Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

How very sad that Apple techs are claiming to never having heard of this problem! It seems so highly unlikely. I now have a Seagate 500Gb AS model HD sitting here on my desk (having just paid for it at a store that doesn't allow returns) and it will continue to sit on my desk until Apple does something about this problem (assuming they do). However, it also seems that HD manufacturers are equally to blame. They could make other HD firmwares available to the public for us to test since it does seem that identical HDs although with different firmware are giving mixed results...i.e. some work fine, some don't work at all. That does not however, take the onus off of Apple to fix what they broke with this firmware update. IMHO.

Okay. This thread scared the **** outta me. Just installed WD Blue Scorpio 500gb and 4gb of crucial ram. The system lagged a little at first. I fixed file permissions and did a triple chime PRAM clearance. The PRAM clearance resolved any lag the system seemed to have.
I checked read/write speeds via reviews at the following sites

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/westerndigital_scorpio_blue500gb
63-68mb/s read/write depending on benchmark used

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/937/2/
Read 67mb/s
Write 63mb/s

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4954
Not sure of average - peak was high 70s read and write


Using those speeds as a guide I ran AJA and Xbench.

AJA gives me 71.9mb/s Read and 70 mb/s Write using an 8bit 720x486 frame size 1gb file. Speeds dip into the mid 60s with smaller files.

XBENCH

Results 60.11
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.7 (9J3050)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type WDC WD5000BEVT-22ZAT0
Disk Test 60.11
Sequential 99.70
Uncached Write 120.47 73.97 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 121.65 68.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 59.73 17.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.82 73.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.03
Uncached Write 16.29 1.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 127.61 40.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 64.99 0.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 119.60 22.19 MB/sec [256K blocks]


No lag whatsoever.
I purchased this mbp(my first mac :)) July8 and updated the firmware with all the software upgrades the same day. I was unaware of any issues like this.
I cloned the osx partition using Disk Utility.
The WD Scorpio Blue 500gb is unable to be set to 1.5gb via jumper. To those with Seagate 7200RPM drives, testing has shown these to run SLOWER than the WD Blue Scorps.
I'd suggest clearing PRAM and revisiting the cloning and repairing the file system just in case these are the source of your problems.

For the purposes of helping people identify the issue at hand.
-------
*What the lagging issue looked like for me...*
Starting in late June or early July (around the time of the firmware 1.7 update), I would get spinning beachballs that would last for something like 20-60 seconds, before everything returned to normal as if nothing happened (except the video in Quicktime would have advanced 20-60 seconds when it resumed). These spinning beachballs seemed to be occurring when I was watching a video in Quicktime, copying a few hundred megs from a network drive to my laptop drive, and surfing the web in Safari -- i.e., moderately heavy hard drive use.

*The best way to diagnose the lagging issue...*
Download, install, and run SMART Utility. Take note of the "CRC Error Count" value. When the above symptoms occur, this CRC error count value will increment (for me, it was at a rate of about one count per second -- you may need to tell the program window to refresh for the value to update).

*What has been working for me (until Apple releases a proper fix)...*
If your hard drive has such a capability, limit the speed of your hard drive to 1.5 Gbit/s with a jumper. The CRC error count for my drive had reached 3990, with how frequently I had experienced this issue. After limiting the drive's interface bandwidth, that error count has remained at 3990 (for maybe a week now).

*It should be noted that...*
This reflects only my personal experience with a traditional HDD on a machine with OS X already installed. I can't speak on symptoms or diagnosis methods with an SSD, on problems installing OS X, nor on problems with using/installing other native OSes (bootcamp).

No CRC errors here. Some people seem to have horrible read/write stats too. How are your r/w stats?

Hello TBastiani, are you still having problems with your Hitachi 7k320? I'm upgrading my daughter's MBP with a new HD and am looking at the Hitachi drive especially. Or is this simply a bad time to upgrade given the firmware update?

The issue does not appear to be related to 3rd party drives -- plenty of people in here have said they see the same problems on laptops with Apple-supplied drives. I'd venture to say that swapping one HDD for another is not likely to have any real effect on this issue.

Because I know my machine has the 1.7 firmware and exhibits the issue (and I've decided to work around it rather than do a warranty swap for pre-1.7 hardware with Apple), I am not going to be upgrading to a SSD until a fix is released. There's little point until then, and if I wait I may be able to get an SSD that's larger and cheaper. But that's just me; if the machine you're thinking of changing a drive on doesn't show this issue, you're probably fine. And if you're not, Apple will have a fix out soon (fingers crossed) anyway.

I just ordered a 13" 2.26Ghz MBP last week, will it come with the 1.7 firmware? I also have more ram and Corsair P128 SSD being arriving tomorrow, this should be interesting

There have been reports in this thread that EFI 1.7 is preloaded on some machines. Not sure if it is on all. If I were you I would use the MBP a good amount of time before swapping out HDD or memory to help with troubleshooting if needed. Once you decide to do the swaps I would swap out the memory first and use it awhile and make sure that the memory is purring properly, once satisfied I would then swap out the drive. Other wise you may play heck trying to determine which caused the problem, Memory, HDD, EFI update or both/all. IMHO

They know about it, they have too, I can see youtube blasting them soon if they dont fix it, **** i expect this on a PC not a MAC.

Just a bump to say that this is still a huge issue for me, and my first apple computer experience will probably be my last. Unfortunately it seems like apple doesn't really care based on how quiet they are about this.

I tend to agree and it is very disappointing for everyone, but don't give up yet!

Hi, kami. Yes I' still having problems with my hitachi drive but I don't use it at the moment... Most of the time it won't even boot. I even have some unexpected lags (but these are acceptable if not in the long run) with the 5400 hitachi that shipped with the laptop. I'm considering buying an ssd but I'm gonna do what you should - wait for a fix.

Just for youks and grins I decided to put another NEW 500GB WD Blue hard drive in my 13.3" 2.53 GHz MBP (purchased 6/10) over the weekend (7/19) replacing the existing 500GB WD Blue HD (not really any problems). Instead of migrating everything over like I did the first time (6/10) I started fresh with everything, 5 1/2 hours later everything seems great.
I cloned the NEW drive back to the old WD Blue HD I took out (after zeroing out the drive of course). I ran DW and had 2 errors which was repaired and am now into the 2nd hour of using TTP5 to optimize the drive.

A couple of thing I've noticed after my weekend adventure:
1. Repairing permissions is a lot faster (2.5 minutes, before 5 to 6 minutes) and there are a lot fewer line that stay around afterwards.
2. The computer feels a lot more responsive (smoother) NO Beachballs at all, except when I first opened MS Office (Word).

Not sure if I really accomplished anything because every thing was working before without any of the things people have discussed here.

I would love to get a 500GB SSD drive but until the price drops to around $300 I'll stick with Blue (maybe 2-3 years).

P.S. I did install the firmware (1.7) update the day after if came out.

This has to be the scariest thread ever. Hi people - first post =]

I should be getting 4gb of crucial ram and a 500gb WD Scorpio Blue by the end of this week. I will report back with how (un)successful this upgrade goes, since I already have 1.7 firmware installed.

i still get spinning beach ball on my 13 inch MBP 2.26 stock/standard HDD

i wish apple would say something about it