Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Hi all, i've skipped a few pages of this thread but just wanted to confirm my problem before taking action. I have a week old 15" pro 2.8 w/ all stock gear. Everything is fine other than pinwheeling/beachballing while using safari and occasionally during other operations. But most notably safari, sometimes its every hour or so sometimes its twice within a min. Very annoying and lasts for a few seconds usually. Can't find the version number but my SATA II for the Nvidia cards are listed at 3Gbps. From what it sounds like I'm in the same boat. Right?

Sorry, not sure how to edit, but after reading up a few posts i found Ella Price's (John's) post about the MOG Apple store and have made an appointment. Thanks. Also I assume the MB FM will be different than the pros correct? My e08 MB has had no problems.

Message was edited by: csmitty

csmitty wrote:
I have a week old 15" pro 2.8 w/ all stock gear. Everything is fine other than pinwheeling/beachballing while using safari and occasionally during other operations. But most notably safari, sometimes its every hour or so sometimes its twice within a min. Very annoying and lasts for a few seconds usually. From what it sounds like I'm in the same boat. Right?

There are a lot of problems that can cause random beachballing. The EFI 1.7 issue is one candidate for what you're seeing. One way to narrow it down would be to move the hard drive to an external enclosure and boot from that -- if the issue goes away, that means it's a problem with the SATA interface (what we are on about in here). But not everyone can do that, or would be comfortable with opening their machine to do that.

I'd suggest that you make an appointment with the genius bar at a nearby Apple Store. They will likely have you try a few different things (reset the PRAM, repair permissions, etc.), and if your issue is caused by something else, that may fix it. But if none of what they have you try solves the problem, you can ask them to roll back your firmware to version 1.6 until version 1.7 gets fixed.

I can go ahead and reset the PRAM and see if that helps, I haven't yet. I'd really rather not take the hard drive out and boot from it in a usb as its only a week old and still so beautiful and new. The beachballing is livable for now.

I've made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon at a store, Mall of Georgia where it seems issues have been corrected, atleast with the firmware.

All i've done is Migrate everything from my MB.

Well, fishbert, I mean was the Express Card Version of MBP also has this kind of problem. Thanks

reposting something from about 20 pages ago to help new people identify this issue

fishbert wrote:

EuroKRN wrote:
Well hmm.. am I posting in the right topic?

My issue is with a new MBP 13" patched with the EFI 1.7 firmware update but I get the same 30 second beachball lockup but with the stock 160GB Hitachi drive (which is supposedly SATA-I).

It sounds like you may be in the right place.

Here's a (probably imperfect) checklist...
1) you have a 13" or 15" MacBook Pro from mid-2009 with the SD memory card slot.
2) you have installed the EFI 1.7 firmware update from late June, or you have a machine that came with it pre-installed.
3) you experience beachballs that last anywhere from 30-90 seconds before the system recovers -- you may get an error message if your system was syncing an iPod or something at the time, but other than that your system does recover.
4) if you move your drive to an external firewire (or USB?) enclosure and boot from that (hold the "Option" key at the power-on chime to select), the beachballs are gone.

There are other symptoms (CRC errors, question mark folder at start up, etc.), but that right there is a simple first-level diagnosis.

Also, check out http://vimeo.com/5854152 -- this is an example of what the issue looks like on my machine.
(has some good audio snips between the hangs -- "watch this" and "worth every penny", haha)

Sorry if this was already asked before.

By rolling back to 1.6, we can avoid the problem but is it totally safe as in are there issues with 1.6 as well? I can live with 1.6 and a capped SSD but that is provided that the experience is free from issues.

Thanks.

Although I have been using OSX for quite a while, it's my first time posting on Apple Support Site.

You can imagine my surprise to see a post with 920 posts and 120,240 view counts (as of posting)!! I couldn't believe Apple still hasn't come up a recognition, let alone resolution (at least I never heard of)after what seemingly to be wide-spread problem.

Anyway, I am watching this post because I am planning to upgrade my internal drive to Intel G2 SSD. I wouldn't want to spend a fortune just to find out these acclaimed 'high-tech/pro' machines does not support these cutting edge technology (pretty ironic..eh?).

I understand there isn't a definite way/tool to check whether a particular macbook pro is affected or not. However, like fishbert preliminary checklist has pointed out, there are some signs. I just got my 13" macbook pro less than 2 weeks ago that has 1.7 on it (possibly pre-installed since I don't recall updating it)...there have been several occasions that 'beachballing' and 'freezed' occurred for maybe 3-5 seconds. According to fishbert, the problem usually last ~30seconds? So does it mean I should be safe? I currently don't have a external dock so I couldn't test the external boot method.

Also, is there a way to check whether 1.7 came pre-installed and the manufacturing date/month of my macbook pro?

Thanks for all valuable info!!

Message was edited by: CaLciD

Message was edited by: CaLciD

tm.chen wrote:
Sorry if this was already asked before.

By rolling back to 1.6, we can avoid the problem but is it totally safe as in are there issues with 1.6 as well? I can live with 1.6 and a capped SSD but that is provided that the experience is free from issues.

Thanks.

It's a very difficult thing to be able to say something is totally safe or perfect.
But as far as I know, the only problem with EFI 1.6 is the stunted SATA interface.

And sure, I can live with 1.6 and a crippled SATA interface too. But that's not what I payed top dollar for in a laptop. It's fine for now, provided that Apple is working toward a real fix, but if they are not and they think that using version 1.6 is good enough... that would be completely unacceptable (at least from where I'm sitting).

CaLciD wrote:
I understand there isn't a definite way/tool to check whether a particular macbook pro is affected or not. However, like fishbert preliminary checklist has pointed out, there are some signs. I just got my 13" macbook pro less than 2 weeks ago that has 1.7 on it (possibly pre-installed since I don't recall updating it)...there have been several occasions that 'beachballing' and 'freezed' occurred for maybe 3-5 seconds. According to fishbert, the problem usually last ~30seconds? So does it mean I should be safe? I currently don't have a external dock so I couldn't test the external boot method.

The 30 seconds figure is a very rough estimate - I'd say it's really anywhere from 30 seconds up to 2 minutes. Check out the video I linked to in the same post as that checklist to see what a typical beachball delay due to this firmware issue feels like.

That said, if you're seeing beachballs lasting 3-5 seconds, those are likely due to some other issue ... or they could also be perfectly normal. A spinning beachball is just saying that the computer/application is busy and can't accept input at that time, and sometimes that just happens - much like the hourglass in windows.

CaLciD wrote:
Also, is there a way to check whether 1.7 came pre-installed and the manufacturing date/month of my macbook pro?

My MacBook Pro was downgraded to EFI version 1.6. When I go in to System Profiler, that very first page tells me: "Boot ROM Version: MBP53.00AC.B02" ... I don't remember what it said before I downgraded to 1.6, but I believe it will end with "B03" if you have 1.7 (just don't quote me on that).

Thanks fishbert for your quick response.

The beachballing usually happens when I am browsing Safari. In general, I just feel like my Mid-2009 MBP is slower than my uMB 13".

So let's say my MBP is fine at this moment, will it start develop problems AFTER I install the Intel SSD? According to some comments, seems like the 1.7 is affecting both after-market and stock drives alike. So does is it mean either you have the problem or you don't regardless of what drive you put in?

I am sorry it's just so confusing since there isn't really a real identification to the actual causing of the problem.

Thanks again!

Thanks for all the info fishbert. Mine isn't near 30s but as there are not other CPU RAM intensive process running it seems something is amiss for it to happen even at all. Come to think of it I was getting the Console message of not finding the computer name every 30s. Once I fixed that that message went away and I haven't seen the beachball for the last few hours. But anyways seeing as I never had any problems on my very underpowerd MB (compared to this one) theres no way it should be normal. But I think i had the .2 safari instead of the .3 on this one. Either way as I'm not planning on uprading HDs in the near future I'll be fine with the 1.5Gbps with the stock 5400rpm dive. Yea I know, but was the only way to get AG at the store. Again thanks for the help and I will be letting apple and the news outlets know about this thread/problems. Also my Boot ROM is B03

Message was edited by: csmitty

so far, i've heard numerous pretty good feedbacks regarding Intel X25 Postville SSD

a bit slower in writing performance but the most likely to be compatible with our MBP EFI 1.7

followed by Patriot Torqx / M28

tungbh wrote:
Well, fishbert, I mean was the Express Card Version of MBP also has this kind of problem. Thanks

Tungbh... The issue applies ONLY to the latest version of MacBook Pros released mid-2009 (which excludes the 17" version as they were not refreshed along with the 13 & 15" versions). Your MacBook Pro with an express slot is not impacted by this issue. In fact, you would not even be able to apply the 1.7 firmware to your machine. If you are experiencing hard drive issues, they are related to something else.

Hello Guys!!

I let my Macbook Pro at apple assistance to they try fix the problem and install my Seagate 500GB...

But, i'm think here.... Do will apple fix the problem in the new version of Leopard, the Snow Leopard???

Maybe they will force us to upgrade or buy the new system... hope not...

Or i just dreamed with that...ha!

Regards!

Just giving Fishbert a rest this morning

Snow Leopard will not fix the problem. This is a firmware issue. The last generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pros (original unibody) were all perfectly happy running in SATA 3.0 mode under Leopard. While it is not clear if there is an actual hardware defect (such as the SATA ribbon) which prevents SATA 3.0 from functioning properly or a glitch in the firmware... neither can be addressed with Snow Leopard.

Personally, I believe there is a physical hardware issue which is causing the instability with SATA 3.0. But... I would be more than happy (and relieved) to be proven wrong.