Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

int hat note Joey r my sata cable is in the midst of being replaced, i will let you know.

Well, I'm one of those who experienced the beachball problem (although relatively mildly) using the stock Hitachi drive.
After 2 weeks, I can now safely say that downgrading to EFI 1.6 definitely solved the problem for me for the time being.

EFI 1.7 activates the SATA II (3 GBit) mode, but it makes the MBP unstable. Not completely unfunctional, but sometimes close to being so, to varying degrees, from what I gather from this and other threads on this topic.

This MBP is my first Mac since 1985, and here was me hoping to no longer have any problems like having to adjust BIOS settings such as Northbridge Voltage and so on.
Now I still have the very same problems, but can't adjust them myself hehe.

While the SATA ribbon cable seems to be a likely candidate, and since we are already wildly speculating, I think it might indeed have to do with some chipset settings that could be improved by a future EFI update. Maybe 0.1V more voltage on the NVIDIA chip could do the trick, for example.
That would certainly explain why some of us are more affected than others (hardware operating at or near tolerance limits)

By now, Apple should definitely be aware that there's a problem, and we all still have some time until our 1 year warranty runs out. Meanwhile, applying the 1.6 downgrade helps.

I purchased my MacBook Pro 15.4 on July 29, 2009. I had the MacBook less than a month when I noticed the clicking, beeps, frozen beachball etc that is mentioned several times in this forum. I barely loaded anything to the MacBook (Itune music and a few photos) when my hard drive crashed and I had to take the Macbook to the Apple store to have it repaired on Sept. 5, 2009. I am not a techie and that is why I purchased this machine because of the commericals touting that the MacBook was easy to use and would be up and running with no problems. Several of my coworkers and friends also mentioned that the MacBook was a great investment and would be a solid workhorse. Even though the Apple store replaced the original hard drive, I still hear the clicks and get the beachballing more than I would ancipate because I normally only run one application at a time. This is my first Mac so I'm not exactly sure of what is normal as far as performance. I use a Dell laptop issued by my company for work and the laptop has run smoothly for several years. I wish I would have done more homework before making this purchase.

Tozzi wrote:

By now, Apple should definitely be aware that there's a problem, and we all still have some time until our 1 year warranty runs out. Meanwhile, applying the 1.6 downgrade helps.

It's quite possible that Apple was aware of a problem when the system was released in June. I still haven't read any explanation for Apple's decision to release the June 2009 system with slower, first generation SATA throughput. The previous generation MBP used an SATA 2 interface and the June 2009 MBP was released with SATA 1.

I understand if a company sell something and then there's a problem in its product. But i really don't understand how apple can sell still a mbpro configuration that apple knows that it has serious problems!

Someone a while back (including me) wanted to know how to suppress just the 1.7 EFI update from constantly popping up. Here's the link to do it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2357

Very simple.

Bryan

Today i left my mac to an apple service center. They have already changed the hd and logic board, now they said to me that they'll ask to apple to change the brand of the hd, for eliminate the incompatibility issue. I believed that apple used only one brand for 500 gb hd.

lets us know the results

I did indeed try using HDAPM and setting the performance level to max as suggested at that link, and so far I haven't had a single beach ball freeze. I'm about 3 days in since the last PRAM reset, and normally I'd only get to about 1.5 - 2 days before I'd start seeing them.

Right now I'm copying 34 GB of data to a firewire 800 drive, playing songs in iTunes, and have 3 VMs running in the background, and nothing is going wrong.

I really hope this is a fix, until Apple provide something officially. Looks very promising for me so far. If it IS a fix, it also could mean that this ISN'T a hardware issue, which would be very good indeed.

Hi blackmondo

Great news! I was hoping someone would notice my suggestion...
According to the ReadMe file accompanying that utility, users who set their HDD APM to maximum suffer from reduced endurance under battery power. Could you do me a favor and check this? If so, this solution would be a tradeoff between stability and mobile endurance.

I'm having the same problem with my new MBP 13" and a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue HDD.

Rebooting helps, temporarily. The top right menu options constantly produce a spinner when I mouse over them and I don't know if this is related, but the "loginwindow" process seems to always be at the top of the %CPU list in Activity Monitor.

It's a brand new machine, nothing but Apple apps installed.

Edit: just noticed the above posts - will try this tonight and post back.

thank YOU for linking to that post. I can try to run on battery power tomorrow for a bit and see how it goes. That said, I run my MBP on power most of the time, since it's a desktop replacement, so it'll probably be hard for me to tell the difference between previous behaviour and "HDAPM max"!

I really hope these freezes don't show up again now... so far so good though. At least if it does work, it's Apple should be able to work a better fix into a software update.

It would be great if others in the forum could try HDAPM too

blackmondo wrote:
I did indeed try using HDAPM and setting the performance level to max as suggested at that link, and so far I haven't had a single beach ball freeze. I'm about 3 days in since the last PRAM reset, and normally I'd only get to about 1.5 - 2 days before I'd start seeing them.

Right now I'm copying 34 GB of data to a firewire 800 drive, playing songs in iTunes, and have 3 VMs running in the background, and nothing is going wrong.

I really hope this is a fix, until Apple provide something officially. Looks very promising for me so far. If it IS a fix, it also could mean that this ISN'T a hardware issue, which would be very good indeed.

Your signature shows you have a 17" MBP. The EFI version 1.7 update only applies to the 13" and 15" MBPs. Why do you think your approach has solved the beachballing/freezes caused by the version 1.7 update?

I've tried to read as many posts in this thread as I can, and yes, I have the same issue. I was told it could be related to iTunes, and that 9.0.1 might solve it. Of course, all of us know it was not the case.

My MacBook is brand new, 13", it came with SL installed and I think, the dreaded firmware too, since Software Update didn't offer to download it. So those who point to the hard drive replacement might be wrong, I didn't do anything like that and have the same issue.

I guess we who are not savvy or bold enough to try the "fixes" mentioned in this thread, should wait for an official response, or better yet, a new firmware. Hope it's soon, this is really annoying.

Of course, I agree that we all should feedback Apple about this. And the tech media! Haven't read anything related to this issue yet. Anyone has?

JJ

heh, I suspected someone might try to call me out on that.... here goes.

While it's true that the 17 inch model has a different Boot ROM version, and yes the 1.7 update does not apply to our model, there ARE users out there, myself included, who have been experiencing 20-30 second beachball freezes that manifest in EXACTLY the same way as how many are describing here. i.e. it often happens while playing songs in iTunes, video in quicktime (that is a fairly constant hit on the hard disk), and then accessing the disk in some other way at the same time, e.g. a large file copy, or even a small save in TextMate (for me anyway).

Here is the thread of a few 17 inch guys who are seeing it: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2162948&tstart=0

Now, I'm not saying that HDAPM WILL SOLVE the problems with 13 inch and 15 inch models, but it is not going to hurt us to try - esp. those of us who HAVEN'T downgraded to 1.6, or don't really want to, since messing with unofficial firmware downgrades can be a little more risky. Heck it might even help Apple understand a bit more about the problem, assuming they do read these forums.

None of us, yourself included, really know exactly WHY the 1.7 firmware update is problematic. What makes you so sure that the 17 inch models CAN'T be affected just because the 1.7 update was never an option for that model? Further, what makes you so sure that changing the performance levels in HDAPM has nothing to do with this SATA / HDD problem? Given how random the timing of these freezes are, it's not a stretch to imagine that over-aggressive power management to the drive is somehow related to this, given that power management to the drive is likely to be heavily based on random events.

Please don't forget that this is just an open discussion of people trying to help other people out. The more options we all have to try to solve this problem until Apple steps up, the better, surely. I think it would be great if a few 13 and 15 owners who are still on 1.7 could give this a shot. And yes, I know that TECHNICALLY this may have been the wrong forum to post in, but does anyone honestly care?