Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive (continued)

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.

Just wanted to let everyone know -- the SSD I Installed in my mid-2009 MBP last fall is still blazing with Snow Leopard.

Again, all I did was install Snow Leopard to the disk on a second computer (a MacPro, in my case) and then put the disk into the MBP. I had the same problems as everyone else until I did this.

Hi,
did anyone already try this new Momentus XT from Seagate?
Does this drive work with a MBP 13' end 2009 and EFI 1.7 ?

Don't think so : http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/Momentus-I-O-issues-on-Dis k-to-Disk-copy/m-p/57207

EFI 1.6 retrograde 1.6 seems to be needed even with the Momentus XT

Thank you guys!

Downgrading EFI to 1.6 solved the same issue for me.

I've bought Samsung HM641JI and had nothing but trouble with my MacBook for the last 24 hours.
I've got the freezing problem after cloning my old drive. Then I've formatted and tried to reinstall Mac OS and it took me like 15 attempts to finish the setup. But the freezing problem persisted even then.

I was going to exchange or return the hard drive today, but luckily found this thread.

I was wondering if someone could help:

I'm looking to upgrade the 160GB Hard Drive on my 13" mid 2009 MBP.

I upgraded to EFI 1.7.

Ideally I would like to install a 500GB hard-drive. Are any of them guaranteed to work?

I tried following disks with no success:

Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 750GB WD7500BPVT
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB WD5000BPVT

It was tested with the MacBook Pro 5,4 (late 2009) and EFI Firmeware 1,7.

Regards
Flözen

Floezen, did you tried to change work with 1.6? i want to buy me Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS and i thought this would make problems... :/

i want to go to gravis and let them change my sata cable.

No, I did not want to use some cracked Firemware-Downgrade for a Russian page... Or is there some official Apple-downgrade?

Anyway. I bought the 3rd hard drive (500GB) from Gravis, which also did not work, due to the SATAII connection. Gravis did not know about this problem at all!

I would also recommend against the Seagate Momentus XT for some simple reason: It needs about 4-times more power than other drives!

But if the change of the sata cable helped you, kindly let me know!

Regards
Florian

you dont have to use some cracked downgrades. (its not cracked at all
you can go to a apple store, munich for example, and let them downgrade for you. thats the point, only the stores can do this. not even gravis can. so the internet-downgrade is just a image/ copy from the stick, that the apple guys use.

but ok. you had the same problems like the rest with sata2, right?

isnt the speed advantage more interessting than the 4 times higher power consumption? i mean, what does it takes? from 7 hours down to 5 or 3 or what?

i wrote gravis a mail today. i want to know if they knew the problem and what they will do if i want a upgrade to a ssd from them. they had to make it usable. dont they?

Regards,
Eduard

Is there any way to downgrade EFI to 1.6 on late 2008 MacBook Pro? I have version 1.8 at the moment.

Pupunussi wrote:
Is there any way to downgrade EFI to 1.6 on late 2008 MacBook Pro? I have version 1.8 at the moment.

The issue that's the subject of this thread affects the MBP models first released in June 2009. The instructions to revert to EFI firmware 1.6 only apply to those models.

Hi i have mac book pro mid 2009 unibody 15" ssd intel generation 2 160gb, cpu t9900 3.06ghz,4gb ddr 3 memory,nvidia 9400+9600gt....MAC OS X 10.6.4 snow leopard original genuine,win 7 x64 pro original.
My problem is i cant install one update that i really need to fix my problem with slow sata 1 my ssd is very fast but i cant use my full performance cuz as u know mac books and apple use sata 1 they made update but i cant install it on mac os x snow leopard update is this http://support.apple.com/kb/DL853 i tried several time to install it on my os x 10.6.4 snow leopard but i cant i got this message u dont need this update.... but i really need it !??!? real message is this "alert this computer does not need this update"
i will be very happy if some helps me to install it or tell me way to activate my sata II cuz right now my ssd is runing low cuz of sata 1 speed limit i tested everything so this is the only reason i hope some will help
regards.

I actually bought a 5400 rpm drive to avoid this problem but I've had a frequent freezes. I think that is because of the 3Gbps transfer rate for this drive. Will it help if i add jumpers to this western digital hard drive to limit the speed to 1.5 Gbps?

Thanks

I should just like to add my own comments here.
My 13" mid-2009 Macbook Pro exhibited the symptoms described here (spinning beachball with a pause for 30 seconds or more). I downgraded to 1.6 firmware, turned off SMS etc. to no avail.
Using SMART Utility I found there were 281 CRC errors on my drive. These errors were updating through each hour of usage.
Researching "CRC errors" I found this page:
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/man-smart.htm
which indicated that CRC errors are usually associated with cables and connectors.
I bought a new (used) cable on eBay, took 15 minutes to fit and the Macbook is now running fine.