Firmware update and SATA II hard drive (continued)

Several months ago I inherited my wife's MacBook Pro 5,4 and installed a 1 Tb Samsung HDD (HM100UI). I suffered silently with the beachball (I thought it was the "rainbow wheel of death"?) for months, but at some point it just became unbearable. I searched all around for a solution in these forums, but never found this thread.

After 3 visits to the Genius Bar, 1 replacement HDD from Samsung, 1 visit to an Apple Authorized Service Center (ClickAway), 1 replacement SATA controller cable, I thought I was in fat city. Everything seemed good for about a week or two, and then suddenly everything came to a screeching halt again. I started experiencing the beachball very frequently, and then soon after I couldn't even boot up.

I finally stumbled upon this thread and the associated thread on MacRumours tonight (searched for "macbook pro bad disk controller"). I promptly downgraded my EFI firmware to 1.6 et voila! I could boot up again! So far, so good.

So frustrated that I wasted so much time on this issue. Thanks to everyone who contributed to diagnosing the problem--I'm glad to finally have a working computer again.

I would like to replace the HDD in my 2009 MBP (model 5,4) with a Western Digital 500GB, 7200 rpm (Scorpio Black, model WD5000BPKT).

I didn't upgrade to the 1.7 firmware at the time (because of early reports of problems).

Anyone got any experience of one of these drives in a mid 2009 MBP, with the 1.6 version firmware?

The only thing that ended up working for me was to track down an older 5400 RPM drive.

On Amazon it's listed as:

Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-Inch 500 GB 5400RPM SATA II 8 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0Y30055

It is still available for sale (from a 3rd party via Amazon)

I had tried many of the proposed solutions and nothing worked except using a drive that was approximately the same vintage as the Macbook. And FWIW I am able to use the 1.7 firmware with no problems.

The drive is not exactly a speed demon but it works.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. It's good to know you found a drive that works, but I do a lot of video and image editing and really need the 7200 rpm.

Has anyone got a 500GB, 7200 rpm replacement drive that's working well in the mid-2009 (5,4) model?

Not exactly your model as mine is a mid-2009 15" with 2.66GHz core 2 duo and calls itself a "5,3". I replaced the internal 5400 320GB drive, which went into my sons machine when his drive died, with a Hitachi Travelstar 7,200RPM 500GB drive with a 16MB cache, model number HTS725050A9A364. Negotiated link speed is 3 Gigabit which is the maximum my machine supports. Fast and no issues from day one with this setup.

Link to .pdf on from Hitachi:

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/3FDCAB792901CF4B862575D8005A B39B/$file/TS7K500_DS.pdf

I also have the 1.7 firmware on my machine: MBP53.00AC.B03

I've followed this one up, and found lots of positive reviews for this drive. It's now on order.

Many thanks indeed!

Blessoill,

I have been battling this issue for the past 6 months since I upgraded my original Hitachi Travelwhatever. How did to revert back to EFI 1.6 from the EFI 1.7? Also, are you running Lion?

Any help would be greatlty appreciated.

KMP

Matteo.Losi,

Can you explain how you downgraded to EFI 1.6 from 1.7? Also, are you running Lion?

KaeMP,

I'm running Lion on my Macbook Pro 15", and I downgraded / reverted from EFI 1.7 to 1.6 by following the instructions here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=8414998&posted=1#post8414998

I downloaded the EFI 1.6 install file here:

http://hotfile.com/dl/109001076/5dfaf39/aluminum.macbook.pro.recovery.dmg.html

Don't know what the provenance of this file is, and I'm sure it's not blessed by Apple, but I suffered almost a year of pain after installing a 1Tb internal drive, and now everything is totally good. It's like a got a new Mac!

Richard

I loaded the Kingston Hyperx SSD 120GB with the lastest firmware installed (

332ABBF0) onto the HDD tray on my MBP. Updated EFI Firmware to 1.7 (been using 1.6 for a while for my WD Black Scorpio) with no problems whatsoever for 24 hours straight!

Fresh install of Lion 10.7.3 in 13 min. (USB Flash Drive)

Boot time: 15 sec. from pressing power button

Shut down time: 3 sec.

Xbench score: 330 for disk

Write speed: 160 MB/sec

Read speed: 260 MB/sec

I'll update the stability of the SSD over time, but so far it has been awesome!

PS. I put the original Apple HDD onto Optibay.

I can't believe they did it again !

This time my 3900$ iMac bought last june is stuck and wont boot after the infam EFI firmware 1.9 update we did today 5-march-2012.

We got this iMac 2011 brand new and we use it as the main development machine, as we are registered Apple developers.

This is the second time an EFI firmware erase our main partition.

The first time we were able to recover from time machine, apparently the firmware was never updated?

I am wondering this because this second EFI firmware update broke the machine and not matter what we do, it will never boot again.

The restore doesn't work since the EFI firmware is broken on SOLID hard drive and when time-machine backup has been restored the system can't boot, perhaps because THIS TIME, the firmware was patched, so the old backup wont go. Oh dear oh dear...

This is the reason why NOT all the users have this problem with EFI firmware update.

Only macbook air and other iMac with a SOLID hard drive are experiencing this, and since these kind of hardware was introduced in the Macs we experienced this problem again and again.

Tomorrow I will call Apple Protection Plan to see what can be done.

This is starting to become really frustrating.

Another user just reported:

We had the same issue. We did the update as instructed. There was no issue with the installation. When the computer restarted there was an odd 'beep' sound and then it did not start properly. It required a Time Machine restore which I did and that apparently was completed correctly. However when it tried to restart after the Time Machine restore, the computer remains locked at the apple logo and rotating circle.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT !!!!

I solved it after some other trial.

Here what I did.

Started the iMac with OPTION key pressed.

Choosed the secondary disk (time machine disk).

Opened the Disk Utility.

Initialized the disc from scratch from the utility disk.

Then rebooted.

Kept pressed OPTION+CMD+R (internet recovery started).

Downloaded everything from scratch from the servers.

Installed from scratch OSX Lion.

After it downloaded everything (I suppose from my cloud ?) it rebooted and installed everything.
After the next reboot, my system started, as it was before, but with the new firmware update finely installed or at least it didn't ask for.

When I ask for software update it now ask for iTunes 10.5.3, Airport 6.0 and Wi-Fi update (which I did already prior to EFI firmware update so...weird!)

Anyway, I will now update all this stuff, and hope everything will go good !

Good luck to others having the same problem.

Hope this helps!

Thanks god and I apologyze for my anger

Tom

Oh, I forgot to mention that now my iMac flies twice the speed !

It boots in 11 seconds so fast that you can't even see the flower spinning !!!

Great work on new firmware!

i have the same issue on my MBP 2,53 mid 2009 with crucial m4.

downgrade to efi 1.6 helped me. but i am still trying to find a way to force it working on efi 1.7

i am just trying to understand if ut works fine with efi 1.6 could it be a problem of cable? i always thought that if cable is bad, it is bad. nope?

One guy in previous threads told he changed the cable, but after few days freezes occured again. Are there anybody who solved the problem (just random freezes and not the situation when drives are not seen/booted from) with cable replacement?

thx!

I don't use any external cable. The problem were on the iMac with all the USB detached.

How can I check what firmware Am I on ?