Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

When I said there was a massive thread on the Apple Forum about it he said 'the problem with the forums is people experience different problems because of different things and they all think it's the same'. I know it's the firmware as the laptop was perfect before the update. Annoyingly the logs showed nothing and the hard drive tested OK. However, if he'd actually used it - played a video, put iTunes on or surfed the net then he may have experienced it.
Before I took it in I transferred all my documents to a USB hard drive and it took 12 hours! The transfer kept halting and stayed idle for about 10 minutes before resuming and then halting. My 4 year old PC read the data in 10 minutes! There is definitely something wrong with this update but they don't appear to be aware of it or, if they are, they aren't admitting it! We pay a premium for Apple hardware as it's supposed to be more rigorously tested! I could have bought a faster laptop for less money from any number of manufacturers but I wanted the reassurance of Apple build quality!

The thing about most Apple Genius bars is they're far from what the name implies. Unfortunately a majority of them are simply first line of defense to look good for customers.

I would call Apple Care and talk to them as they will log the issue. I suspect lots of people are not taking in their MBP's or calling Apple Care and are simply waiting for Apple to come out with a fix. If people do not call Apple on the problem it will not be logged and it will not be globally fixed.

I think a lot of the problem is that many people (like me) are holding off on upgrading to 1.7 EFI until this problem is rectified. If everyone had just upgraded it was obviously be causing a lot more problems than it is and maybe Apple would be working harder on a fix.

It has now been a month since this saga began. I still cannot use my X25 and am stuck with my "stock" HDD.

I've given up hope on this. I've also given up stock in purchasing apple products for my company. This is not enterprise ready.

Good luck everyone.

Just called Apple in the Netherlands. They haven't heard of this problem yet. So if you live in the Netherlands (or anywhere else), please call Apple Support and have them log your problem! The only way to wake up Cupertino..

The guy on the phone was very helpfull and let me run 'repair disk permissions' in Disk Utility, and run the Hardware Test. Of course this didn't help... I still have to run HW Test, will do that later today (I don't have time for it now). I expect it to come back with everything OK.

To be continued...

Is this a 13" problem or both, I still don't know what laptops it effects

Wilbur507 wrote:
Is this a 13" problem or both, I still don't know what laptops it effects

This affects the new Powerbook Pro 13" AND 15". They had the capped SATA II.

Affected laptops are the ones with the new memory card slot.
(not to say there is or isn't a causal relationship there... just helps identify)

You'd think a 30 page long discussion on a fairly specific issue in the support forums would at least grab somebody's attention...

Are there not official 'apple people' whose job it is to monitor the support forums for exactly this kind of problem?

I got a replacement today! It has the original firmware (sata at 1.5gb) and I've hidden the update so I don't accidentally install it. I'm going to buy the 500gb Seagate Momentus 7200.4 and hopefully I won't have any problems.

I got a different 'genius' today who said he hadn't had anyone else complain of the problem so maybe people aren't complaining? I said I wouldn't update the firmware again and he said I should as it wouldn't have been released if it caused a problem. He claimed to have the same Macbook Pro himself and hadn't experienced the problem. Hmmmm.

The Powerbook Pro 17'' I bought yesterday has the same issue... The store (Official Apple Retailer) said they didn't know of a problem.

It may be suffering from the same symptoms, but this particular problem is directly caused by the EFI 1.7 firmware update which was not pushed to or even available for the 17" MBP. The update is only installed on the (mid2009) 13" and 15" MBPs.

What we may find is that apple restricted the 13" to 1.5GBps why i don't know surely a pro is a pro? It maybe a hardware restriction, apples 1.7 firmware may have been smoke and mirrors and when people added 7200 rpm drives with 3.0 GBps it can write properly.
There is another thread about clicks and beeps 5 + 17" macbook are suffering from, I wonder if the 13" macbooks are experiencing something related?

This issue is not only effecting SATA 3.0 drives, 7200 drives or any other 3rd party drives. This update is effecting Stock apple drives as well, on 13" and 15" MBPs.

I would like to know if everyone claiming to have the problem necessarily have a massive CRC error count like previously discovered in this thread.

Are there people experiencing the problem but have 0 CRC error with applications like SMART Utility?

Message was edited by: Pierce2019