Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

the previous gen is not concerned by this issue

only 2009 MBP were delivered with 1.5 Gb sata

I'm pretty sure that's what I just said (quite a few times at this point).

Well anyone who has been reading my posts know that I bought a new 15" with 1.7 already. I put in a Seagate 5400.6 500GB with a system on it from the previous Unibody 13". The drive would not even boot or take a system. So I jumpered the drive down to SATA I (1.5), verified SSC was disabled and was able to use it but with the aggravating pauses.

I then took it in and had the rollback done and removed the jumper. The drive worked much better but I was still seeing slight pauses, no where as bad as before the rollback though. If I pulled the drive and booted off it in an external case it worked flawlessly.

So, I ordered the Seagate 7400.4 500GB and cloned it last night and the machine is flawless. I have been running 4 movies on a loop, using VM Ware, compressing DVDs and basically beating it down. I have not had one issue, not one beachball.

I do not know why I was still having the pauses even with 1.6 but I am a "happy" camper, for now. Apple still needs to fix this eventually though. I paid for SATA II and I expect it to run at SATA II speeds.

I was almost going to return it but I am glad that it is back to "normal" for now.

Cheers, John.

Hello!!!

For people that don't know yet your firmware version, this chart here will help you to see your firmware version.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237?viewlocale=en_US

And here (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3561?viewlocale=en_US) apple said:

+"This update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbps, however Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac portable computers, and their use remains unsupported. All previous and current Apple portables with a SATA drive interface include a SATA 1.5Gbps hard drive."+

Well, there's a big problem between apple and apple users...

What we gonna do? I think we have to stop try to figured out "what is going on?" and stop try to discover "the problem" and ACT!!!

Again... What we (thousands of MBP 2009 users with this problem) gonna do????

Regards!

Any body had reported this issue to apple? Let's do it. Apple must fix this problem!!!!

Wow, I'm having the SAME ISSUES with my MBP! It especially happens when running multiple browser windows open. So frustrating!

Please fix the firmware, Apple!!!

I want to add that I run into exactly the same issue today. I have an early 2009, custom-build Unibody MacBook Pro 15" (2.93 GHz, 320 GB HDD).

Today I tried to replace the HDD with a WD5000BEVT (Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB). Not only the HDD didn't boot—was fine in a USB enclosure—but it generated disturbing noises. I suspected it was a power supply issue, but only after reading through this discussion thread did I discover it's more likely a firmware issue.

WD5000BEVT doesn't have a jumper to force it to run in 1.5 Gbps mode. But from the discussion thread, I don't think this is the right fix, only a temporary and not totally satisfactory workaround.

Following up on a previous post:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9996280#9996280

Being a curious type of person I decided to do an experiment today. Even though my "updated" MBP works perfectly I had the local Apple Store roll back the EFI update. It took maybe 2 or 3 minutes and they did not give me a hard time about it. I did not even have an appointment.

The tech I worked with was incredibly impressed by the speed of the SSD, so the visit ended up taking about 15 minutes because I showed him some cool "really fast SSD" stuff.

For some reason he would not let me watch the screen as the firmware update CD did its work, but I know the rollback worked because the software update thing wants me to go back to 1.7 now, and the boot ROM version changed.

Hardware being tested:

MBP (MB991LL/A)
X25-M (SSDSA2MH080G1GN)

Before:
EFI 1.7 firmware (MBP55.00AC.B03)
SSD 045C8820 firmware
SMS deactivated
Everything works fine, all the time.
Very fast!

After:
EFI 1.6 firmware (MBP55.00AC.B00)
SSD 045C8820 firmware
SMS deactivated
Everything works fine, all the time.
Very fast!

So, in conclusion, for my usage patterns, the speed of the SATA2 interface seems to have no effect on system performance.

I am getting ready to install 10.6 right now. If I experience anything weird I will post a reply.

So I too have a mid 2009 15" MBP but I never really had this issue. Maybe I got it once a month or so but I couldn't replicate it or anything.

Then I got Snow Leopard today and it is beachball city when copying large files.

Console picks this up though now in 10.6:

Aug 28 15:25:58 euclid Safari[359]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:30.876621, # of Inserts: 3, # of bytes written: 43012, Did shrink: NO
Aug 28 15:29:58 euclid Safari[515]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:30.790314, # of Inserts: 0, # of bytes written: 0, Did shrink: NO
Aug 28 15:32:34 euclid Safari[521]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:7.000271, # of Inserts: 0, # of bytes written: 0, Did shrink: NO


This issue is real, it doesn't lend itself to trouble shooting much, and it is most certainly a firmware issue. If we ever want to get this resolved we need to send feedback to Apple daily until it is. Just keep sending feedback until they say something. Send two messages a day if need be.

No notebook HDD can saturate SATA 1.5 bandwidth. Current SSDs can peak and on occasion go slightly over the maximum bandwidth available to SATA 1.5. Basically... even current SSDs are not impacted (significantly) by being in 1.5 mode. I guess the issue may be with what SSD speeds are available down the road. Current hard drive speeds have been locked at 5400 and 7200 RPM for quite a few years now (desktop and servers have HDD options that are comfortably twice that speed). The biggest drawback to HDD speed is that the platters actually have to spin really really fast. You can only get so fast before the vibration becomes an issue... this is particularly a problem with notebooks. Those limitations don't exist on SSDs. They can keep making them faster and faster so long as the technology allows. There is no limitation based on moving parts. It's safe to say that in the very near future, SSDs will be well above the bandwidth that SATA 1.5 can support. It would be nice to have SATA 3.0 functioning properly so that we can take advantage of those drive when they come our way.

Brand new 17" out of box for around 5 hours, and just froze for 30 seconds, then sprang back to life.

Only software I've installed is my drobo, istat menus and aperture.

I think something fishy is going on with all the new MBP's regardless of screen size.

Thought some of you might find this interesting...

A few weeks back I posted about my unsuccessful install of a Western Digi Scorpio Blue 500gb which suffered from horrible beachballing, etc., etc., and then purchasing another of the same drive and experiencing zero issues...

Catching my breath...

Well, something interesting happened after installing Snow Leopard. The problem has popped up not only in the second Western Digi drive, but also the stock Hitachi drive (which was completely problem free before). Setting up an appointment at my local Apple Store now to see if I can get a rollback now.

Quite frustrated.

Nihilistic Monk wrote:
Brand new 17" out of box for around 5 hours, and just froze for 30 seconds, then sprang back to life.

Only software I've installed is my drobo, istat menus and aperture.

I think something fishy is going on with all the new MBP's regardless of screen size.

I hope the 17" is also affected. It's possible, with all the focus on the click/beep issue, that the same misbehaving 3.0 Gb/s SATA II is implemented in their seperate firmware and has just been overlooked on the larger MacBook Pro. Difficult to say for sure, but I really hope so because there is no firmware to roll back to for that machine, so Apple would have to come up with a real fix.

Technorganix wrote:
The problem has popped up not only in the second Western Digi drive, but also the stock Hitachi drive (which was completely problem free before). Setting up an appointment at my local Apple Store now to see if I can get a rollback now.

Quite frustrated.

As I understand it, Apple has told their "geniuses" that the rollback tool is specifically for people with 3rd party drives. Which would be fine by me ... the more people who get hardware replaced, the more expensive this issue becomes, and the sooner we are likely to see some kind of a fix.

I think the issue is far more prevalent on snow leopard - I have the stock drive and am starting to experience beachballing where I never did with 10.5... That said I think if indeed Snow Leopard makes this problem more obvious then Apple may see increased pressure to fix this.

But in the meantime I'm probably going to get the 1.6 rollback installed.

Thanks for the tip fishbert. Luckily I have really good relationships with a lot of the reps there as well as a business account which seems to make things go a bit easier for me as well. I don't foresee having too many issues with getting the rollback if they have it on hand.