Mac Pro freezes after sleep, wont shut down, and 5870 issue

I seem to be having the same problem. I got my 3.33ghz Mac Pro back in mid January and it seems like every night when I let it go to sleep I can wake it up in the morning and I can still move my mouse but everything is frozen. I also end up just having to hard reboot. I found your thread because I was sure that someone else has had this problem. Apparently not a lot have. Hopefully someone will see this.

Thank you for following up on this. My Mac Pro (with OWC SSD) was freezing after scheduled sleep, but not after I set it to sleep manually. I bought OWC because they're supposedly more Mac-compatible :/

I've had the same problem but I don't have any SSDs with my Macs, it all started happening since my upgrade to 10.6.6.

Wow. I do have an OWC SSD. I will just set it to manually sleep then. Thanks for the heads up. That kinda blows.

Btw, I have a 5770 so its the drive and not the card for sure.

Message was edited by: SimonAsher

Have the exact same problem with my 3.2 Quad. Got an OWC SSD yesterday and after cloning my system to it, it kept freezing after going to sleep. Figured something goofy happened with CCC, so I reformatted it and did a clean install today, but got the exact same results.

Just emailed OWC, if they don't get this fixed shortly the drive's going back. It doesn't seem much faster than my Crucial C300 anyway, maybe its a sign that I should have waited for the Vertex 3...

I had the same thing happen to me with a OWC SSD - mine was returned in a heartbeat. I now have 2 Crucial 300's that work like a charm. I feel that OWC is using misleading advertising. What's worse, they keep on selling all this crap, knowing it won't work properly. How many would they sell if they told prospective customers that "They are the best SSD's but will only work well with a workaround"?

I have to agree, I have had no problems with my Crucial C300, just thought the OWC would be faster (my C300 is the 64GB which has relatively slow write speeds) and didn't want to have to deal with reconditioning my SSD. Sigh, after a couple hours of research it seems like this is a widespread issue with most Sandforce controllers and Macs - not just OWC. I've seen tons of folks having issues with MBPs, Mac Pros, iMacs...

just wanted to update you guys on what the official stance of OWC is on this situation. I had the same problem like you guys. I have the 240GB OWC extreme pro SSD in my Mac Pro 3,1. When it goes to sleep, and i leave it sleeping for a day -- upon returning, it will freeze up with the spinning wheel of death.

This is what they had to say about it:

"While Sleep will work with our SSDs, there have been reports of system hangs in relation to hibernation mode which is the deep state of Sleep. We suggest not using ANY program that puts your computer into hibernation mode when using an SSD. SandForce is working on this issue and it will be addressed in a future firmware update.

Normal, automatic sleep mode functions perfectly with no issues. But if you need to try and fix the hibernation issue with your Mac revision, please Open up Terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal) and go through the following steps:

Type: sudo pmset hibernatemode 0
Press: return/enter.
Type: your password when it prompts you to, then press return/enter again.
You have successfully disabled hibernation! Go ahead and exit Terminal.

Also, some have chose to use the application SmartSleep, which is free online. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26979/smartsleep
SmartSleep is an application that you can use to set the hibernation mode on your computer.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and hope you will continue to bear with us as our extreme SSD product line transitions through these evolutions and unforeseen road bumps. Please let us know if there's anything else we may do to help."


--I would like to add that the OWC SSD is great. And since Downloading smart sleep and disabling deep sleep aka hibernate, the issue has been totally resolved. Im pretty sure the terminal entry works just as well. But I liked the added convenience of the other features of smartsleep. So there you go guys.

Have same problem. Using MacPro4,1 2,93 GHz Quad-Core (2009), with a Mac Pro RAID Card.

In my case, my RAID battery was broken. However, the solution might apply to some of you too.

I noticed a weird thing: although I had "Put hard disk to sleep" to OFF in System Preferences / Energy Saver, pmset -g in the Terminal showed, among others: disksleep 180 (so the disks WERE put to sleep!).

I set "Put hard disk to sleep" back ON, then looked at pmset -g: disksleep 10;
Then I switched it again back OFF, and, see there, now disksleep 0 and the problems are gone.

(I guess I'll have to change the battery to be able to use the sleep function again - but maybe worth of notice for others here too: somehow the disksleep setting was ON despite that I switched it off in the prefpane!).

Regards to everyone,

R.

Latest update from OWC:

The firmware update for the SSD's has arrived. This update fixes remaining hibernation issues. There is still no Mac updater so you still must either find a PC or use Bootcamp. If those are not options, you can send your unit in and we can update it for you. If you are OK with the work around for the hibernation issue, you may even want to wait a few months as we hope to have our Mac updater available by then. There is no guarantee, but it is being worked on. Thanks for your patience and please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.

Here is the link for the update:
http://eshop.macsales.com/CustomizedPages/Framework.cfm?page=sffirmware.html

Sigh... just spent 2 hours trying to get this new firmware update to work and it failed every single time. I followed all the directions correctly, but still get the same failure message. I've emailed OWC, so we'll see what they say. Getting very frustrated and disappointed with OWC at this point.

I have installed OWC's update (Firmware 360A13F) and I can confirm that the issue is NOT fixed. There appear to be some performance improvements associated with the update, but the sleep issue is unresolved on my 6-core Mac Pro. Has someone tried sleep with "Put the hard disks to sleep when possible" with both power and (if you have one) UPS settings in Energy Saver? I have not yet tried
r2d2000's method.

In the mean time, I'll try messing with a few of the command line settings. I'll post back here if I figure anything out.

Good to hear someone got this firmware updated, even if it doesn't address the sleep issue. May I ask what OS you were using to run the update?

I struggled with getting the firmware to "download" onto the SSD most of the afternoon, but then I decided to re-format the SSD in Windows and was able to get the firmware to finish "downloading". Once this step is complete it reboots my PC and causes a blue screen. I'm thinking of trying to install Windows XP on a separate drive to see if maybe the issue is with Win7. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

@Bryan
I used Windows 7 on a separate, Intel SSD.