Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Right now I'm using my 2.8GHz mbp. Screen is absolutely PERFECT and the blacks are super black and the colors are eye candy vivid! Only reason keeping me from returning it so far... Not to mention no dead/stuck pixels (which scares the bejesus out of me!).

Anyway everything works great, tight hinges, no flickering backlight (I had the 2.53GHz last gen that I sold 8 months ago that had backlight flickering on 1-3 notches), keyboard is perfect, no chips in the aluminum body, mouse clicks perfectly with no weird click noises.

Maybe I'll just hang onto this mbp, it works flawlessly with the stock hdd but only when I try to install the 3rd party hdd that I have lying around...

Is is possible to swap the SATA cable attached to the HD interface for the one in the optical drive bay. This would help confirm if it is the cable at fault or the specific interface.

it is certainly not the cable, my motherboard was swapped, not the cable's to the HDD/optical bay.

Thanks for the reply, does your new motherboard have the EFI 1.7 update on and is it functioning correctly with a third party SATA II capable drive in it?

I've got a possible solution for this (testing at the moment). If you install the drivers from the OS X 10.5.6 patch, the problem goes away. Here's an updated version of my post on MacRumors:

Hi all,

A couple of months ago, I had issues with a 5400 RPM SATA 2, Seagate Momentus HD with my Unibody MacBook. It worked fine in Windows (and in a USB caddy), but I kept having random beachball lock-ups in OS X and "waiting for boot device" boot failures (crossed circle on the screen) , as people are seeing when running SATA 2 drives in the new MacBook Pro.

I put an identical Momentus HDD in my girlfriend's white NVidia MacBook at the same time as I got mine. It was working fine. She wanted to put 3.0 on her iPhone recently, so upgraded to 10.5.7. As soon as she did this, her system got the same symptoms mine had - boot failures with a crossed circle and beachballing. I then thought - did 10.5.7 change the MCP79 drivers?

I had a look with Pacifist and saw that it did update AppleAHCIPort.kext (amongst others). So, I moved the old one (in System/Library/Extensions) and replaced it with one from a downloaded 10.5.6 patch. Then, I removed /System/Library/Extensions.mkext (This is regenerated by the system, and ensures no cached kext's interfere with my tinkering).

I have restarted it about 40 times, and not seen any boot failures.

Does anyone technical want to try this on their uMBP to see if it sorts their HDD issues? It might screw your system up so watch out. I'm not sure if it's a full fix as yet, as I have only used my system for 4 days after. I have had no beachballs or boot failures since though.

Message was edited by: UltraMonkey

Are both the the drive and controller still operating in SATA II mode i.e. 3 Gbit/s? Is the drive SMART reporting any UDMA CRC errors?

Ultramonkey thanks for this help.

Are you saying to download this update

http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_6Update

extract and install only the AppleAHCIPort.kext (overwriting the old one?)

I have a third party disk in it (WD 320Gb) but it doesn't ahve the EFI 1.7 and I'm not planning on installing it any time soon :S

OK. The reason I'm asking is that I wonder if the length of the SATA cable is causing problems when the higher data rate is enabled. Is the cable from the DVD drive to the controller shorter or of a different style when compared with the one connected to the HDD? Does anyone know if the cable has been re-designed or changed in anyway compared to the previous Unibody macbooks? Am I correct in thinking the SATA specification uses LVDS?

Yep, the SATA rate is still 300 Mbps (this is the OS release that came on my uMB 2 Ghz), I do get occasional beachballing, but it's only for a second or so, and the system doesn't crash (so it may well be RAM, I do a lot on my mac). I haven't seen any errors come up with that SMART Utility, which I've had running for 1 day so far.

Yeah, that's the one. I haven't tested this on a UMBP (I'm using a Unibody MacBook), so I can't guarantee it will work. They do have the same SATA controller, so it might help out.

If you are handy with Terminal/UNIX command line, I would back up your existing AppleAHCIPort.kext so that you can restore it by moving it (using the Reinstall Disc) if things don't work out.

Yes I use a Hackintosh system at home so I'm pretty handy with terminal, kext, caches, reboots and so on..

I just tried this method but it didnt work.

I'm off to the Apple store to get a refund even if I take the restock fee...

Maybe this is Apple's true motive? Restock fee!

how do you extract the file from the 10.5.6 udpate? It doesn't have the option "Show Package Contents"...

I went to the Apple store tonight prepared to bite the bullet and return my new MBP and just wait it out without a new computer for awhile until I saw whether or not Apple was ever going to acknowledge an issue or just continue to blame the customers. I was fully prepared to pay the restock fee. When I arrived I was greeted by a very helpful employee (this was my fourth time to the store with this computer). He must have seen the broken-spirit look on my face because he immediately asked me what was wrong. Upon hearing my long and awful story and hearing of what I'd had to go through with Apple's support he apologized, reviewed my extensive case history and then did what I didn't expect at all because i'd been told "absolutely not". He waived the restock fee. After the return was completed he asked if there was anything else that Apple could do to "make right". In the end we opened a MBP from the stockroom together, verified that the 1.7 update wasn't in place and I now have a computer that once again works and I'm a very happy camper. Just goes to show that even if Apple as a company isn't willing to do anything at all to help us that there might still be a little guy in that system that still does value the customers that keep those doors open.

-Goldie