisites (June 13-15" mbp, 1.7 EFI).

Well after going through previous beachballing and all the same complaints as everyone in the forum, I downgraded to 1.6 and was problem free, with my Seagate 500GB 7200RPM.

Yesterday, I took the plunge and purchased an OCZ Vertex 250GB SSD (couldn't resist), installed it right away, and did a fresh install of Snow Leopard. Software Updated it to 10.6.1, and before installing any additional software, ran AJA System Test...results as follows:
http://i31.tinypic.com/255i5as.jpg
Write: 103.5 MB/s
Read: 127.0 MB/s
Respectable results indeed, but keep in mind that this is at EFI 1.6, thus running at SATA 1.5 Gbps.

Then, I immediately re-upgraded to EFI 1.7, confirmed that I was now running at SATA 3.0 Gbps, and ran AJA again:
http://i32.tinypic.com/6se51j.jpg
Write: 158.7 MB/s
Read: 229.5 MB/s

Now that's performance!! So while many standard drives, even 7200RPM may not reach the limits of SATA 1.5, this is clear evidence that today's SSD's absolutely require and nearly maximize the bandwidth available on the Sata2 3.0Gbps bus. So far, I've been lucky enough not to experience a single beachball since the re-up to 1.7, but I'm only at day 1. I'll report back if the situation changes, but until then, I'll be basking in the glory of opening Photoshop in 2 seconds flat

ATTENTION TO EVERYBODY!

I've just received my MBP from Fed Ex and I was wondering what should I do.
I got the 15" 2.8 GHz, 500GB 7200RPM. Should I leave it sealed and go to the apple store to request a refund? Or should I open it and test my luck. I heard if you open it and even though it's within 14 days of being received, you'll just get store credit. I ordered on the September 8th, it arrived today on the 16th. So I'm guessing the 16th is the 1st of the 14 days. What should I do? i don't want to get freezing and use the 1.6 which reduces Sata Speed. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks