Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Technorganix wrote:
This may be of interest to some, but after having a WD Scorpio Blue drive that was effected by the EFI 1.7 Firmware update for a while now, I put the stock Hitachi drive back in and placed the WD in an external enclosure and let it be for a while. After returning here a few times to see about others' experience with the firmware update and reading that some are having issues while others aren't, I decided to go out and purchase another drive (same one), noting the dates on the drives. The older one was March 09, while the one I just bought today was July 09.

The previous drive would only get to about 1/4 of the install complete before crapping out and before giving any type of error message, it would state about a 10 hour install time. This time around, the install took less than 20 minutes.

I'm going to test it out for a few hours and post again later to let you guys know how things go.

If you could post the labels on the two (different, yet the same) drives, that may be helpful. Perhaps there's been a firmware update for the drives, or something else relatively non-obvious like that.

I've just emailed WD support to ask this very question. It might also be useful if those of us with the WD32000BEVT could post the System Profiler Information. It may show up which versions are working.

Here's mine, which I just sent to WD:

WDC WD3200BEVT-11ZCT0:

Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200BEVT-11ZCT0
Revision: 11.01A11
Serial Number: WD-XXXXXXXXXXXX
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
BigMac Drive:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
Available: 95.1 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

This is currently running in my White Macbook, but wouldn't work correctly in my new Macbook Pro 13".

Steve

Message was edited by: SteveA_UK

Apple swapped my faulty 15" 2.53 unibody MBP paperweight for this faulty 13" 2.53 MBP paperweight?!

So here's the latest (good) news. After testing the new WD Scropio Blue 500gb drive for the day, I have absolutely no problems to report. The drive cloned without issue and it took to the 10.5.8 update without problem as well. No Beachballs. Drive is noticeably faster than the stock Hitachi drive as well. As for revisions, it's has the exact same revision number (can't remember what it is, and forgot to write it down. Sorry, three kids running around and screaming like wild animals will do that to you), but they were identical.

Aside from the date, serial number and WWN(?), everything was pretty much the same. As well, here is the info from System Info for the drive that works,

WDC WD5000BEVT-22ZAT0:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: WDC WD5000BEVT-22ZAT0
Revision: 01.01A01
Serial Number: WD-WX*
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Mobile Studio:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 346.64 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

As I said, everything is pretty much the same except for the date on the drives. I think I said July earlier, it was actually June for the drive I bought today, whereas the older drive was March 09.

< Edited by Host >

I just purchased my 15" MBP a week ago yesterday and when I popped in my 500 GB Seagate that was working just fine on an older MBP, I was unable to boot. So I tried reinstalling OS X and it was about 10% of the way through after 30 minutes. So I picked up a WD Scorpio Blue 500 GB to see if that would work, and no dice. After reading a prior suggestion on here I picked up a Hitachi 500 GB and used a Windows machine to run the SATA Utility that is available from Hitachi's website to configure the SATA interface on the drive itself for 1.5 Gbps instead of 3, and also disabled Spread Spectrum. After doing so, I reloaded OS X from restore CD and it took all of 20 minutes to load. I then restored 60 GB of data from a time machine backup, this took maybe 40 minutes. I am in the process now of copying my Parallels VM's back onto my machine and the thing is running flawlessly. So, in summary, forcing the Hitachi drive to 1.5Gbps and disabling spread spectrum did the charm for me. And for the record, I have seen some people speculate that if you got a machine from the factory with EFI 1.7 Firmware update that the problem would not occur........this is not true (at least not in my case). Mine had 1.7 from the factory and until I popped in this Hitachi drive I had been second guessing my purchase ever since. Now I'm a happy camper again, although Apple should fix this so I can actually utilize SATA II speeds. But hey, at least I have my 500 GB back!!!!

My first 13" (2.53, 250GB stock Hitachi) exhibited this problem in a severe manner after the 1.7 upgrade. That machine was returned to Apple and I obtained another 13", 2.53, this time a BTO with a Hitachi 500GB drive.

Same issue with the replacement machine, though not as severe as with the first. The replacement had had the 1.7 update applied at the factory.

I then upgraded the memory from the stock 4GB using an OWC 8GB kit. I have not seen the problem since; went from several times an hour to zero times in weeks.

Bazineta,

Do you run apps that are memory intensive or a lot of apps? Just a thought but it could be that you're not experiencing the issue after upgrading/increasing your memory as the system may not be swapping at all or as much than when you had only 4GB.

I have a stock MBP 13" with the 160GB Hitachi and after the EFI update, I've had 30 second beachballs a few times per hour. Terribly annoying.

Apple support just took my laptop in to check it out. I was considering applying the Hitachi 1.5Gbps restriction hack that someone mentioned earlier since my drive already doesn't go beyond that but I thought I'd have Apple take a look first.

One interesting thing is that I ran SMART Utility on my drive and the G-SenseErrorRate attribute was up in the 68billion range. A couple hours later and it was up in the 72billion range (RAW value). Not sure if it's related but my desktop machines all have a 0 RAW value and searching online most people seem to have 0 or something in the thousands range.

I suppose macs need faster caches and WD has always the best and bigger ones.

EuroKRN,

I do run a stout workload, and Xcode does really enjoy the extra memory, but the problem was often most evident when I had little more than Mail and Safari running, just surfing the net, conditions under which I was most definitely not swapping.

The situation you describe, 30-second beachballs several times per hour, was exactly what I was seeing as well. Annoying in the extreme.

With respect to the SMART data, I'd be surprised if the drives in your desktop machine were equipped with G sensors, so it's not really an apples to apples there.

EuroKRN wrote:
One interesting thing is that I ran SMART Utility on my drive and the G-SenseErrorRate attribute was up in the 68billion range. A couple hours later and it was up in the 72billion range (RAW value). Not sure if it's related but my desktop machines all have a 0 RAW value and searching online most people seem to have 0 or something in the thousands range.

My hitachi 5k500.b has 0 for that SMART attribute after 307 power on hours. Mine has specific identifier of HTS545050B9A300, which is yours?

edit might as well mention that I also show 0 for CRC errors, although I was most certianly impacted by the issue before limiting the drive's abilities with the hitachi tool

Message was edited by: katmeef

my stock standard 13 inch base model MBP use to beach ball heaps.. but now its just stopped

since when? any chance 10.5.8 solved the issue?
(can't check myself, my MBP is at the store for repair.)

Last month I bought a brand new MBP 13. I brought my new machine home and ran software update as a matter of course. The EFI firmware update was one of the updates that was pushed to me, and I clicked ok (how I wish I had been aware of this thread at the time!) Everything seemed fine at first. The next day I pulled my 320 gig WD Scorpio drive out of my previous MBP (mid 2007) and installed it in the new machine, doing an archive and install on the OS.

Since installing the new (old) drive, I have been having all of the problems described here: intermittent beachballs which take the system away for from a few seconds to several minutes, and which seem to appear for no apparent reason. Usually, if you wait long enough, the system suddenly "wakes up" and catches up with what it was doing. Once I see the first beachball, the occurrences become more and more frequent, often resulting in the whole thing freezing hard, leaving no way out short of a hard reset.

I have verified that there is no particular CPU activity during these episodes that would warrant this behavior (I've been keeping Activity Monitor up on my second display), so its not as if the CPU is maxed out. The system just... stops and waits.

Also, on several occasions, reboots have been verrrry long in coming (5-20 minutes) and on two occasions I have just gotten the flashing grey folder. Usually, however, the system seems to boot normally.

What is so frustrating is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the behavior. My system can work for hours at a time without a problem. It is not clear what triggers the issue, although certain things appear to precipitate the onset of beachball mania, among them use of Parallels, and possibly iDisk synchronizing. Once beachballs begin appearing, it makes no difference how many apps I am running, and as I mentioned there is no correlation between CPU activity and system behavior that I can see.

I have checked out my HD using Disk Utility repeatedly, and it always reports that the disk is OK. I've done hardware tests on the RAM and it checks out.

I write all this not because I have anything particular to add to the gloom, but to add my voice to the chorus in the hopes that Apple will take this issue seriously. My machine is useless for the public presentations that I do because I can't trust it. Apple, I hope you are listening!

Hi!

I've noticed that my Windows XP Service Pack 2 is booting faster on my mbp than Mac OS X.

Do you think that I should reinstall Mac OS X?

Thank you!

kaderan wrote:
I write all this not because I have anything particular to add to the gloom, but to add my voice to the chorus in the hopes that Apple will take this issue seriously. My machine is useless for the public presentations that I do because I can't trust it. Apple, I hope you are listening!

Apple doesn't really listen in this forum.
I'd highly encourage you to call AppleCare support to report the issue.
And, please let us know how it goes.

dom_beta wrote:
Hi!

I've noticed that my Windows XP Service Pack 2 is booting faster on my mbp than Mac OS X.

Do you think that I should reinstall Mac OS X?

Thank you!

This has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.
Please take your question somewhere else, or start your own thread about it.