Firmware update and SATA II hard drive (continued)

So I've been trying to drop a second OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB hard drive into an Optibay solution in my 2010 13" 2.66 Macbook Pro. Nothing but hangs, lock-ups and freezes with both hard drives connected to the SATA controller. When only the primary drive is connected, zero issues. Once the second drive is connected I'll boot from a USB drive to setup my Raid 0 config between the two drives. I've run some hard drive tests using AJA and the read/write is awesome initially but after a few tests I end-up having to reboot. If I skip the testing I get as far as starting an image restore with Carbon Copy or Disk Utility and the process stops about 2-3 minutes in (about 2.5-5GB of data restored)...data transfer rate drops to 0. When I kill the restore and try to check hard drive stats using AJA again...zero data transfer.

Basically, I'm posting to mention that this SATA issue is impacting the new 2010 Macbook Pro 13" models.

Message was edited by: Glasskopf

I'm assuming that those of us with 2010 MBPs shouldn't try the 1.7 EFI update?

Glasskopf wrote:
I'm assuming that those of us with 2010 MBPs shouldn't try the 1.7 EFI update?

That is not even a possibility. The new MBP's use a different firmware.

okeven wrote:

Glasskopf wrote:
I'm assuming that those of us with 2010 MBPs shouldn't try the 1.7 EFI update?

That is not even a possibility. The new MBP's use a different firmware.

Alrighty then. I've ordered a new cable so I'll give that a whorl. I also tried just throwing my second drive in and running off the primary...same issue. I can see the second drive, but the system hangs after a few minutes and I have to hard reboot. I've also tried doing various combinations of PRAM resets and drive installations/ restores. No dice.

Message was edited by: Glasskopf

Message was edited by: Glasskopf

Hello everyone,

i've been experiencing the same issues (or at least what seems to be the same issue) with my Macbook unibody 13 (before it became "pro"), and a Seagate 7200.4 500Gb drive i had installed.

I was fed up with the clicking and the 1 second pause it was creating.

I read this whole forum and did not find a better answer than needing to work with the EFI etc ...

I did not really look into this, and downgrading was not an option.

I found this:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2223443&start=15&tstart=0

I downloaded the CD thing and updated the FW of the drive as the last post says....

So far, (did this yesterday) drive hasn't clicked once !

Maybe this solves the issue !

FYI

Regards

Tim

I had exactly same problem before with Seagate 7200.4 500Gb drive.

Then I switched to Hitachi 5k500.B drive, which is 500GB 5400rpm.

The problem seems gone. if you really want 7200, 7k500 seems to work too according to other posts in the 2010 Macbook thread.

I believe there is an issue with the sata controller and the firmware/ EFI when you have 2 SATAII 3GB drives installed. My system would boot off of one or the other and once booted would consistently hang with the other driver hooked-up and partitioned (2x OCD 128GB Turbo SSD drives). Could not stripe them and could not get them to play well together as separate drives. If the CD/DVD drive is in or I have the second drive unpartitioned (regardless of which bay I'm booted out of) the system hangs and I have to hard reboot. Just want to throw that out there in case anyone from Apple is keeping an eye on this thread...I'd really like to RAID this computer with my 2 SSD drives. 😟

Just a short report on my success getting the Seagate 500 gb 7200 rpm drive working without all the spinning disks, kernal panics and disk errors on a July 2009 2.53 ghz 15" Macbook Pro. I scavenged a jumper off another 2.5 in. drive and jumpered the 2 pins on the left and I've now been running for over a day without a pause or any other problem. The drive is operating slower than advertised however it's operating much faster than it was before the jumper was applied. Hopefully Apple addresses this problem with a firmware update however in the meantime I'm happy.

After over a year of swapping out various types of 500GB drives and experiencing the beach balls after 10 seconds or so I have finally fixed my MBP. In addition to reading just about every post on the subject, I decided to take my chance with the macrumors firmware downgrade and it works perfectly.

I purchased a Seagate ST905003N1A1AS drive, booted off the original Hitachi via FW800 and did a CCC to the new drive and everything is working excellent.

For curiosity sake I performed a software update check and sure enough, it presented the 1.7 firmware selection. I certainly will NOT be installing this disaster of an "upgrade". I encourage all in this forum to repeat the procedure that I followed because I can say that it does work perfectly. I only wish I had done this sooner, say a year ago when I brought home my MBP.

Comments and or suggestions are encouraged!

Are you getting 3 gigabit throughput now? That's the only drawback to using the jumper trick as the throughput is limited to 1.5 although in reality it probably doesn't make much of a difference.

I don't think you understand my post. I reversed the firmware back to 1.6 using the method presented in the macrumors forum. When you reverse the firmware back to 1.6 the chipset only allows 1.5GB; in addition the negotiated speed is also 1.5GB.

Anybody that can notice a speed increase or has a hard drive capable of 3.0GB throughput (real world not theoretical)should chime in and explain. All I know is..... after the firmware update I have not been able to install a hard drive any larger than 250GB until I reversed the firmware. Regardless of any jumpers.

BTW, I tried a Seagate 3.0GB 500 drive and set the jumper and I still got beach balls, in fact could not install the OS when booting from the CD (could not see the drive)

Recap: my current Seagate 500GB without the jumpers and with the original 1.6 firmware works fine.

Clear?

That's interesting and I see that you're definitely not alone with respect to not being able to get OS X to even see the drive. I formatted my 500 gb 7200 rpm Seagate with it in an external enclosure prior to using Super Duper to clone the stock drive. So, despite having problems with it when it was running at 3 gig it works fine with the 1.7 firmware as long as it is jumpered to 1.5 gig.

Sure would be nice to have a fixed firmware though.

Interesting.... I tried the jumper on the far left and far right with no joy. That procedure must only work with certain Seagate 500GB. I wish Apple would come up with a fix, or at the very least remove the update from the software check.

If somebody knows how to permanently remove the 1.7 firmware update from showing up that would be nice.

I recommend flashing the drive's firmware like I previously wrote in the above post.
Have had no clicks or problems since !

We don't have a noise / clicking issue, we are talking about hard drive pauses of 30 seconds or more. This issue prevent a fresh install of the OS for example. We are stuck with the original SATA 1,5 hard drive.