Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Yes, my first MacBook Pro was defective. I got Apple to repair it (new logic board) and it came back and is now able to boot. Installs still fail when the drive is in the computer, but I did get it to boot after installing via USB. With that said, there is still beachballing when a moderate load is applied. So, in short, even with the new logic board, things haven't been fixed. Improved, but not fixed. Luckily, I bought another one that DOES work, and the person I sold it to had no interest in a SSD.

The confusion about Mac firmware vs. normal firmware seems to have come up because there are so many different firmware revisions for the Vertex. The drives initially shipping with 1.0, then there was 1.1, 1.3, and now 1.4. Sales representatives had heard that 1.3 solved some mac users' trouble with the drive and then started telling people there was a new "Mac firmware", when this was not exactly true. Anyway, you can save your money and just get the standard OCZ Vertex and if it doesn't work in your machine, steer clear of the "Mac edition". Better to get your computer repaired/replaced than to dump money on an identical SSD.

To sum up, in my defective MacBook Pro with EFI 1.7, I tried the following drives:

G.Skill TITAN 128GB - Success
G.Skill Falcon 128GB - Failure
OCZ Vertex 120GB - Failure
OCZ Vertex Mac Edition - Failure
OCZ Summit 120GB - Failure

Other than the TITAN, none of the drives would even boot (except over USB). It should also be noted that the G.Skill Falcon is an identical drive to the Vertex.

will do some research about Gskill Titan drives

i'm still waiting for some responses on Crucial forums about the M225 which seems to be compatible but i want to make sure first


edit: performance seems quite bad on Gskill Titan

Message was edited by: Jerry H.

The reads were outstanding, writes not great. I also did see stuttering. I switched for this reason. Still way better than a standard HDD though. Boot times were a ridiculous 9 seconds, much faster than my Vertex.

i waiting for people to post feedbacks about the new intel postville SSD

btw, Runcore is selling SSD mentioned to be Mac-compatible

also waiting for feedbacks

"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..."

I can understand your confusion/reservations. I was thinking the same thing. However, I can confirm for you both from the mouth of OCZ and from my own personal experience that these drives use the exact same firmware and, when opened up, are 100% identical. Maybe, just maybe, if you take the computer into the Apple store for repair with the "Mac Edition" inside (it has been "Apple Certified" in some fashion) they might not give you the line about how they do not support third-party hardware? I don't know, didn't try it...

To quell any remaining suspicion or confusion, here is the difference between the Mac Edition and normal Vertex drives, from the mouth of the Forum Support Manager at OCZ:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60801

"They are the same drive.

When tested on the apple hardware, those are the speeds we expect you to see. Remember that what the drive is connected to, will govern the actual speed achieved."

bad info/mistake or lie to the consumers... but it seems that Crucial SSDs are not recognized

let me introduce myself first...I am Tony off the OCZ forum. I came over here to kill the notion Mac vertex has a different FW to PC Vertex. We used to have a post on the OCZ forum where i showed pictures of the two drives and quoted that the only difference was the branding sticker, we removed it a while back as OCZ have been telling people they are the same drive for a good while now.

Think about this a moment...if the drives needed different FW i would release a PC FW and a mac FW every time we have an update on the OCZforum...fact is I do not release different FW which should tell you they are the same drive;-)

If you see retailers charging more for the mac version, buy the PC one...its as simple as that.

HI Tony

thanks for posting here

can you please confirm that OCZ SSDs can work (or not) with the new Macbook Pro with the EFI update 1.7

finding a good SSD working with them is a real pain...

thx

Well after using my MacBook after the downgrade to 1.6 I am still seeing issues. I thought all was good but if I push the drive (multiple read/writes from different threads) I am still getting the $^#$%^# pausing. Last night I even booted off an external drive and all was well until I started accessing the internal drive. I then removed my 500GB from the MBP and put in external case and booted off it. Everything worked fine. No pauses or anything. I then put back in and did the same exact things and the pauses came back. I then put back the original 250 back in and tested and no pauses.

I am going to order a new Seagate 7200 drive or a Scorpio 500GB. Dunno yet.

This is so frustrating!



Cheers, John.

Being honest macbooks and macbook pro's are proving a real pain, FW 1.30 was good with both but some did have sleep issues or hibernate issues. We just released 1.41beta and now users who had no issues with 1.30 are having sleep issues...BUT hibernate is OK.

EFI 1.7 i know has caused you guys a ton of hurt, I was watching macrumours for a while and it looked the ONLY drive that worked OK was a Vertex.

OCZ are pushing like crazy to get a stable FW for all macs, but when you have users with identical machines and 1 has issues and the other does not its hard to nail down exactly what is the cause.

For now FW 1.41 beta brings garbage collection and TRIM to the table that i know you guys will see in the next version of OSX, sleep looks an issue on the 13inch unibody but hibernate is issue free...we are looking into it. Note that 2008 macbooks sleep just fine with this FW so its something on the late 2009 machines and their EFI that does not like the new FW and sleep. Ofcourse it could also be something in OSX that interacts with the EFI and is causing an issue...we are looking into whether 10.5.6 is OK and 10.5.7/8 has the issue.

**** Apple and its EFI 1.7 !


i have been searching for week for good info and feedback because i just don't want to waste time and money buying a SSD that will not be recognized, especially when online retailers do not always refund products when they are used...

you should create a topic for Vertex users to give their feedbacks with Macbook Pro EFI 1.7

i will wait a bit before buying a Vertex to be 100% sure that it will work...


this EFI story is really annoying, same for 10.5.8

and nothing says that Snow Leopard will not be even worth...

You forget you can always back flash FW to 1.30 if the new beta was an issue. The drives are recognised right out the box.

Also our Summit drive is pretty Apple friendly and is now shipping with Samsungs 18C FW that has garbage collection...so this is also an alternative.

OCZ has so many models, i'm a bit lost

just looking for a good performance/price ratio

i've just received OCZ ram for my MBP, i'm so happy with it ^^

now just need the SSD...

I have been following this thread from almost the beginning. I bought a macbook pro in June 2009 and immediately installed a Seagate 500 gb 7200 drive (as well as 4 gb of ram).

I did not immediately install the firmware 1.7 EFI after I started reading the reported issues on this forum.

Since I have never owned a Mac before, and come from a windows environment, I am used to my computer slowing down or freezing with an "hourglass" instead of your "beachballs". To be honest, I thought this is normal behavior for computers....random freezes, intermittent crashes..... having to reboot...

So now my issue is: I am having "panic attacks". I am afraid to turn on my computer for fear of accidentally installing the 1.7 firmware update and making my machine completely usable. Is there a way to turn off this update?

Thanks!