MBP 2011 and Intel SSD 510

Hey Delphi, have you tried resetting the SMC? I managed to get full 6Gb/s speed that way. Other than that, not sure what I can do...

Which OS X install DVD did you use?
Where did the installation fail the first time?
Where does the Mac freeze when you rebooted it?

I will see if I can try that tonight when I am back in my home office.

FYI - The Intel 160GB SSD had no issues with the disk restore through the Disk Utility. Have been running it for days, even under heavy load there are no lockups to report. Even the initial lockups I had on the MBP 17 (that are reported by many other people) are all gone. I wonder if Apple's own SSDs also have an issue in SATA III mode, just less frequent than the Intel 510 SSD. - Just speculation on my side.

Hello jbowry and fxstein:

Here are additional facts:

- I installed the OS form the original DVD.

- I had a chat with a guy over the internet that did not experienced any problem on a MBP2011/15'' with an Intel 510. Hence, the problem doesn't seem to be systematic (?);

- I spent the whole week-end doing tests and I can conclude the following: in my case (MBP2011/17''), the problem occured at both 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s (in order to make it work at 6Gb/s I had to reset the SMC otherwise the negociated speed remains at 3Gb);

- The installation from the DVD sometimes works sometimes fails. I could successfully complete the installation three times (from the DVD) out of 5 tries. The three times that worked I previously formatted the entire SSD by writing zero's everywhere; the two times the installation failed I formatted the drive without riting zero's everywhere;

- after the three successfull installations, the macbook always booted up perfectly; however: after the three successfull installations, I always experienced the colored rotating wheel as soon as I was doing anything (for instance selecting "about this mac" from the apple menu);

- Since I'm stubborn as a mule, today I installed the OS for a sixth time (after formatting the SSD completely and from the DVD). Surprisingly, everything seemed to be OK ! I then started to install a game (World of Warcraft). Every went perfectly during the first 30 minutes, then, suddenly, the game displayed a long error log saying that the game installer could neither erase stuff from the disk not write.

I now replaced the SSD with a normal drive and waiting for info either form INtel or Apple.

Sigh.

Thanks for the info.

At this point, all I can really recommend is the get the drive exchanged for another and try your luck again. The Intel should work (I'm typing on a 2011 MBP 15 with an Intel 510), and you're doing everything I did, so my guess is a hardware issue issue with either the Mac or SSD.

One more thing, do you have another machine you can try the SSD in? Any Mac of windows machine will do. I want to see if you can reproduce it on another computer.

Lots of people are encoutering an issue with the Intel 510 (and other sata III drives); hence, the probability that my ssd is corrupted is not that high.

The link below supports a hardware based theory; however, I can't confirm it.

http://forum.hardmac.com/index.php?showtopic=9957&st=0&p=17916&#entry17916
http://communities.intel.com/message/118621

Might be a driver based issue, we'll see.

Yes, I have another MBP, 17', 2006.

Thread, does the sata iii / macbook pro issue have anything to do with the intel sata controller chipset design error ?:

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/01/31/intel-identif ies-chipset-design-error-implementing-solution

Will apple replace the macbooks ?

... 😟

Still no solution available and both Apple and Intel have yet to respond to the issues. Meanwhile my MBP 17 is continuing to crash even with 10.6.7 and its original drive. Wonder if there is more to this than just the incompatibility with Intel's SSD.

As I was saying, mine works. So, I doubt that it's just as simple as an incompatibility. I've installed OS X 3 times since getting my SSD, and haven't seen any issues at all. Have you looked into whether or not an app you use (or run on boot up) causes it to not worK? Also:

1) What exactly is the issue, and where does it happen?

2) How'd you install OS X? DVD? Cloning? Any backups used?

3) Did you ensure the SATA cable (which admittedly *****) is secured properly?

Let me know. Maybe we can pin something down...

Explained it all in great detail before.

The only 2011 MBP that are not (or very few) having issues reported seem to be the 15" models. Yours seems to be such a model.

The issue is very simple: Wether you partition/format/erase the 250GB/510 series in the internal bay or an external enclosure, the MBP 17" 2.3 GHz 8GB model will never boot from it.

Tried (all with and without SMC reset):

1.) CC of existing drive onto external INtel 250GB SSD - MBP 17 will not boot from it when in swapped into the internal bay
2.) OSX 10.6.7 disk utility partition in external enclosure (disk utility would not even talk to the SSD inside the internal bay - would simple freeze with a spinning ball) then swapped into the internal bay, boot from external drive (original drive) and restore with disk utility. During restore 30 sec freezes about every 30 sec. 4h later restore completes, again MBP will not boot from the drive
3.) Install OSX from the CD shipped with the MBP. Same thing - almost - install aborts after many freezes.

Next recommendation that usually follows: Your SSD is broken. Except it is not: That same drive right now sits inside a 2010 MBP 15" working without ANY issues but of course at SATA II speed.

Cabling and install are perfectly fine. Both the original 128GB SSD as well as a prior generation 160GB Intel SSD work out of the box without issues.

FYI used the very same disk utility restore with the Intel 160 GB SSD. Restore from original drive in external enclosure took about 1h, next boot from it as internal drive without any issues.

Just to share my experience as well:

MBP 17" 2011, 2,2GHZ 8GB, Optibay, Intel 510 250GB

Same experience as you, except that I swapped the SSD from internal slot to optibay (only the internal slot is full SATAIII (6GBPS)), and when I use the optibay slot (running at SATAII speeds (3GBPS)) it works fine (although slower).

I'm completely convinced that this is a quality issue with the internal SATA cable as it has been proved over and over that changing the cable makes a difference, whereas anything else doesn't.
I have also installed win7 native onto the drive (in the MBP), and although the installation takes forever and kinda works, it still shows the same behavior and only tell me that windows installation is more fault tolerant.

I hate apple for not acknowledging the issue and providing new cables free of charge, and I will worship the first independent manufacturer to make replacement cables that fully support SATAIII speeds.

Well - at last Intel points at Apple for the issue:

http://communities.intel.com/message/119656#119656

This is an Apple issue and not related to the Intel SSD. Funny that the Apple SATA controller is also from Intel...

Any pointers from Apple? Not good getting bounced in between the two main manufacturers.

Message was edited by: fxstein

marc meier wrote:
I'm also having problems. Tried out everything. The drive seems to work under light load, but as soon as load gets heavier there is beach balling and sometimes even system crashes and data corruption.

The problem might be associated with SATA III mode, as other SATA III drives from other manufacturers are also affected. See the aforementioned threads and also

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2011/03/11/2011-macbook-pro-and-c300-the-problem-mig ht-be-coming-from-the-macbook-pro

and (in German) http://www.macuser.de/forum/f10/welche-ssd-fuer-425659/index107.html

for more problem reports. Apple should really fix these problems!

I just wanted to report I am seeing similar behavior with my 2011 15" MBP fitted with a Micron m4 (Crucial C400). I was able to format, install OSX from DVD and restore my settings via a Time Machine w/o any problems. Under light loads, the machine is fast and great. However, occasionally random beach balls does occur for one or a couple of programs (though not all). As far a I can tell, Spotlight is not indexing at those times.

From the few occasions that it has happened, it has lasted anywhere from about 15-25 seconds. I did have one that resulted in a full crash. I really hope an update comes soon to address these issues.

On a side note: I just tried the SMC reset thing. Will have to see if I see any more beach balls today.

Just got my S-510 250 GB today. Packed on 14th of march in Taiwan. Version PWG2

System : MB Pro 8,2 15" i7 Quad 2.0GHz 8GB RAM Antiglare - shipped 7th of march 11

Took it into an external USB Adapter case - used Carbon Copy Cloner (File method) and made a clone from the original drive. Switched it off and replaced the internal HD with the SSD. Reseted SMC and PRAM and the "JET" took off. Slowly in first stage 😉 (took 1 minute) - repairing permissions but after 2nd boot it took me 16 sec after pushing power button ! Sudden Motion is still on - do not understand why people switch it off. Also HD idle in Energy Savings is on. Full loaded battery reports 8:14 (screen on half brightness) Airport on, BT off

Putting into sleep - space- and its back again !
About this Mac: its on S-ATA III (6 GBits)
AJA -System Test reports (128MB) : Write 280MB/s Read 310MB/s
PS5 starts in 3 sec. , Word 2011 in 2 sec, and ....

If theres a change I´ll report

Similar problem here with Intel 510 250gb SSD and 17" MBP 2,2 8GB.

Maybe the following may help us to track it down:

First installation of OS X from DVD to SSD worked fine (displayed 34 min in the beginning but finally took only 15). Both the drive and the MBP came fresh out of their boxes.

So far everything worked fine and really fluid. System startup at approx 10 sec and nice application performance.

Then I made a SMC reset which switched the SATA level from 3 gigabit (II) to 6 gigabit (III). With 6 gigabit level I had all the problems described above. Since then all attempts to switch back to SATA level II (3 gigabit) failed. I tried to install the original Apple drive and made a SMC reset but this only gives a temporarily SATA level II. Putting in the SSD again it starts up with level III and system startup fails. Level III is displayed by the profiler when booting from the OS X installation DVD.

Is there any way to force the system to SATA II? Maybe this could be a patch until there is a solid SATA III support available?

All the best from Germany

Nik

I have a 512GB C400 drive in a 2011 17" and I have the exact same situation as kappaknight. I have tried PRAM reset, SMC reset, disabling sms, disabling hard disk sleep, and nothing has changed.

I have never been in a situation where something simply doesn't work on an Apple product with no response from the company. Clearly SATA 3 is broken on the new macbooks, none of the new drives work. They seem to want to blame the fact that it is an SSD, but I suspect if there was such a thing as a 7200rpm drive that ran at 6mbs it'd have the exact same issue.