Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

blackmondo wrote:

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?

I'm willing to try. Have not downgraded to 1.6 myself, my bandaid was forcing my drive to 1.5 after another user had commented about it stopping the balls.
Can I undo the HDAPM via PRam reset / do you know the default settings to reenter to get back to stock if this doesn't work?

In the PDF manual on the DMG for hdapm, the author states that you can use the keyword "default" to set the drive back to it's normal setting.

Also, hdapm includes a ".plist" file that can be installed in you /Library/LaunchDaemons/ folder so that the command to set your drive to max performance is run every time at startup. This would suggest to me that the setting change is not permanent, and would reset to the default on restart anyway.

For what it's worth, this has been my situation with the problem:

I bought a refurbished 13" MacBook Pro that was almost unusable when I got it. I got beachballs for ~30 seconds every few minutes or so. I found this thread and used the 1.6 firmware downgrade to try and fix the problem. It fixed the beachballs, but for some reason it still wasn't operating the way I felt it should be. I had just upgraded from a 13" MacBook that was running much better than this newer model. I decided to try something since I still had the previous MacBook and I swapped the hard drives. I've been running with the MacBook's hard drive AND the 1.7 firmware now for about 2 hours and haven't had any of the issues I had before. The old MacBook had a 250GB Toshiba and the new MacBook Pro had a 250GB Fujitsu.

So far for me, Toshiba=good and Fujitsu=bad.

Hmm, I have no problem so far with EFI 1.7 and my X25-M G2 160 Gb SSD. Any ideas how to stress test to look for beachballs?

You might try watching an iTunes video in full screen mode. That always does it for me. Usually happens once in about 45 mins or so.

I tried watching a 720p movie using VLC, while downloading using utorrent at 3.3 MB/s and also running xbench. No beachball so far, the movie froze for a second when I was starting the xbench test but apart from that it rocks. I couldn't even watch DVD from HDD and use utorrent on my stock drive without the movie freezing.

FWIW.. I've yet to have any issues with an aftermarket Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS in my MBP 13" EFI 1.7. I did a clean install of Snow Leopard on it. I use it at work and at home on a daily basis. Hard drive has been in for about a week. Only note is that my SMART load cycle count it a little high (I think).. around 120/hr.. I will attempt to monitor this thread if anyone has questions.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.26 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: MBP55.00AC.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.47f2
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Hard Drive:
ST9500325AS:
Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Model: ST9500325AS
Revision: 0001SDM1

i has to be quicktime stritly, as for some reason vlc doesnt exhibit these issues.

David K., you are a lucky one. I have received my new MBP 5.5 two weeks ago and every thing is Ok since I use the stock HDD. But if I install my Agility 120 Gb SSD I experience a few beachballing freez per day. The genius guy from the Apple store told me that for my MBP Apple can't guarantee third party SSD. You have to try one and if you'r lucky, it will work. If not, just to bad for you. After reading so many page on this discussion, I realise that the SSD is not the only drive in cause.
Wathever, shame on Apple for this bad support.

I think I've finally figured it out… and I'm surprised it didn't occur to me sooner.

It's been more than 2 years now since the iPhone was first released. I think all that time spent working with AT&T has rubbed off on Apple's customer service. Funny thing is, I didn't expect to be buying my MacBook Pro from AT&T.

It's strange though, I had a lot of strange HDD issues with my stock drive. Including a few beachballs now and then. With my SSD I haven't had any issue yet, so this SSD seems to work better then the stock drive, and that's something that shouldn't be allowed to happen.

I really think Apple got no idea what is wrong since there is no consistency in the errors. Some gets fixed with a downgrade to 1.6 then upgrade again, some get them on stock drives, some get them with other drives and so on.

Only thing I gathered is that from what I seen around the net is that the Intel X25-M is one of the SSDs that you mostly hear that people got them to work, haven't heard many people who had problems with it.

what do you mean

Got a beachball :/ Only one though, same thing as happened with the stock drive, got a beachball out of the blue. Will report back later, on the stock drive I got em like once a week (1 day I got 3 that day though). If I start getting more I might downgrade EFI.

EDIT: I got another one, I saw my SMS being enabled though, disabled it now to see if it fixes the issue.

Message was edited by: David.K

I recently purchased my MBP 13" and recieved it about a week ago. I just got to updating all of the software, and "upgraded" to 1.7 without researching it. I have not modified anything on the mac- it's all stock. I tried the Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner- it helped, but didn't get rid of half the problems.

I'm taking it to a mac specialist tomorrow, unless something can be done about it. Is there a way I can downgrade to 1.6 without traveling 3-4 hours away to an Apple store?

-Seth- wrote: Is there a way I can downgrade to 1.6 without traveling 3-4 hours away to an Apple store?

Yes, some of us do it repeatedly as we experiment using 1.6 and 1.7. There is a downloadable file that you 'Restore' to a USB hard drive or an SD card (I have used both) or some say even burn to a CD.

I don't recall where the 1;6 rollback file is in this lengthy thread but it is there somewhere.