EFI Firmware Update 1.7 Causes Massive Disk Performance Issues
If you have been following the issues with the SATA II speeds and how they are limited in the most recent unibody MBP, then you know that 2 days ago apple released a firmware update to rectify the issue. Since I upgraded the slow 250gb 5400rpm drive to an 80gb Intel x25-M, I was one of those users waiting for the update. I was very impressed by Apples quick patch, but I changed my mind:
My issues started after I updated the firmware from the Software Update. Prior to this, my computer was running perfectly. Everything was snappy, fast, and perfect. I then installed the Apple update and my computer would no longer even boot. I booted into the OS recovery CD, and the computer no longer recognized my x25-M. After some waiting, my drive eventually popped up, but things were just off. Disk performance was abysmal, literally, it took 3 hours to reinstall OS X. Once OS X was reinstalled, it wouldn't even boot up. I figured it was a bad firmware flash so I went to the apple store the following morning. I spent 4 hours there with the geniuses trying to diagnose the issue, and they eventually just replaced my laptop with a new one.
Excited to be back up and running, I installed my x25 into the new computer and it was running great. I went through the process of installing OS X, and it seemed to go at record speeds. It came time to run system update and I contemplated not running the firmware update, even though I was confident that something unique had gone wrong with my previous system and it couldn't be the systems in general. I opted to go ahead and try the firmware update. The update seemed to go well, the machine booted back into leopard without issue and things seemed fine. However once i started actually using the system, it was clear that things weren't right. The system runs, but the drive hangs for 20 to 30 seconds every so often.
Anxious to discover what in the world was going on, i opened up activity monitor and switched to the Disk Activity tab. There was clearly something wrong. While running the migration assistant from my time machine backup, The Disk activity graph sits completely flat with 0bytes read and 0 bytes written. Every 20-30 seconds the graph will spike for just a couple seconds up to what i figure are normal read/write speeds. This is consistent with how performance feels on the computer. Anything that requires disk I/O immediately locks that particular process into an unusable state.
Please remember that I only started experiencing this issue after the firmware update, so it is clearly the result of something apple did with that update. And I experienced it on two separate systems no less...
Apple has clearly dropped the ball on this one.
Things i have tried:
- Flatten/Reinstall of the OS
- Flash firmware of SSD (already up to date)
- Install beta of Snow Leopard
- Thats it, if a flatten/reinstall doesn't fix it is clearly a hardware issue.
I encourage any users who are experiencing this or similar issues to please post in the following format:
MacBook Model: 15" Unibody New Model
Hard Drive/SSD Model: Intel x25-m 80GB
Comments:
Message was edited by: Andrew Myers
My issues started after I updated the firmware from the Software Update. Prior to this, my computer was running perfectly. Everything was snappy, fast, and perfect. I then installed the Apple update and my computer would no longer even boot. I booted into the OS recovery CD, and the computer no longer recognized my x25-M. After some waiting, my drive eventually popped up, but things were just off. Disk performance was abysmal, literally, it took 3 hours to reinstall OS X. Once OS X was reinstalled, it wouldn't even boot up. I figured it was a bad firmware flash so I went to the apple store the following morning. I spent 4 hours there with the geniuses trying to diagnose the issue, and they eventually just replaced my laptop with a new one.
Excited to be back up and running, I installed my x25 into the new computer and it was running great. I went through the process of installing OS X, and it seemed to go at record speeds. It came time to run system update and I contemplated not running the firmware update, even though I was confident that something unique had gone wrong with my previous system and it couldn't be the systems in general. I opted to go ahead and try the firmware update. The update seemed to go well, the machine booted back into leopard without issue and things seemed fine. However once i started actually using the system, it was clear that things weren't right. The system runs, but the drive hangs for 20 to 30 seconds every so often.
Anxious to discover what in the world was going on, i opened up activity monitor and switched to the Disk Activity tab. There was clearly something wrong. While running the migration assistant from my time machine backup, The Disk activity graph sits completely flat with 0bytes read and 0 bytes written. Every 20-30 seconds the graph will spike for just a couple seconds up to what i figure are normal read/write speeds. This is consistent with how performance feels on the computer. Anything that requires disk I/O immediately locks that particular process into an unusable state.
Please remember that I only started experiencing this issue after the firmware update, so it is clearly the result of something apple did with that update. And I experienced it on two separate systems no less...
Apple has clearly dropped the ball on this one.
Things i have tried:
- Flatten/Reinstall of the OS
- Flash firmware of SSD (already up to date)
- Install beta of Snow Leopard
- Thats it, if a flatten/reinstall doesn't fix it is clearly a hardware issue.
I encourage any users who are experiencing this or similar issues to please post in the following format:
MacBook Model: 15" Unibody New Model
Hard Drive/SSD Model: Intel x25-m 80GB
Comments:
Message was edited by: Andrew Myers
MacBook Pro 15", Mac OS X (10.5.7)
