Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Hi Bob,
I don't think that booting into Safe mode / resetting the permitions will help, because the EFI 1.7 problem appears at the very early system boot stages, before any OS is loaded.

That's why, when the system boots with EFI 1.7, OS X won't even start many times ( a couple of times I got a message that there is no operating system installed at all!) and Windows in Boot Camp, has also big issues with Blue Screens during the start-up phase or (again) missing operating system warnings.

As soon as you revert back to EFI 1.6, everything works fine.

It is obvious that the computer cannot handle the SATA 3.0 Gbps timings but I really don't (and nobody can tell for sure) if this is a hardware limitation or if it will ever be fixed with a new EFI udpate.

I will try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM as you suggest, but I am not optimistic...

Sorry Mellto but Robert is a lucky guy. The upgrade did nothing for me (as for many others).

Hi all,
I want to confirm that resetting PRAM/NVRAM had not effect in regards the EFI 1.7 - SATA 3 Gbps problem. As soon as the firmware update installed and I rebooted I start to have the freezes and all known hard drive issues. I did twice a PRAM reset and nothing changed (actually at some point I think the disk become very slow and OS X did twice the time to boot).

I reverted back to EFI 1.6 and I got back the fast (expected) performance.

No more experiments with EFI 1.7 until we see a definite solution to the problem, but frankly I doubt about it...

Same story with me. Perfect with original HD. Replaced by seagate 500 3GBS and the death ball came.
Downgraded to efi 1.6 and it turned back.

I wont try to upgrade to 1.7 again, even after have installed de performance update, since it doesn't seem to solve the problem according to the posts in this forum.

syd-@69 wrote:
I wont try to upgrade to 1.7 again, even after have installed de performance update, since it doesn't seem to solve the problem according to the posts in this forum.

Really? Performance update solved it for me - and a number of previous posters. Based on the reduction of volume of posts in this thread, likely quite a few others, too... Might be worth trying, worst case you can downgrade again (and maybe even take your macbook in to an apple store to get checked out)

syd-@69 wrote:
I wont try to upgrade to 1.7 again, even after have installed de performance update, since it doesn't seem to solve the problem according to the posts in this forum.

PU worked for me.

Folks, it's been clear for quite some time that this thread has been a catch-all for beachballing issues in general. And, while some in here have had PU1.0 resolve their issues, the fact still remains that an OS update is not going to resolve an OS-independent issue.

Perhaps now that it's not just me saying PU1.0 has not resolved the EFI 1.7 issue, more people will realize that Apple never said that it would (indeed, PU1.0 was targetted to 15 different models of Mac going back to 2008). Really, there's -zero- reason to believe PU1.0 does anything to this EFI 1.7 issue, other than some people in here said their beachballing went away (and for that, I would refer you to the part about this thread becoming a catch-all for all things beachball).

As I've said before, there is no reason not to install PU1.0, and it may resolve what you are seeing (yay!), but it does not resolve this firmware issue.

fishbert wrote:
Folks, it's been clear for quite some time that this thread has been a catch-all for beachballing issues in general. And, while some in here have had PU1.0 resolve their issues, the fact still remains that an OS update is not going to resolve an OS-independent issue.

Perhaps now that it's not just me saying PU1.0 has not resolved the EFI 1.7 issue, more people will realize that Apple never said that it would (indeed, PU1.0 was targetted to 15 different models of Mac going back to 2008). Really, there's -zero- reason to believe PU1.0 does anything to this EFI 1.7 issue, other than some people in here said their beachballing went away (and for that, I would refer you to the part about this thread becoming a catch-all for all things beachball).

As I've said before, there is no reason not to install PU1.0, and it may resolve what you are seeing (yay!), but it does not resolve this firmware issue.

As I've said before, the PU may address problems some people were experiencing after the EFI upgrade opened them up to 3G interface speeds - a problem which was impacting a much wider range of MAC's that already had 3G speeds - but hey, I'm no apple engineer and have no reason to think I would know the real answer.

katmeef wrote:
As I've said before, the PU may address problems some people were experiencing after the EFI upgrade opened them up to 3G interface speeds - a problem which was impacting a much wider range of MAC's that already had 3G speeds - but hey, I'm no apple engineer and have no reason to think I would know the real answer.

That's entirely speculation.

There is no reason to believe that PU1.0 has anything to do with SATA II interface speeds. Apple has not said anything about PU1.0 being related to a SATA II interface. The only Apple product line that officially supports a SATA II interface is the Mac Pro, and if I remember correctly, that line is not among the 15 models PU1.0 was released for. Also, if Oliver's dialog with an Apple engineer is correct, Apple does not ship SATA II drives - and Apple has said nothing about PU1.0 being related to 3rd party drives, either.

Everyone claiming PU1.0 resolves an OS-independent firmware issue is dealing entirely within the realm of speculation. Apple has said nothing of the sort, and all the signs (list of target machines, that it's an OS-level update, etc.) indicate otherwise.

Haven't had any problems since the PU .

fishbert wrote:

katmeef wrote:
As I've said before, the PU may address problems some people were experiencing after the EFI upgrade opened them up to 3G interface speeds - a problem which was impacting a much wider range of MAC's that already had 3G speeds - but hey, I'm no apple engineer and have no reason to think I would know the real answer.

That's entirely speculation.

There is no reason to believe that PU1.0 has anything to do with SATA II interface speeds. Apple has not said anything about PU1.0 being related to a SATA II interface. The only Apple product line that officially supports a SATA II interface is the Mac Pro, and if I remember correctly, that line is not among the 15 models PU1.0 was released for. Also, if Oliver's dialog with an Apple engineer is correct, Apple does not ship SATA II drives - and Apple has said nothing about PU1.0 being related to 3rd party drives, either.

Everyone claiming PU1.0 resolves an OS-independent firmware issue is dealing entirely within the realm of speculation. Apple has said nothing of the sort, and all the signs (list of target machines, that it's an OS-level update, etc.) indicate otherwise.

Speculation is all we have, my dancing monkey..

So, after my trauma, I’m tempted to upgrade to efi 1.7 again.
I just wanted to hear from the ones who tried efi 1.7 + PU 1.0 in a Seagate 500 7400 rpm 3 GBS, if, upon copying massive data from an external HD and working with many programs at the same time, the ball shows up.
Because for me this was the typical situation when I had the problem, the copy was going well, then at about 1 gb it stopped for, say 20 seconds, started again ...
My macbook pro is mid 2009, 2.53 GH, 15"inch.
Thanks Guys.

syd-@69 wrote:
So, after my trauma, I’m tempted to upgrade to efi 1.7 again.
I just wanted to hear from the ones who tried efi 1.7 + PU 1.0 in a Seagate 500 7400 rpm 3 GBS, if, upon copying massive data from an external HD and working with many programs at the same time, the ball shows up.
Because for me this was the typical situation when I had the problem, the copy was going well, then at about 1 gb it stopped for, say 20 seconds, started again ...
My macbook pro is mid 2009, 2.53 GH, 15"inch.
Thanks Guys.

Since PU, with EFI1.7 I have been able to repeatedly do 4gb AJA tests at same time as opening all the apps on my doc, no problems. Tried playing a 700MB avi while copying others now experiences no playback issues.

Running par2 and subsequent extraction of 7GB+ newsgroup multipart RAR downloads would previously put my computer into a beachball frenzy.. not anymore

In 10 days 9 hours uptime since the update I've only had 3 beachball freezes, each one lasting less than 10 seconds, and only occurring when running firefox and rapidly clicking links. (these remaining freezes are unrelated to the EFI issue IMHO, based on the duration of the pinwheel, the extremely reduced frequency, and the initiation of the issue occurring from firefox only)

Message was edited by: katmeef

I've got a 13 June MBP with 1.7 and PU 1.0 and a Seagate 500gb 7200. I haven't been able to get significant beachballing issues. I've tried copying large files while running AJA with up to 4gb copying, and opening numerous apps at the same time, or playing large movies in QT X and running AJA and so far ran into only one very short BB in the Finder, which I would never have noticed in normal use because it only went on for a few seconds, and of course may have been unrelated to disk copying.

It may be of note that my machine is a refurb, and I have replaced the SATA cable (unrelated to this issue; related to big oopsie in installing the drive. Be careful out there).

Actually guys, I am back to EFI 1.6

The initial couple of BBs which I had noticed exagerrated while I waw watching a movie on iTunes. 2-3 BBs in a matter of 30-45 minutes is not cool (each lasting 15 seconds or so...)

So now I am back again at EFI 1.6 and the laptop is butter smooth. Since I am on a 500 GB Seagate 7200.4, the SATA 1.5 gbps bus is in no way a bottleneck for me.

I am wondering how the people with the new Intel G2 80/160 GB are fairing with mid-2009 MBPs.