Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Anyone who is reading this thread before buying a macbook pro, we urge you to buy either a 17" mbp (not affected by this sata issues, only the 13" and 15" mbps are) or if you REALLY want a 13"/15" mbp just wait it out to see if apple addresses this issue first.

So, this Wednesday Im going to buy a 13" MBP (2.26). If it comes with the 1.6 EFI firmware, can I install a SSD and use it properly, without any hitches? Im okay with being limited to 1.5gb as long as it works. Should I risk updating to 1.7?

You SHOULD not have problem IF there is 1.6 EFI Firmware Installed.

You RISK if you update to 1.7.

My advice is : check the functionality of the MBP in front of the employee (better BEFORE paying it ).

Well, what If anyone that is going to buy a MBP annoy the employees of Apple Stores? (In front of all other potential customers?)

So thats what I gathered. Nobody had problems ungrading/replacing drives in their MBP pre-1.7 update. After that people had issues using them/

and to keep it in everyones mind, this issue does not only affect the new 2009 mbp, the LATE 2008 MBP´s are also affected.

so APPLE please fix this issue or send me an intel chipset based mbp

Well, I was hoping I wouldn't need to reply in this thread once I installed my Seagate 500Gb (AS model) 7200rpm HD but I tried installing it yesterday and here are the results of the ordeal:

Removed old stock HD and installed new one (lost one screw in the process - reminder to self - buy a new screw). Once it was installed I just put the bottom cover in place but did not screw it together (I had a feeling I would need to put the stock HD back in).

Rebooted the machine with the Leopard DVD in and waited....once at the Select Volume screen, (no volumes present), I used Disk Utility to format the HD Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It seemed to format perfectly fine.

I now selected the newly formatted HD and the Leopard install began but seemed to stall after approx. 10% had installed. It never gave me a Estimated finish time but was stuck on "calculating".

After waiting another hour, it finally conked out and gave me the Install Failure screen. Tried one more time, fomatting then installing and still got an Install Failure.

I took out the new Seagate, jumpered it to SATA 1.5Gbps then reinstalled the drive remembering that many here have been successful with that method. It did work....sort of.

The OS installed fine and it then brought me to the screen where it asked if I wanted to restore from a time machine backup. I selected yes and picked a backup I had on my USB drive. The backup hung at the last second and never completed. It said less than one minute remaining and I waited over an hour. I finally gave up and pressed the power button to reboot.

As soon as I did that, it would not reboot into OSX but instead just gave me the folder with the X through it.

I gave up and re-installed the stock HD and here I am in the same boat as the rest of you. (sigh).

Did you have the 1.7 firmware installed before you tried the new Seagate you bought? I was hoping to do the same upgrade without the firmware update but will hold off if you had the problems even without the 1.7.

chris.broadfoot wrote:
Download the Hitachi Feature tool: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

For me, I had to boot this from a PC, the internal and external keyboards plugged into my MBP weren't recognised.

Hey Chris!

Do you mean you have to plug the HD into a PC on an internal SATA-plug ofr running the Hitachi Feature tool BootCD?

Thanks for your help!

I've tried the Hitachi Feature tool but the keyboard/mouse/trackpad don't work. I don't have a PC to plug the HD so,there's not much I can do.
has anyone the keyboard drivers for PC DOS?

Yes, I had the new firmware installed. My 2 month old 15" Macbook Pro (early 2009) was stolen a few weeks ago and this one is the replacement I bought with the insurance money. I should have held off on the update since I had already ordered the new Seagate but had read so many posts saying how the AS drives were not affected. That, I know now, is simply not true. All the Seagate 7200rpm 500Gb drives are equally affected. Now I'm wondering if I should just use it as a portable HD in an enclosure and buy a 5400rpm 500Gb instead but am equally concerned that I may have problems with that as well. I may just wait it out and see if a new firmware version is released to address this issue.

I have a 13" MBP 2.53 Ghz with a Corsair P256 SSD and I am happy to report it is running without errors.

Luckily I haven't experienced any beach balls or stutters.

Used SMART utlity to check for CRC errors as suggested previously; ID#199 UDMA CRC Error Count = 0

Either I got lucky with my MBP or maybe the 13" MBP & P256 SSD are not susceptible to this particular issue.

Just my two cents.

Miula wrote:
I have a 13" MBP 2.53 Ghz with a Corsair P256 SSD and I am happy to report it is running without errors.

Luckily I haven't experienced any beach balls or stutters.

Used SMART utlity to check for CRC errors as suggested previously; ID#199 UDMA CRC Error Count = 0

Either I got lucky with my MBP or maybe the 13" MBP & P256 SSD are not susceptible to this particular issue.

Just my two cents.

Does it have the EFI 1.7 update installed?

Of course; installed it the day it came out...

Forgot the mention it on my previous post, my bad...

Message was edited by: Miula

Interesting, if possible could you let me know what sort of transfer rates you get from the drive.

can you please run XBENCH and post the results?