Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

chaotik99 wrote:
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?

In Software Update, highlight the update you want to turn off, then from the menu do:
Update->Ignore Update

And you can always stop ignoring again in the future, if you change your mind.

Hi Everybody!

I just wanted to share some experience i made with MBP13" and SSD:

I purchased the Notebook with a 160 GB HDD and the intention to replce the disk by an SSD.

I upgraded to EFI 1.7 the day it came out. I didn`t have any problems with the original harddisk.

Then i purchased a G.Skill Falcon 128 GB SSD (indilinx controller, identical to OCZ Vertex). The disk was not reliably recognized,system installation took ages and the same errors and problems described in the thread occured during operation. So i put the original HDD back in.

Then, last week, i got a Samsung SSD (128 GB) and what should i say: It works perfect; 200MB/s read and 150MB/s write speeds, system boots within 15 seconds, absoölutely no spinning balls, ...

So the whole issue appears to be some kind of incompatibility between the NVidia controller / driver and certain harddisks. The cable, as some assume, should not be involved.

Thus i would expext that an EFI update will be able to fix the whole issue and re-establish compatibility with any harddisk / SSD.

For the moment, i can tell that the Samsung SSD works fine in my MBP whereas the G.Skill does not.

Hope this helps some of you!

thx for the feedback

everyone is waiting for this stupid update

it's been more than a month and nothing yet...

has someone tried the new Intel X25 "postville" ?

thx

Samsung drive is identical to the OCZ SUMMIT, same FW etc

Gskill Titan is an OCZ Apex. gen 1 SSD with raided JMicron controllers

I have the OCZ Summit and I still experience the beachballing whenever my hard drive is accessing or copying a large data set. It's gotten so bad that when I know I need to do something that's hard drive intensive, I boot off my stock hard drive which is in an external USB enclosure.

dam n beachballing

apple has to fix this for good

only a few weeks to go before Snow Leopard, I really hope that it would solve everything for good

After my uMBP 13" refused even to recognize my WD3200BEVT HDD after EFI 1.7 I purchased this one:

SAMSUNG HM500JI:

Kapazität: 465,76 GB
Modell: SAMSUNG HM500JI
Version: 2AC101C4
Seriennummer: S1YAJD0S513244
Native Command Queuing: Ja
Queue Depth: 32
Wechselmedien: Nein
Absteckbares Laufwerk: Nein
BSD-Name: disk0
Treiber für Mac OS 9: Nein
Partitionstabellentyp: GPT (GUID Partitionstabelle)
S.M.A.R.T.-Status: Überprüft
Volumes:


could directly install OSX and no beach balls with this drive.

What I don't like: you can hear the drive when it's absolutely quiet in the room. sounds like shhhhhhhhh... if you put a shell next to your ear

with AJA System Test I have this results:

Write: 60.8 MB
Read: 61.2 MB

so on!

Message was edited by: rumeon

This message is kind of long.

Maybe there is a step in what I have done that has caused my setup to work. Or maybe I am lucky. I have never been lucky before.

I bought a 13" MBP (MB991LL/A) on July 3rd. On the very first boot cycle, I did a clean install using only the first DVD. I immediately upgraded the SATA controller firmware when the software update thing prompted me to do so. At this point I had the stock HD in the laptop.

On the same day I purchased the MBP, I also ordered an Intel X25-M SSD from Newegg.

I came across this thread while I was waiting for the SSD to arrive and as I was researching how to install it, so I was really worried that it was not going to work.

I received the SSD on July 7th. It was packaged in a real tiny cardboard box that was sealed. The box had a November 2008 date stamp on it. I had hoped that Newegg would have shipped a newer one. Because they sell so much stuff I figured they wouldn't have any old inventory on hand. Anyways, I had to upgrade the firmware on the SSD using one of my desktop machines. Fortunately, the firmware upgrade was a bootable ISO. I upgraded the firmware on the SSD before I ever installed the SSD in the MBP.

I installed the SSD in the MBP and on the very first boot cycle I did a clean install using only the first DVD. One of the first things I did was turn off the "sudden motion sensor" since there is no need for it with a SSD. I have since pushed the system very hard and have used it maybe six to eight hours every day and it has performed very well. It is dead silent and scary fast. Having the MBP be totally silent was a major goal for me because any little noise distracts me.

I use the "safe sleep" power setting because it "hibernates" so quickly. Because there are no moving parts I can put it in my Booq sleeve while it is "hibernating". By the time it is in my sleeve the blinky light is blinking.

The only time I have ever seen a beachball is when there is a dialog box asking me to input my password. If I move the pointer outside that dialog box I get a beachball. Other than that, I would not know what a beachball looks like.

In normal usage the MBP runs between 55˚C to 65˚C. If I push the MBP with a long computation it will get to about 90˚C and then a noisy fan will come on. In normal usage the fan is not audible even though the system says it is spinning around 2000RPM.

I have had one kernel panic and one unresponsive return from sleep attempt. The kernel panic happened on the third boot after upgrading to 10.5.8 and the unresponsive return from sleep happened about a week ago. I do not know what caused these events. No data was lost.

I am a bit bummed that the first generation Intels have dropped in price by $100 but since mine works I can deal with that. I am tempted to get the adapter tray to allow a second SSD to be installed in the optical bay and then run a RAID setup, but what I have right now is so fast I really cannot justify the cost.

I have been following this thread every day. I have run several utilities to try to make the SSD barf and it never skips a beat. The few SMART utilities I have tried have returned some very odd numbers. I assume that is because the SSD is not in the database or maybe because the numbers they use are designed for "mechanical" drives.

I have tested the SSD relentlessly with "AJA System Test" and the graphs do not show any dropouts, even if I run a pile of active apps at the same time. I ran an Xbench test on July 24th and today. The results are linked at the bottom of this message.

I have no idea if I am just lucky or if some combintion of events has allowed my SSD to work. All I know is that using any other computer is a drag for me. At my house I have, in addition to my MBP:

1 4GiB dual-core Hewlett Packard laptop running 64-bit Windows Vista.
1 1GiB dual-core Lenovo laptop running 32-bit Windows XP.
1 4GiB quad-core Gateway desktop running 32-bit Windows Vista.
2 6GiB quad-core Hewlett Packard desktops running 64-bit Debian Linux.

All of them have regular hard drives and I find that my MBP is "snappier" and more fun to use than any of them. My son now has the Hewlett Packard laptop and my wife now has the Lenovo laptop. The desktops are used for distributed computing tasks.

[Xbench results|http://www.teamprimerib.com/txt/xbench.txt|Xbench results]

what FW is on that drive...if 1801 there will be an update to 18C soon, or you can ask OCZ to take back the drive and reflash it for you now.

There is absolutely no reason for this drive to give you any issues in a mac,everyone who sells these drives (corsair...ocz...samsung etc) use exactly the same drives and exactly the same FW, the drives are supplied to us by Samsung.

ocztony wrote:
There is absolutely no reason for this drive to give you any issues in a mac...

How about the issue with the EFI firmware 1.7 update? That seems like a very likely reason for having beachballing problems with otherwise perfectly fine drives. Someone should open a forum topic about that!

From the very beginning of this (now 52 page) long thread, people have been giving their experiences with various drives, and the one thing that's been clear is that the same drive could be fine for some and also not fine for others. It appears to be rather hit-or-miss across a wide variety of drives (3rd party, or not).

So, I'm going to go way out on a limb here, and say that there is no list of "compatible drives" to be found. And that it's impossible to say "drive X from these guys is guaranteed to be fine with the bad firmware from Apple."

The best advice remains: If you experience the issue, put your drive in an external enclosure or go get your firmware backed out to the 1.6 version until the issue is fixed by Apple. Playing 'musical drives' is not a good way to go.

ONce again, i ask is this 1.6 firmware roll back tool exist, i keep hearing it, keep reading of it, but no one posts any results or even any slight hints of having used it. it seems to me this firmware restore tool is as mystical as a unicorn.

Anyone used this utility yet ? or have results of it being applied?

Also is it normal for the random beachballs and lock ups to be happening to factory installed drives also? i have the stock 320gig hitachi drive and it beachballs randomly when doing very minimal work.

Tony, under my system profiler it shows VBM1801Q. I had another Summit in my computer that was giving me the same issues (I returned it for this one since I thought it might the SSD, at first). Are you saying there is an upcoming firmware revision that will make it compatible? If so, how would I go about obtaining and installing it?

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
ONce again, i ask is this 1.6 firmware roll back tool exist, i keep hearing it, keep reading of it, but no one posts any results or even any slight hints of having used it. it seems to me this firmware restore tool is as mystical as a unicorn.

Anyone used this utility yet ? or have results of it being applied?

Hmm........

fishbert wrote:
I just spoke with someone at my local Apple Store, who informed me that Apple has released to them a tool to roll back the firmware from 1.7 to 1.6. I'd suggest anyone who is interested call their local Apple Store and ask if they are aware of this, and perhaps schedule an appointment.

Again, as far as I am concerned, this is a temporary workaround until Apple releases SATA II capable firmware that doesn't break things... but this is certainly a step forward (by allowing us to step backward) and it's the best we have so far.

As a bonus, it's a clear sign of recognition from Apple that a number of people are having serious problems with this firmware, so maybe we will get a permanent solution after all.

fishbert wrote:
Ok, went to my appointment at the local Apple Store today to rollback the firmware. The first "genius" (not being snarky... just indicating it's a job title) I spoke with didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned the rollback tool. But the supervisor who told me of it over the phone was right there and filled him in, explaining what it was, that it was new, and that he hadn't pushed it out to everyone yet so it was only installed under his account in the back (or something like that).

Anyway, they take my machine back there, and a few minutes later it returns, the 30-90 second hangs having disappeared. Huzzah! The "genius" had me go in and hide the firmware 1.7 update (as it had reappeared as available), and I was on my way with a much less annoying MacBook Pro.

Actually, while my machine was in the back, the "genius" came back to double-check my symptoms. It sounded to me like the tool came with some sort of documentation describing the issue we're all having and saying the tool was intended for that issue, but I didn't ask specifically.

But yes, firmware rollback tool = good thing to do in the interim while waiting for a proper SATA II fix. Certainly a better option than fighting with Apple over support due to a 3rd party hard drive.
I highly recommend it! ... (the tool, not the fighting)

Ella Price wrote:
Just got back from Apple store. I added this thread and a little background on the issue. When I went in the tech had a boot cd already burned and ready to rollback my firmware. Was in and out very quickly. I am about to start testing it. I still have my drive set to sata 1 but should not make a difference. Will report back with what I find.

Wish I remembered the techs name but kudos to him and for being prepared. Also to take the time to do his homework on the issue. I was the first person to have a rollback done at the Mall of Georgia store.

Ella Price wrote:
No problem. It is actually John. I used my wife's CC once for iTunes when I lost mine and somehow her name got stuck as my alias. I am to lazy to make a new account. LOL

Yeah, the guy was great and I love how he had the CD right under the counter waiting for me. I should have imaged it real quick. HAHA Make an appt., reference this thread, and they should be ready when you come in the store.

Good Luck. So far so good with it. No beachball's yet.

Ella Price wrote:
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.