Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Take the Mac back to the Apple Store and request another mac that is not suffering from these problems. It's new, and it should work period. You have 14 days after purchase to take it back for a return or swap, Make them fix it... it is Apples responsibility!!!

Guys,

At this risk of sounding like a squeaky wheel, have any of you tried HDAPM at all?

I previously had this problem with my unibody 17 inch under Mac OS X, and I found a post on this very topic with someone suggesting a utility called HDAPM which might help.

HDAPM has absolutely nailed this problem for me, I haven't seen a single freeze since running it, the machine is smooth as could be. I posted some instructions at the link below on how you can install HDAPM and set the necessary setting via terminal, if you want to give it a shot. Others in this topic appear to have had similar success:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10283888#10283888

Maybe some of you guys should try it. One thing, this apparently may reduce your battery life slightly, but I haven't noticed anything too drastic.

For anyone who does try, let me know if it works for you.

Something I find interesting is that if I format my SuperTalent 256GB SSD as Macintosh Extended (Journaled) and then partition it into 3 volumes and install an OS on one volume (doing this while it is in an External enclosure) it will not work if installed later as an internal drive. It will not even boot.

However, if I format the SSD as MS-DOS (FAT) but then format the 3 partitions as Macintosh Extended (Journaled) and put an OS on one of them it will indeed work as a bootable drive when installed as the internal hard drive.

I don't know what this means but thought I would toss it out as I find it interesting.

blackmondo wrote:
At this risk of sounding like a squeaky wheel, have any of you tried HDAPM at all?

HDAPM has absolutely nailed this problem for me, I haven't seen a single freeze since running it, the machine is smooth as could be.

No, it hasn't solved this problem (not even for you). You are running a 17" MBP (in fact, you linked to another discussion thread entited: +Hard drive beachball problem for the 17"+), while this thread is specifically about adverse effects from the EFI 1.7 update that only applies to 13" and 15" MBPs. You've been called out on this before, and responded with some lengthy "well, how do you know it's not related? it could be… nobody really knows what's going on, certainly not you!" which is nothing more than trying to find excuses for a shot in the dark based on little more than ignorance of the issue at hand (and, honestly, is an argument whose foundations lays entirely on your own lack of understanding on the issue). It's like turning to some voodoo faith-healer to cure your rare form of cancer.

But let's look at what you say was fixed for you…

blackmondo wrote:
There is a chance that the hard disk could be at fault I guess, but the symptoms of this problem for me are remarkably similar to what I've read in the 96 page post, and on the macrumors forums. To summarise:

o the problem usually begins when I'm playing iTunes all day, and then I'll go to save something, say in TextMate, and then iTunes stops playing.

o Any app you then try to switch to while the freeze is there will then just beachball itself.

o I can make the problem go away by restarting and zapping the PRAM. All day today my computer has been fine, but I suspect that sometime tomorrow it'll probably start all over again.

The only thing that sounds familiar in that description is that there is a beachball involved. In fact, what you describe sounds an awful lot like the conditions that would point to a hard drive power management issue (holy crap, batman! a hard disk power management utility solved it for you? what are the odds?!) -- playing music doesn't require much disk access at all (and much of the load that is there is taken up by disk caching), then you're asking for immediate disk activity by saving files (so the disk has to spin up, recover from the down time, etc.), and you see an interruption.

The issue that this thread discusses is beachballing pauses that are fairly constant, given disk activity. There is nothing intermittent about them, and they can make a floppy drive seem fast when trying to do disk-intensive tasks such as a network backup operation. And zapping the PRAM has no effect on this EFI 1.7 issue (look much earlier in the thread for evidence of that).

See what the issue looked like on my 15" MBP when playing back video (still a disk caching sort of task, but much less so than with music):
http://vimeo.com/5854152
Note that I do run a disk test program to guarantee an event trigger for the video, but the system would freeze with just the quicktime video playing… it didn't need any files to be saved to a dormant drive or anything like that - just the constant disk activity.

I think JoeyR said it best when you first came to this thread a couple weeks ago:

JoeyR wrote:
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.

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

-------

blackmondo wrote:
Hey guys,
I'm kinda doing the rounds on these topics (there's so many, my god Apple...), so I thought I'd contribute something.

blackmondo wrote:
And yes, I know that TECHNICALLY this may have been the wrong forum to post in, but does anyone honestly care?

I care. And so do many of the others in this thread who are looking for a real solution to the SATA II interface issues introduced with the EFI 1.7 firmware update last June. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but this thread is 103 pages long. It doesn't need extra filler for every little thing that causes a beachball. It's great that you found something that solved some beachballing problem on your 17" MacBook Pro, but that doesn't have anything to do with the 13"/15" MBP firmware-specific SATA II issues that this thread is all about.

Please don't "do the rounds" here next time you want to spam every beachballing thread out there with the same thing.

Okay okay, I apologise if I've misunderstood the issue at hand here.

I watched the video of your problem (thanks for posting it, and reposting if you had already done so), and I still have to say that your problem looks a lot like mine did. I only really noticed it myself while playing music in iTunes, since I don't play video a whole lot during my work day.

My only comment about "The issue that this thread discusses is beachballing pauses that are fairly constant, given disk activity" would be to say that video likely requires a higher level of constant disk access, so the likelihood of the freeze increases when another event hits the disk (whether that other event is a virtual memory disk swap, a file save, a file copy, whatever...). As a result, you'd be more likely to see the freeze more frequently in Quicktime. I would guess that the freeze happened for me WHEN iTunes was hitting the disk to cache the next chunk of music.

I also wonder whether the power management is so incredibly flawed that the machine is not providing the correct levels of power even for highly disk intensive operations.

To say that I am "spamming" the threads seems a little harsh - I wanted to share the success with my issue to a few different threads, and just check if anyone else has had any success. I'd really like to see other people get their machines running smoothly again, since I know how much of a pain it can be when the computer we've all paid a reasonable amount for doesn't work as it should.

Good luck to everyone with their machines, and I hope Apple is listening

Hey again. I just wanted to summarise what I know about this topic, and why it is still my personal opinion that we're all dealing with a similar core issue across ALL of the mid 2009 Unibody Mac Book Pros. Here's what I know myself. Please don't take this as exhaustive or gospel, I'm happy for any of this to be corrected or expanded upon:

1. The EFI 1.7 Firmware Update was released by Apple to allow 13 and 15 inch Unibody MacBook Pros to use the full 3GB/s speed of the SATA II interface, after it was discovered by many users that their systems were only capable of half-speed - 1.5GB/s.

2. The 17 inch MacBook Pro (mid 2009 update) was never offered the 1.7 update - out of the factory it was running firmware that ALREADY supported the full 3.0GB/s speed offered by SATA II.

3. For the 13s and 15s, the 1.7 update has caused a range of issues for many people. Some experience beach-balls and extended system lockups when playing Quicktime movies and iTunes tracks. Some people find that certain third party drives were not working at all in their systems.

4. Many users in this topic have found that downgrading their firmware to 1.6, and therefore having it running at 1.5GB/s again has resolved the problems they were seeing with the 1.7 update.

5. My 17 inch MacBook Pro 17 has had problems where it would freeze for 20 - 30 seconds when there was some form of constant disk access, accompanied by another disk operation.

6. There is evidence in these discussion boards that OTHER 17 inch MacBook Pro owners besides myself are having beachball/freezing issues as well.

Given all of this, I think it's fair to say that 13, 15, AND 17 inch MBP owners see beachball/freezing issues when the SATA bus is running at 3.0 GB/s (among other things). One thing we DON'T know is whether 17 inch users would stop seeing issues when running at 1.5GB/s, since we can't downgrade to check, so that's one gray area.

Please don't take this post as "I'm right and you're wrong". I'm just genuinely interested in diagnosing the issue, and I wouldn't take the time to write this up if I weren't. My machine is running really well now after applying HDAPM, so I could happily ignore anything going on in these forums, since it's not an issue for me any more.

And I DO apologise for my "Copy" and "Paste" across a few topics earlier today. If I didn't want to take the time to post something that was specifically addressing each forum, I shouldn't post in all of them like that. Fair call.

blackmondo wrote:
Hey again. I just wanted to summarise what I know about this topic, and why it is still my personal opinion that we're all dealing with a similar core issue across ALL of the mid 2009 Unibody Mac Book Pros. Here's what I know myself. Please don't take this as exhaustive or gospel, I'm happy for any of this to be corrected or expanded upon:

1. The EFI 1.7 Firmware Update was released by Apple to allow 13 and 15 inch Unibody MacBook Pros to use the full 3GB/s speed of the SATA II interface, after it was discovered by many users that their systems were only capable of half-speed - 1.5GB/s.

2. The 17 inch MacBook Pro (mid 2009 update) was never offered the 1.7 update - out of the factory it was running firmware that ALREADY supported the full 3.0GB/s speed offered by SATA II.

3. For the 13s and 15s, the 1.7 update has caused a range of issues for many people. Some experience beach-balls and extended system lockups when playing Quicktime movies and iTunes tracks. Some people find that certain third party drives were not working at all in their systems.

4. Many users in this topic have found that downgrading their firmware to 1.6, and therefore having it running at 1.5GB/s again has resolved the problems they were seeing with the 1.7 update.

5. My 17 inch MacBook Pro 17 has had problems where it would freeze for 20 - 30 seconds when there was some form of constant disk access, accompanied by another disk operation.

6. There is evidence in these discussion boards that OTHER 17 inch MacBook Pro owners besides myself are having beachball/freezing issues as well.

You are trying to draw a connection with #5 and #6 based solely on the evidence of "well, I get beachballs sometimes, too." Which, falls right into what JoeyR correctly pointed out earlier (quoted in my previous post) when he said your issue could very well be something else, as there is no evidence that the beachballing is due to the same issue.

blackmondo wrote:
Given all of this, I think it's fair to say that 13, 15, AND 17 inch MBP owners see beachball/freezing issues when the SATA bus is running at 3.0 GB/s (among other things). One thing we DON'T know is whether 17 inch users would stop seeing issues when running at 1.5GB/s, since we can't downgrade to check, so that's one gray area.

Right, the 3.0 Gb/s characteristic has been isolated on the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros (via a firmware update) as the variable that triggers this issue - hence why it's often referred to as the SATA II issue. But to attempt to connect this beachballing (again, fairly common symptom for a wide variety of issues) to the 17" MBPs as well is like saying it's due to there being an optical drive attached -- nobody's isolated such a variable. "Oh, but we can't isolate the 3.0 Gb/s interface as a variable because we don't have firmware to downgrade to" … that's not good enough to go ahead and draw the connection anyway.

blackmondo wrote:
Please don't take this post as "I'm right and you're wrong". I'm just genuinely interested in diagnosing the issue, and I wouldn't take the time to write this up if I weren't. My machine is running really well now after applying HDAPM, so I could happily ignore anything going on in these forums, since it's not an issue for me any more.

And I DO apologise for my "Copy" and "Paste" across a few topics earlier today. If I didn't want to take the time to post something that was specifically addressing each forum, I shouldn't post in all of them like that. Fair call.

How about this… way back on page 5, Oliver pointed out that he was seeing CRC errors when he experienced this SATA II issue. I can confirm that this was a symptom on my machine as well, as can many others in this thread and elsewhere. Later, on page 19, Oliver posts the following:

OliverF wrote:
The most objective way is to download SMART utilities:
http://www.volitans-software.com/

Then click on "Attributes" "Show all".
Line "ID 199: UDMA CRC Error Count should be 0, if you see other or increasing numbers there you are experiencing the issue.

Basicaly what happens is that if there is a critical frequency of CRC errors, the beachball will start popping up as the operating system is trying to recover from the SATA bus errors.

This typicaly happens on heavy HD access or for example during Time machine backups to ext USB drives.

cheers,

Oliver.

If you want to run an actual test to see if you might be seeing the same issue (again, "might be"… this is not a proof of equivalence, but it can rule equivalence out), go get SMART Utility, install it, undo your HDAPM changes, run SMART Utility, check the CRC error count, get your computer to freeze, check the CRC error count again. If the CRC error count has changed, then you may be seeing the same issue (maybe). If it has not, then your issue is demonstrably different than the SATA II issue discussed here.

I suspect your drive will not show a CRC error count change, as drive spin-up lag from power management (if that is your beachballing issue, as I am guessing) should not be generating CRC errors with the drive.

Re: beach-balling "(again, fairly common symptom for a wide variety of issues)". Such as? I've owned about 6 or 7 macs over 15 years or so, I've been running OS X since the developer preview, and in all that time, I've never seen beach-ball / freezing issues like the nasty 30 second "I guess I have to just wait this out... AGAIN" suckers I'd been experiencing with this computer. I kinda get a vibe that your comment "well, I get beachballs sometimes, too." means that you think I'm some kind of first-time mac user who thinks that legitimate "system/application is busy" beach-balls are the same thing. I'm certainly not THAT guy...

"Oh, but we can't isolate the 3.0 Gb/s interface as a variable because we don't have firmware to downgrade to" … that's not good enough to go ahead and draw the connection anyway."

I wasn't trying to draw a connection there at all - I was trying to say that not being able to downgrade to 1.6 works AGAINST my argument, since I can't compare how a 17 behaves after being downgraded to 1.6 to a 13 or 15 after being downgraded, so therefore it's difficult to say definitively "yes I have THIS issue".

Re: SMART, I had tried to run SMART utility before I applied HDAPM, and I had never encountered any CRC errors, so if that proves that my issues isn't this one, then fair enough. Do you reckon that CRC errors could possibly be generated if power levels to the drive are incorrect or something like that? I'm interested to know why others think the drives are failing CRC checks, since it sounds like the drives themselves are fine.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the root cause of all of these issues MIGHT be related, since to my mind the symptoms appear to have a lot in common. Not saying they absolutely ARE, just putting it out there.

I'm sure we can both absolutely agree that these mid-2009 macbook pros weren't quite ready for prime time, and we're all wasting time and effort on something we shouldn't have to!

blackmondo wrote:
Re: beach-balling "(again, fairly common symptom for a wide variety of issues)". Such as? I've owned about 6 or 7 macs over 15 years or so, I've been running OS X since the developer preview, and in all that time, I've never seen beach-ball / freezing issues like the nasty 30 second "I guess I have to just wait this out... AGAIN" suckers I'd been experiencing with this computer. I kinda get a vibe that your comment "well, I get beachballs sometimes, too." means that you think I'm some kind of first-time mac user who thinks that legitimate "system/application is busy" beach-balls are the same thing. I'm certainly not THAT guy...

The beachball has it's own nick-name: the spinning beachball of death. There is a reason for that.
Moving on…

"Oh, but we can't isolate the 3.0 Gb/s interface as a variable because we don't have firmware to downgrade to" … that's not good enough to go ahead and draw the connection anyway."

I wasn't trying to draw a connection there at all - I was trying to say that not being able to downgrade to 1.6 works AGAINST my argument, since I can't compare how a 17 behaves after being downgraded to 1.6 to a 13 or 15 after being downgraded, so therefore it's difficult to say definitively "yes I have THIS issue".

So then why are you saying things like, "HDAPM has absolutely nailed this problem for me," in this thread? Sounds pretty definitive to me (and false… but mostly definitive).

Re: SMART, I had tried to run SMART utility before I applied HDAPM, and I had never encountered any CRC errors, so if that proves that my issues isn't this one, then fair enough. Do you reckon that CRC errors could possibly be generated if power levels to the drive are incorrect or something like that? I'm interested to know why others think the drives are failing CRC checks, since it sounds like the drives themselves are fine.

I don't care if power levels could cause CRC errors… because that's not the issue at hand in this thread. Oh, and how about this for an explanation of why the drives are failing CRC when exibiting the SATA II issue from EFI 1.7:

Basicaly what happens is that if there is a critical frequency of CRC errors, the beachball will start popping up as the operating system is trying to recover from the SATA bus errors.

This typicaly happens on heavy HD access or for example during Time machine backups to ext USB drives.

Sound familiar? That's because _it's in the post you are replying to_. It's in that bit I reposted from page 19 and is what Oliver hypothesized back in early July.
Do try to keep up.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the root cause of all of these issues MIGHT be related, since to my mind the symptoms appear to have a lot in common. Not saying they absolutely ARE, just putting it out there.

You just admitted that your machine doesn't exhibit one of the basic symptoms of this issue that was identified very early on in this thread (and in others). Yet you are still pushing that the two might be related somehow. I'd hate to point you to JoeyR's post for a 3rd time tonight, but maybe you should consider the (far more likely) possibility that not all beachballing is related, that it's a very common symptom of a wide variety of issues, and has been that way for a very long time (please refer back to the long-standing "spinning beachball of death" nickname above).

I'm sure we can both absolutely agree that these mid-2009 macbook pros weren't quite ready for prime time, and we're all wasting time and effort on something we shouldn't have to!

I'm not much inclined to agree with you on anything, as you seem to be proving yourself to be someone who can't look at evidence and draw rational conclusions. All the signs point to you experiencing a completely different and unrelated issue, but you just won't have any of it. It appears to be akin to a religious argument with you, as there doesn't seem to be anything anyone could say or do that would convince you that your beachballing is not related to this EFI 1.7 SATA II beachballing.

Please don't forget that this is just an open discussion of people trying to help other people out.

No, it's not… these forums are categorized into threads designed to focus on specific issues or questions. And until you can show some shred of evidence that the two cases of beachballing are related somehow (you know, something beyond: "well, they're both spinning beachballs that last for a bit!"), you don't belong in this thread. Please take your religion elsewhere, as _*this thread is long enough already and doesn't need your unrelated filler*_.

My SSD started to make squeaking sounds yesterday, Apple support told me to press "any key" to resolve it. I am now getting my keyboard RMA'ed as it is missing the "any key". Man this EFI 1.7 really *****.

No serious. Fishbert getting back on the the topic, you seem fairly passionate to get this resolved as well. What is your status with Apple Support? Are you still have an active case open ?

While this is working for me in the mean time with EFI 1.7, I really would like to understand the root cause of this as well out of professional curiosity.

It has been close to three month now. Three month would be more than enough time to safely assume that Engineering has isolated the root cause (If they not already knew it when they released the 1.5GB/S restricted firmware). Given the speed Apple R&D is churning out products it really does not look like that this will be addressed and that the affected customer does not seem big enough to put priority on this.

This whole issue has for me permanently changed the way I look at Apple. They have reinvented themselves on the product innovation side, but certainly are stuck in time when it comes to their customer communication and support attitude. Product quality issues are common, but the way to deal and respond to them is what sets a great company apart from one that is just out for profit.

I wonder if Apple would not make the majority of their revenue with low maintainance Ipods and Iphones now if they would take a more customer centric approach again.

Ollie.

I think this is the most I've seen my name in a thread without actually posting in a while.

It's worth noting that the current 17" MacBook Pro actually shares more with the previous unibody MacBook and 15" MB Pro (with the Express slot) than with the current 13 and 15" MB Pros. The entire previous line shipped in SATA 3.0 mode. There does not appear to be any evidence to suggest that those machines are experiencing the wide spread problems being encountered by the latest generation of 13 & 15" MB Pros.

This thread has really grown to an unmanageable length... both due to how long the problem has existed and the number of people posting. It's not realistic to expect anyone who has not been part of this thread from the beginning to read through the many many pages it now contains.

If you think you have a solution for a similar problem on 17" machines, others having similar problems may benefit from knowing about your solution. It is probably best to put that info in a different thread simply so they can get to your solution without (and not likely) reading through this entire thread. The primary key difference between the 13/15" problem and the 17" problem is the 1.7 firmware. Granted, there may be similar symptoms (and even potentially similar causes), but those with 17" MB Pros can at least eliminate the 1.7 firmware as a cause... something which the 13/15" users cannot do.

Pretty much every possible solution to the problem has already been posted in this thread. If someone with a 13/15" MacBook Pro decides that they want to attempt some suggestions that have corrected beachballing on 17" machines (or even last gen 13/15" models), they can certainly look through other threads and see if any of those suggestions help them out.

The problem with including every possible solution here is that they may not be easily found by those who can actually benefit from them.

For the most part, most 13/15" MacBook Pro users will benefit from reverting to the 1.6 firmware (again, something which does not apply to the 17" model). Whether it's reverting to an older firmware, or using other work arounds... the issue remains that none of this should be necessary.

The problem simply isn't with the drives (although, it's safe to say that at least a handful of drives may actually be faulty). The vast majority of this thread is folks attempting to come up with solutions to a problem which is in Apple's lap.

We don't really need to argue back and forth at this point as to what the problem may or may not be. That point is pretty much moot now. It's been going on for months without so much as an acknowledgment. Apart from Apple coming out with an official fix, there's not much more that can be accomplished here.

After replacing sata cable hardrive and logic board twice, and ram, the issue persists.

Customer relations are going to send me a replacement machine, and if the issue manifests itself again. they want me to get it serviced another three times before giving me another replacement.

Hopefully the replacement will work properly, if not i am demanding to either a receive a full refund or making me a sweet deal on a previous gen unibody macbook pro.

On the other hand, i dont think apple will cough up a solution. why am i saying this? three months into production, 100+ pages 1000+ posts and not even a hint at them acknowledging this issue.

They will most likely, a) ignore the issue completely, b) play it off like they did with the Nvidia 8600 GT and offer full three years coverage for that card or c) play it off like the rev A macbook air hinge problems and fess up to it 2 years later.

Either way, we got the short end of the stick.

Also a quick question for a few of you to answer

Ive only been able to consistently replicate the issue under snow leopard in this manner:

Play an xvid video larger then 700mb in quicktime, copy roughly 2 to 4 gb of data from a dvd in the super drive to your hard drive, and run the AJA System Test at with file size 8.0 GB (http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJASystem_Testv601.zip)

Can anyone try this and return results, wether or not this creates this systemwide freeze we are talking about (In my case this triggers the system wide freeze)

Also if anyone is following this thread with a 2008 Unibody macbook pro, can you please try the same and post wether or not you get a system freeze or any beach balls at all.

thank you.

It would be greatly appreciated if you test this out really quickly both if you are and are not having any beachball problems on the mid 2009 macbook pros (please try this oliver).

Message was edited by: Peter Di Arcangelo

I bought a new 13" MBP from the Apple at the beginning of September. Stock 2.26Ghz model with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB Hitachi 5400rpm drive (System profiler shows 3Gb speed). No hardware upgrades performed. Boot ROM version ends in B03 (That's EFI 1.7, right?)

I'm experiencing the frequent but random spinning beachballs with just about any app including Safari, Firefox, Aperture, Mail, Pages, etc. Everything freezes up for at least 10-20 second or more, than resumes as normal. I didn't have this problem with my old white 2.0Ghz MacBook. Very frustrating.

Tonight I might try using the EFI 1.6 downgrade I found at MacRumors to see if that makes a difference. I would really like to upgrade the RAM and get a bigger HD soon, but I want to fix this issue before introducing new hardware (and giving Apple something else to shift the blame too). Any other suggestions?

please try what ti have mentioned...