Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Well of course it won't help anyone here, you haven't got the problem that this thread discuses.

That's the point, I was showing the settings of a machine that does not have a problem to give hope to others. Please think carefully before replying to posts and not jump in trying to sound superior!

What on earth are you talking about? How does posting the setup of a machine that does not have the problem give hope to anyone? It is well established in this thread that you cannot discern whether you will endure this issue based on the setup of your machine, so your contribution adds absolutely nothing.

You are a very angry young man and are entitled to your opinion as is everybody. I may keep this discussion going just to see how annoyed you can get, if I can be bothered?

Hey mick1957... I appreciate your post!

katmeef wrote:
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?

Well I finally got around to popping my drive into a windows box to set it back to SATA II, and after about 30 hours I started getting the beach balls again.. (I wasnt having any problems initially, decided to boot into 32 bit mode when I started to experience the issues - strange coincidence??)

Anyways, I turned HDAPM to Max and continued getting beachballs.

When is compare my old Macbook Pro 15 early 2008 vs Macbook Pro 17 mid 2009 the drive speed are almost the same!

I find this very strange because the MB out 2008 has a SATA speed of 1.5 GB and the MB of 2009 has a SATA speed of 3.0 GB. I should get much faster speed with the MB 17 Pro!!

AJA System test Macbook Pro 15 2008:
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8915/macbook15early2008.png

AJA System test Macbook Pro 17 2009:
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/9256/macbook17mid2009.png



If I look at the SMART Drive logs of the MB 15 2008 drive there are no "Raw Read error Rate" and "Hardware EEC Recoverd" errors. When i check the same SMART drive logs on the MB 17 2009 i get a lot of errors:

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2207/smartlogs.png



Seems the Apple Macbook Pro 17 hardware is not working correct with the Seagate drives! Apple whats going on?

Please fix this. It's been going on for quite a while now.

one thing i wonder is,

what is the situtation with vertex mac edition ssd s?
they are ssd but they are mac certified so theoritically it means they should work.
Anyone using vertex mac edition?

hololoy112 wrote:
one thing i wonder is,

what is the situtation with vertex mac edition ssd s?
they are ssd but they are mac certified so theoritically it means they should work.
Anyone using vertex mac edition?

The problem is not one of incompatible drives.
The problem is one of a broken SATA II interface on the laptop.

All SATA II laptop drives should work - there is nothing that makes them "incompatible" (setting aside shock protection conflicts) - the interface is an industry standard designed to allow interoperability.

Is there any solution to this problem? will a complete reinstall of SL fix this?

best regards, rune

You have a few options, but reinstalling Snow Leopard won't help.

Option 1: Let Apple know so they fix the issue soon:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html
This is the best long term solution.

Option 2: Go to an Apple store and ask to be downgraded to EFI firmware 1.6.
This is a short-term solution, more like a bandaid.

my bad.
maybe i shoul have written work (ok) instead of just work.

from what i understand, the problem is the sata interface that causes problems when you try to run a faster hdd or ssd that exceeds sata 1 speeds.

what i was trying to ask is that, if there is such problem (we all know there is) why apple certified a third party ssd and ocz stamped apple logo in vertex mc eddition. The 1.7 efi release page states that apple portable computers were only meant to work with sata1. so why did they even certified vertex ssd at the first place.

Am i missing something?

Well sadly i have this issue on my 4 week old MBP 13".
I have downgraded to EFI 1.6 and it seems to be ok. Albeit in SATA 1.5 . .

Today though i did get an email from apple asking me to complete an online survey about my latest apple MBP purchase. At the end of the survey was a comments section. I throughly detailed this problem and pointed them to this thread.

I know they'll just shrug it off but the more people that officially complain the more apple will try to do something about it.

I've been reading through the 100 or so pages on this thread. Wow, I need a drink...and it's only 8am :--)

I've got a refurbished 13 MacBook Pro (base model: 2.26 GHz, 160 Gb stock HDD, upgraded to 4Gb Ram). Just picked it up 3 weeks ago. I'm on SL and have the 1.7 update (ie notice Boot Rom ending in B03). Performance is ok(ish) for my use. However, programs are slow to start (ie pages takes a few "bounces" to come up, etc...) and I wanted to upgrade to a faster HDD (SATA II). I was thinking either WD Scorpio blue (5400 rpm) or WD Scorpio black (7200 rpm)

Question: Given the various postings in this thread, will upgrading the HDD to one of the options noted above be a complete waste of time for me? What are the odds that I will be affected by the "beachball/freezing" issues mentioned in this thread (80% chance, 90%, 100%). Or, should I give it a go as there is a "reasonable" chace that I won't have an issue (ie is the problem hit/miss)?

I guess "worse case" if I bought the drive from a place where I could return it if I did have an issue, there is not much risk. Does this sound reasonable?