Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

fishberts' post sounds alittle harsh, but it hits the bulleye. In other words Apple can not help anyone if the problems are not reported. If only a few hundred people call about similar problems which can occurs for multiple reasons they will just assume that they are isolated issues. Thats is why it is important to call Apple care, they issue gets logged and they try to fix it, if they see that thousands are having the same issue... well now they have something to go by in which to help them trouble shoot.

The first 14 days of an Apple in critical for the buyer, as they need to put the MAc through the ringer... If there are any issues call Apple Care that one of the reasons why we pay the premium dollar for a Mac. They not only are there if your computer breaks but they are there to help you get familiar with you Mac.

Well I phoned apple and reported it, the guy did say he never head of it, possibly, but he did say that the beeping disk issue is being looked at, I was the first freezing issue.
if everyone here reported it apple would so something.

Thanks, I thought as much so I've ordered 4gb ram from Crucial (£47) and bought a 500gb Seagate Momentus 7200 drive from Scan (£90). What I didn't buy was one of those special screwdrivers to get the retaining screws from the sides of the original Hitachi drive!

Oh I haven't updated to EFI 1.7 on the replacement laptop and I haven't seen the spinning beach ball once!

Hay people;

I've been treading this thread. Im a little confused over some issue's. I currently have a 500 gb, 5400 rpm drive from WD in my custom configured 17" MBP. I bought it in April of this year (09). It came with a stock 320 GB drive from Apple but I have this WD drive from a previous MBP. That drive, (the WD 500 GB0 was bought for me at Christmas last year, 7 months ago. I have not had any issues at all with it.

What I'm puzzled about is I cannot find any firmware upgrades in software update at all. I looked utilities and found a few from my older MBP that got transferred over when I did my file transfer but none are the 7.1 as many people in here speak of. Is that the one thats giving everyone the headache?

I trashed my older firmware updates because they were for my 15" MBP and dint even apply to my new 17". I know that because I tried to open them and I was told that "these do not apply to this model computer". In fact, I do not remember seeing a firmware update yet---sense Ive even had this machine.

So, Im headed out to Best Buy to get the new 7200 rpm, 500 gb from Seagate as I write this. I hope all go's well as Im a little nervous after reading this thread and others like it on other sites. I'm gonna come home, clone it to my 500 gb WD drive via Carbon Copy, and post my experiences here.

PS, Do any of you know just why I havent got a notification update fro the 7.1 firmware? Is it because I have the 17"? Thanks--Seattle

The 17" never had this issue as it always had SATA II. Bottom line. You have nothing to worry about. You are in the clear. In the famous words of Bobby McFerrin "Don't worry be happy".

Wait, so you haven't even TRIED working with Apple on resolving your problem (one that you admit may or may not even be related to the one discussed in this forum)?! Your ONLY course of action has been to "vent"?!

Stop complaining or just go away. You obviously don't even want to find a solution; you just like to hear yourself talk. You're like someone who doesn't vote, but who then complains to anyone who will listen about how so-and-so in office is ruining everything.

Wow.. Talk about hostility. If you noticed, I said "I would wait a bit" aka - not go without my nearly brand new laptop (which didn't have the problem that I noticed within the 14 days fyi)

Why would I want to be without my laptop while it's torn down and logic board replaced, if a fix is going to come via new firmware flash?

katmeef wrote:

Wait, so you haven't even TRIED working with Apple on resolving your problem (one that you admit may or may not even be related to the one discussed in this forum)?! Your ONLY course of action has been to "vent"?!

Stop complaining or just go away. You obviously don't even want to find a solution; you just like to hear yourself talk. You're like someone who doesn't vote, but who then complains to anyone who will listen about how so-and-so in office is ruining everything.

Wow.. Talk about hostility. If you noticed, I said "I would wait a bit" aka - not go without my nearly brand new laptop (which didn't have the problem that I noticed within the 14 days fyi)

Why would I want to be without my laptop while it's torn down and logic board replaced, if a fix is going to come via new firmware flash?

Replacing a logic board should only take a few hours. You could drop it off at an Apple Store, go have lunch, run some errands, and pick it up again on your way home. And, really, the laptop isn't "torn down" in the replacement; remove the back cover and the logic board is right there, with disconnecting a few cables left to do.

Also, you may be able to talk them into replacing the machine outright, if you get the right person and have good people skills.

Or, you could wait for a fix to be released. That's what I'm doing, though with how long it's taking, I may change my mind and go in for a logic board replacement after all.

And finally, you've said there are no CRC errors in your case. What you are experiencing may be a completely different issue all together; in which case I'd suggest you take it in to have it looked at anyway.

Regardless of which avenue you select, bellyaching and cursing Apple in an unmonitored forum really doesn't help.

I would like to say I'm having intermediate beach ball issues as well but no CRC errors.

I've got a June 2009 2.53 I bought on the first day they were released and still have the stock drive.

GoodOmens wrote:
I would like to say I'm having intermediate beach ball issues as well but no CRC errors.

I've got a June 2009 2.53 I bought on the first day they were released and still have the stock drive.

Did you upgrade to EFI 1.7 prior to the beachballs issue? Is the problem more prevalent when using the system heavily?

We have a MBP 13" 2.53 that has the beachball issue. Seemingly random pauses that last anywhere from 15-30 seconds (beachball appears, music stops playing, can't interact with URLs files or folders, etc). Very frustrating.

We bought ours on June 29th and I upgraded to firmware 1.7 on July 3rd. I cannot remember if the pauses began before the firmware update. No CRC errors reported through SMART Utility, no read/write issues when running AJA System Test.

The system is bone stock: 250GB Hitachi, 4GB RAM. We did do a restore from a Time Machine backup, and initially I thought this to be the problem. Before doing I full reinstall, I decided to check the forums first, and lo and behold I found this thread.

Haven't tried talking to Apple yet, but will do so this week.

jgrgnt

I too did a migration and everything seemed fine for nearly 3 weeks....however the system always seemed lagy and decided to do a complete reinstall.

I ran a Xbench test before and after here are the results:

Before the reinstall:

Results 126.10
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.7 (9J3050)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT0
CPU Test 170.23
GCD Loop 295.39 15.57 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 143.16 3.40 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 118.98 3.93 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 211.76 36.87 Mops/sec
Thread Test 267.42
Computation 409.95 8.31 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 198.43 8.54 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 185.12
System 223.46
Allocate 314.10 1.15 Malloc/sec
Fill 182.55 8876.20 MB/sec
Copy 209.92 4335.79 MB/sec
Stream 158.01
Copy 151.64 3132.05 MB/sec
Scale 148.44 3066.64 MB/sec
Add 167.07 3559.02 MB/sec
Triad 166.74 3566.90 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 205.97
Line 188.19 12.53 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 248.98 74.34 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 204.57 16.68 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 196.36 4.95 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 201.44 12.60 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 163.11
Spinning Squares 163.11 206.91 frames/sec
User Interface Test 380.85
Elements 380.85 1.75 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 37.19
Sequential 67.68
Uncached Write 109.27 67.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 125.18 70.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 41.30 12.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 56.35 28.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 25.64
Uncached Write 8.85 0.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 50.11 16.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.26 0.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 118.52 21.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]

After reinstall:

Results 155.72
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.7 (9J3050)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT0
CPU Test 169.37
GCD Loop 295.37 15.57 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 143.36 3.41 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 117.07 3.86 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 212.12 36.94 Mops/sec
Thread Test 314.07
Computation 406.49 8.23 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 255.89 11.01 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 184.67
System 221.13
Allocate 304.08 1.12 Malloc/sec
Fill 183.01 8898.29 MB/sec
Copy 207.73 4290.63 MB/sec
Stream 158.53
Copy 151.19 3122.87 MB/sec
Scale 149.51 3088.80 MB/sec
Add 167.67 3571.71 MB/sec
Triad 167.65 3586.34 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 206.47
Line 187.87 12.51 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 249.05 74.36 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 205.54 16.75 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 198.87 5.02 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 200.59 12.55 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 159.41
Spinning Squares 159.41 202.22 frames/sec
User Interface Test 326.79
Elements 326.79 1.50 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 61.46
Sequential 94.96
Uncached Write 124.73 76.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 130.31 73.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.78 14.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 148.44 74.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 45.43
Uncached Write 17.34 1.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 129.60 41.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.55 0.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.98 23.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Message was edited by: D/FW

Just some further feedback from South Africa..... apparently Tuesdays are "Software Update" days - and hence you all should be checking during the course of tomorrow and then again next week Tuesday - lets hope it's done this week and not next!

Wan Chai Man wrote:

Thanks for posting about the AJA System software test

I upgraded my MBP (Standard low end one with 160gig HD) to EFI 1.7 and was really worried about performance after the upgrade.

WIth AJA, alhough I never get 70mb/s throughput I geta steady 52-55mb/s

It never drops to zero at all - whatever the file size (128 - 1gb).

Does this mean that my computer is okay then? I am not expecting blazing performance... and although my programs dont load so fast I really never get the beach balls.

Did anyone else try this test? If so post your results here.

Message was edited by: Wan Chai Man

Wan,
if it's not dropping to 0, I would say that you are OK. I got to 70MB/s with a MPB 2.53ghz and 4mb RAM, maybe that makes the difference.

Wilbur507 wrote:
There is another thread about clicks and beeps 5 + 17" macbook are suffering from, I wonder if the 13" macbooks are experiencing something related?

Clicks and beeps are a part of normal operation of the 500 GB 7200 BTO HD in the current generation MacBook Pros (the drive is the Seagate Momentus 7200.4, model number ST9500420ASG), and need not be reported to AppleCare or taken to a Genius Bar.

I have one in my 15" MBP (5,3), and a 5400 RPM version in an external enclosure for backups, and both drives are healthy and work fine, but are a bit chirpy/clicky.

Yes, I'm seeing this on my 15" MBP with the BTO Seagate 500 GB 7200 RPM drive, but my SMART numbers look clean, with a CRC Error Count of 0.