Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Ref. the 'Rollback Firmware', surely this is just a .iso file that could be made available to the public, albeit with a disclaimer posted on the Apple support site. Why all the cloak and dagger about having it at the genious bar only? Release it already ...

Yeah, I voiced this to the tech as well. It had to be a very small iso because it really did not boot OS X at all. It just booted right to the firmware load like if you had downloaded one and ran it.

Also, my brother tells me the Tech's name (at the Mall of Georgia store) was Jon.

I did have a few beachballs last night but I am pretty sure it was due to VMWare loading my boot camp partition. After it was all settled down and loaded it seemed to be much better. I will continue to test.

Cheers, John.

Hmm... I'm a little concerned about them rolling back the software. It's great that they're doing it, but this is an unusual step for them to take and would seem to indicate that perhaps they're having a problem coming up with a solution to the problem... otherwise, they would just push it out in a new firmware update. Of course this has been something of a fiasco. First limiting the new systems to SATA 1.5 caused an uproar (but at least everyone's machines were working)... then pushing out the 1.7 firmware very quickly (in about two weeks)... which of course did nothing but cause problems. The only thing it was supposed to do was enable SATA 3.0... and it seems all it did was break third party drive support. So they ended up with a bigger mess than they started with. I'd imagine they want to be VERY sure that the next update works properly. I'd imagine more than a few head have rolled over this mess by now.

Is very true, and strange... I've been booting to OSX over external SSD via Firewire 800 and it has worked very well. It seems to even run faster than when using the internal platter drive that came with the MBP. It's the Patriot Torqx 128GB.

I just hope they resolve the issue soon... as I feel silly with my primary system disk being external!

Folks, from what I understand, this new firmware upgrade affects those MBPs that have a 3rd party HDD installed. Does this also impact 3rd party SSDs (like say the intel x-25s)?

Also, what about those MBPs that are shipped with the stock SSDs (128 or 256 GB)?

It seems to impact most non-stock storage devices - platter or SSD.

Haven't heard anything about problems with the stock SSD.

When I attach my (aftermarket) SSD to the SATA in my MBP, the boot loader freezes up. I can't even boot to the OSX install CD. However, it works just fine when I have the SSD attached via Firewire 800... boots right to it, and I use the stock platter disk for storage/scratch. I'll reverse this scenario when they fix the SATA bugs.

Yikes
Thanks theARGIOPE.

BTW, can someone who owns a MBP with the stock SSD comment on its performance. Have searched through many threads but was only able to find comments on the 3rd party SSDs.
Have read numerous threads claiming that the stock SSD does not perform as well as some of the 3rd party SSDs (Intel x-25, etc).
But how does this drive perform against the faster 7200 RPM HDDs?
I presume the read-write speeds should still be better.

Well,

I have used my system to do everything, I even installed world of warcraft on it while watching a dvd , with mail running in the background and several other programs. I have not had 1 single beach ball, never 1 the whole time I've had the new macbook pro.

It works a little faster after i changed out the hard drive and ram, I'm so confused how everyone else is having this issue, why am I not having this issue?

I am quite sure that my Macbook Pro came with the 1.7 installed on it as I think the macbook was recently made at the end of July.

So I wanted to give an update, no problems here at all.

To remind you, I put in a WD Scorpio Black 320gb Drive and 4gb Mushkin memory.

I just ran AJA Benchmark and I got 81.2MB Write and 79.8MB Read.

shrug

Ronnie

Here's a link so you can verify if you have the EFI 1.7 update:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

i'm in exactly the same boat. Put my Seagate HD into a USB HD enclosure and installed OSX onto it with no problems. It boots from the USB HD just fine but when I put the Seagate drive into my MBP and try to install OSX, it's a no-go. Booking an appointment tomorrow with an Apple Certified Repair Shop to see if they can roll back the firmware. Just found out that my SD card slot is not reading my card as well so will have to get that fixed at the same time.

Yes that link you provided is what mine says.

Official response from Apple about the issue...kinda...UGH! This in no way affects our issue. I just posted it to show that Apple is at least addressing something related to HDs and MacBook Pros.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/08/10/fix.coming.for.mbp.hdds/

Ella Price wrote:
Official response from Apple about the issue...kinda...UGH!

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/08/10/fix.coming.for.mbp.hdds/

As mentioned a few times before, this response speaks of a completely different issue... one affecting only 17" MacBook Pros with specific 7200RPM, 500GB drives (not that I'm an expert on that issue). There are fundamental differences between that issue and the one this thread is about (not the least of which is the fact that the EFI version 1.7 firmware update is ONLY for the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pros, and has _*NOTHING TO DO WITH*_ the 17" MacBook Pro).

To date, there has been zero official communication from Apple addressing the issue of this thread.

I know. THat is what the UGH! was for. LOL

There, I edited to make my self clearer.