Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

oh, gee, i don't know...

1. zap pram. repair permissions. reset smc.
2. if that fails, install the old drive for the time being. ctfd and breathe, yes it is an inconvenience and yes it is stupid that apple didn't test a single machine with an aftermarket hd but would it really kill you to just put the stock drive back in for the time being???

I've got a new HDD sitting silently on my desk; waiting, hopefully for a fix to come so I can attempt to install it. Have already left feedback through the link suggested here. Here's to hoping it will happen soon...

Is there any response from apple since this terrible story began?
I did not understand why apple handels this problem such lazy, if there is no fix at latest in one week, i will send my MacBook Pro back to Apple. Very harm, it arrived only yesterday.


Please excused my terrible english.

There's no harm just trying to install it. Like I said, my mid-2009 1.7 efi firmware that I updated to worked just fine with the WD 500gb Scorpio Blue that I received. The worst that can happen is the beachball issue, in which case you'd just have to swap back the hard drives and you'll be set!

I tryed to install my vertex ssd several times. First all looks good. But after five minutes of installing the superdrive turns off and the install did not go on. There is no error message or something also i can play with the mousecurser, but the superdrive did not make any noise and the install stoped.

The biggest joke is, that my MacBook Pro was shipped with efi 1.7 !

Message was edited by: Concert

Small update,

I have started a case with applecare... Once I mentioned the thread, I was placed on hold immediately while he spoke to a product expert. He advised they might want to take the call 'as they examine upcoming issues', however he returned after about 5 minutes with some stuff to do.


I have been asked to perform the following steps:
-repair volume by booting into OSX install disc (as opposed to by booting in safe mode, nothing was found to be repaired)
-create new user account for test purposes.

I have been advised to use my standard user and when the issue occurs next (I have it more intermittently than some) to A) login to the test account and note if it occurs. If still occurring under the test user, I am to B) boot into safe mode and see if it occurs there as well - then call back with results.

I didn't get any direct acknowledgment of this being a known issue, but the fact he put me on hold to speak to expert first thing leads me to believe they are aware.

Forgot to mention one other thing: I was also asked to reset the SMC prior to the disk repair. Waiting for next iteration of beachball freeze and will let you guys know if the other user / safe mode has any effect.

I have solved this issue by forcing the drive into 1.5Gbps mode and no spread-spectrum clocking, on the drive's own firmware.

I am using a Hitachi drive (5K500.B), and they have a downloadable tool at hitachigst.com with which you can set the SATA interface's settings. I imagine other manufacturers have similar tools.

Apple should be embarrassed. This is my first Mac and I am NOT impressed with the stability and testing of their firmware. I am also not impressed with the management of the service organization. AppleCare told me the only way to roll back to fw1.6 was to take the MacBook into an Apple store, where they had a tool that could wipe the firmware completely and then set it to the appropriate level. Upon finally getting an appointment at the "Genius" bar (=not!), they told me that they have no such tool. They also told me that all they could do would be to send the laptop to their repair center for a logic board replacement, but they could not guarantee it would come back with fw1.6 instead of fw1.7. AppleCare apparently doesn't talk to the retail store support people and vice versa.

Note that it is important to disable spread spectrum clocking as well as 3Gbps transfer rates. I got unstable results just enforcing a 1.5Gbps xfer rate.

I now have zero SMART errors.

highorbit wrote:
I have solved this issue by forcing the drive into 1.5Gbps mode and no spread-spectrum clocking, on the drive's own firmware.

I am using a Hitachi drive (5K500.B), and they have a downloadable tool at hitachigst.com with which you can set the SATA interface's settings. I imagine other manufacturers have similar tools.

Did you have to put the drive in a windows machine to run the tool? I wanted to see what my drive was set to, burned the image and was able to boot into dos holding down the C key, but the system seemed to freeze while starting the hitachi feature tool

thanks eh,

Actually I had to just put it in a machine that has a BIOS. It boots from cd, before the operating system boots. It happens to be a Linux machine, but it might as well be a windows machine or even a Hackintosh for that matter. As long as it has a bios that PC-dos will recognize, because that's the runtime OS that Hitachi's cd uses. If you have a different drive mfg, ymmv.
In general, apple manufactured machines based on EFI rather than bios do not expose their keyboard interfaces the way pcdos expects to see them, so you can't use your mac to do this update. Unless hitachi decides to release an osx or unix-based runtime cd for flashing the drive's rom.

highorbit wrote:
In general, apple manufactured machines based on EFI rather than bios do not expose their keyboard interfaces the way pcdos expects to see them, so you can't use your mac to do this update. Unless hitachi decides to release an osx or unix-based runtime cd for flashing the drive's rom.

The irony... Thanks for the info, looking for windows box now..

I have the same mbp 15 2.66 (shipped with 1.6 and then upgraded to 1.7) and was able to install the vertex (with fw 1.3), and was able to install the vertex using carbob copy cloner (cloning a "good" installation from the original drive. Now all seems fine (but as already stated I had to change 3 mbp 13)

I've put up a video illustrating this issue. (http://vimeo.com/5854152)

I play a video clip, then start AJA System Test and run a 512 MB Disk Read/Write test. It hangs a few times, and you can see the resulting performance drop. I would've included a CRC error count bit as well, but I wanted to keep it simple... just trust me that the count increases (I'm up to around 4,400 CRC errors so far).

Also included are a few screen captures of AJA System Test's results for other runs I did.

I really had enough of waiting now and after never hearing back from Phone Support I got the Support Center to replace my Logic Board.
They did that without hesitation and in 45 minutes so at least that was commendable.

I am back on the old EFI now and as expected no more CRC errors and my SSD works fine at about 100-120MB/s. Still with SATA 1.5GB/s of course.

I really do not have the heart to upgrade the EFI 1.7 again so I will stay put for a few weeks and see how things develop in regards to hopefully some official statements from Apple.

Ollie.

highorbit wrote:
I have solved this issue by forcing the drive into 1.5Gbps mode and no spread-spectrum clocking, on the drive's own firmware.

I am using a Hitachi drive (5K500.B), and they have a downloadable tool at hitachigst.com with which you can set the SATA interface's settings. I imagine other manufacturers have similar tools.

Man thanks so much for this tip.. I've read a few hundred gig's off the drive now with no issues, and it just feels faster. I'm also getting +80MB/s with the 5K500.B when reading contiguous files.

Fingers crossed this will keep the beachballs at bay permanently! Hopefully those with other drives can find analogous tools from the drives respective manufacturers!