Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Ponzi wrote:
Well you may be out of MBPs, but I know you have milk and cookies in the UK.

Oh right :S
Anyway on to more productive discussions....

Sent an email to Apple (see below) and here is response - They don't want to put anything in writing then!....

Thank you for contacting the Apple Store and for your interest in purchasing from Apple.

For sales advise and further information relating to your query please contact our Sales team on 0800 048 0408 the agents there will be able to advise you as to the product that best suits your needs.

Kind Regards,

Apple Operations Europe
Cork, Rep. of Ireland
<Edited by Host>

Hello

I am contemplating the purchase of your Apple Macbook Pro MB991B/A (New mid-July 2009 model), and upon receipt I wish to install an Intel X25-M SATA SSD 160GB Hard Drive that I already own.

However, I have heard that there are technical issues with this Macbook after installing any hard drive that uses the SATA 3.0Gb standard, even though the NVIDIA chips inside the Macbook are supposed to support this.
Could you please let me know the situation before I go ahead and purchase the Macbook, as I do not wish to waste mine or Apple's time by having to return the Macbook if any kind of issue arises shortly after receipt and upgrade.

Thank you

OK, now Dixons and Currys have actually removed the MB991 (Macbook Pro 13" 2.53) from their website! If they had just run out of stock it would say "waiting stock". Are they thinking they are not getting any more for quite a while, to allow Apple to fix the hardware fault??

My Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD made it through a second 16hr day of hard production work - After Effects, etc.

Zero beach balls - r/w speeds are close to that documented by the drive specs.

Just keeping you folks in the loop so you know there is hope if you keep trying.

theARGIOPE wrote:
My Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD made it through a second 16hr day of hard production work - After Effects, etc.

Zero beach balls - r/w speeds are close to that documented by the drive specs.

Just keeping you folks in the loop so you know there is hope if you keep trying.

Thanks, hope is all we have, I am not purchasing Macbook Pro 13" until this is sorted.
Can I ask what model you have exactly, what firmware it had/has, and what you did to get it to work with your SSD, and is it running at 3Gb?
Cheers....

hi

i'm looking for a SSD for my new MBP13

so, so far, does it mean that there are 2 models compatible with new MBP with EFI 1.7 ?

-> Vertex Mac Edition
-> Patriot Torqx

?

any other?

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet or not....and I don't know if it will work....but try doing the firmware update first then add the new hard drive. I had similar issues a while back, my fan was going like a mad man. I thought it was a software issue. I unistalled what I thought was the offending software and did a restore from time machine and everything is working fine. The software I removed was for controlling when time machine backed up.

coolas - I ordered the 15" 2.8Ghz the first week of August, so it's the latest. It shipped with the 1.7 firmware.

Now everything was not peachy to begin with. Unfortunately I don't know what exactly made it smooth out, so I'll just walk ya though what I did.

First, right out of the box, I flashed the firmware on the SSD (requires a Windows machine). Then, ran the optimization utility on the Patriot website.

I installed the drive in my MBP, put the OSX install disk in, and tried booting... but the installer would never load up. I tried several times - holding option, zapping PRAM, etc, etc. No dice.

Next, I attached the SSD to my wife's Macbook via Firewire 800 to install OSX - then put it back in the new MBP and... no dice, it still froze up at the boot loader.

Finally, I figured I'd see how well the SSD performed in my MacPro before I returned the SSD to the store. It booted up OSX (fast as *!), I went through the initial setup and ran a *Software Update*... after everything was updated, I ran a few Xbench tests just for fun, and then shut down.

On a hunch, I wondered if the Software Update changed anything... so I put the SSD back into the new MBP for a final try, and like magic, it booted right up.

I haven't had any problems with it after about 50 hours of pushing it hard.

The "System Info" report lists 3Gb for Serial ATA - and XBench reports r/w speeds near the specs on drive documentation, so I think it's at top speed. That's as far as I can tell - I don't have any other tools for measurement.

Anyways - that's my experience.

Some people argue that software (OS) and firmware have nothing to do with each other - which is a gray area, really. If there was no relationship, we wouldn't need drivers to assist their communication.

Perhaps the updates included newer drivers or what not that tweak how OSX talks to the hardware? Just trying to find an explanation for why this worked for me.

CLARIFICATION: Also, the SSD was connected via SATA on the MacPro. That could make a difference.

hi

so finally you kept the ssd ?

does it mean that we have to use a pc to update the SSD in order to have it working with a macbook pro ?

i've found the Crucial M225, it seems to be compatible with MBP EFI 1.7

Yes, I kept it! Changed my life, man. I work in pro sports, and speed during chaotic post-game production is critical. This baby isn't going anywhere!

I can't speak for other vendors, but the Patriot Torqx firmware update and optimization tool does require Windows.

thx for your great feedback, because so far, the only one available was the vertex mac edition

that makes now at least 2 SSD compatible...

*It needs to be said that the OCZ Vertex and the OCZ Vertex Mac Edition ARE IDENTICAL DRIVES.* The only difference is the price and the sticker on the front. This has been stated and confirmed over and over again in the OCZ forum by OCZ techs and moderators. Regardless of what sales has told you, branding is the only difference. There is no special "mac firmware" or anything like that. They are literally identical.

With that said, I can tell you that the exact same compatibility problems exist with the OCZ Vertex and the OCZ Vertex Mac Edition. I had a MacBook Pro 15" (mid-2009) and tried both of these drives and they failed in exactly the same fashion. I also tried an OCZ Summit (with the Samsung controller) and had no luck. *Mac Edition is no more compatible than any other drive, so it is important not to tell people that it is somehow more compatible than other SSDs.*

I ended up buying another MacBook Pro 15" (mid-2009) and trying the OCZ Vertex and this time everything works fine. No freezes, no beachballing, nothing. Both computers were running the 1.7 EFI (both were flashed by me, not by the factory). It seems a large percentage of these computer are defective and getting one that works is a huge crapshoot.

Not surprising... the OCZ Vertex and Patriot Torqx are essentially the same device - according to their respective forums.

I'm not engineer, so I can't speak for it... but man... OCZ needs to get their story straight to avoid looking silly. Their sales/tech people are spreading the Mac edition "firmware" comments around.

It is a little suspicious that the "Mac Edition" has different specifications than the non-Mac version... and the comments about OCZ slowing it down to deal with saturation issues.

I'm not debating ya, icemonkey, just suggesting what a mess this is!

Message was edited by: theARGIOPE (reworded)

meaning that your first MBP was defective... (?)

i see, so the Mac edition is just a crappy marketing stuff to charge more for the same product...

anyway, i would be very frustrated to get my new MBP13 exchanged by apple to get one working with OCZ drive...

moreover this is very odd, but looking at the specs, the Mac edition is slower than other OCZ series

this cannot be the exact same hardware...