MBP 2011 and Intel SSD 510

Since I'm one of those having problems. I hope they issue a fix soon. The thing, these two products were just released, and its hard to see many people with this combination. Its really stupid that Apple will only support their stupid SSD (SATA II) while having the technology to run new SATA III SSDs.

For god sake its just a SSD that every PC/Mac shouldn't have any problems with regardless of the brand or type.

I just got an Intel 510 256GB ssd for my 2011 MBP 15. So far, I've had zero issues with the drive. I installed it, installed OS X 10.6.6, then reset my SMC to get it to work at SATA3 speeds.

Long story short, I can't slow this thing down if I tried. I've seen some people have issues, but I guess I got lucky.

can you give me more details on your configuration? negotiated link speed?

this is really the first success story i hear with intel 510 beside Anandtech review. You are lucky
🙂

Ok.

I bought a 2GHz 2011 MBP 15 three weeks ago, and just put the new drive yesterday. These were my steps:

1. Updated my Time Machine backup.

2. Took out my old Seagate 7200.4 500GB.

3. Carefully put in the new drive. I say carefully because it's very easy to tweak or damage the SATA flex cable. I've had his break twice before on my 2009 MBP 15. Don't take any chances.

4. Booted up and held alt to boot to the Install CD

5. Formatted the drive for one partition, HFS+ Journaled. The usual.

6. Installed OS X 10.6.6 that came with the MBP. DO NOT USE ANY OTHER OS X INSTALL DISC. I installed it with rosetta, no extra fonts, and all the print drivers if I remember right. The installation took about an hour, nothing out of ordinary.

7. The Mac booted up, and I used my Time Machine to bring it back to the backup I had made earlier.

8. Everything looked great, except the the link speed. It was only negotiating at 3Gb/s, not 6.

9. I restarted the Mac, and reset the SMC.

10. Presto! It worked. The Mac booted up in 15 seconds, and the link speed was at full 6Gb/s.

11. Since then, I've reinstalled most of my applications, as Time Machine never gets restoring apps quite right.

http://img638.imageshack.us/i/screenshot20110313at100.png/

Hope this helps.

jbowry wrote:
Ok.

I bought a 2GHz 2011 MBP 15 three weeks ago, and just put the new drive yesterday. These were my steps:

1. Updated my Time Machine backup.

2. Took out my old Seagate 7200.4 500GB.

3. Carefully put in the new drive. I say carefully because it's very easy to tweak or damage the SATA flex cable. I've had his break twice before on my 2009 MBP 15. Don't take any chances.

4. Booted up and held alt to boot to the Install CD

5. Formatted the drive for one partition, HFS+ Journaled. The usual.

6. Installed OS X 10.6.6 that came with the MBP. DO NOT USE ANY OTHER OS X INSTALL DISC. I installed it with rosetta, no extra fonts, and all the print drivers if I remember right. The installation took about an hour, nothing out of ordinary.

7. The Mac booted up, and I used my Time Machine to bring it back to the backup I had made earlier.

8. Everything looked great, except the the link speed. It was only negotiating at 3Gb/s, not 6.

9. I restarted the Mac, and reset the SMC.

10. Presto! It worked. The Mac booted up in 15 seconds, and the link speed was at full 6Gb/s.

11. Since then, I've reinstalled most of my applications, as Time Machine never gets restoring apps quite right.

http://img638.imageshack.us/i/screenshot20110313at100.png/

Hope this helps.

Could you tell me how did you reset SMC?
All I did was holding the power button for few seconds, and the link speed changed to 6Gb

But I think I'm doing something wrong, this is not reseting SMC I think. and the way described here:
"
Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.
"
is not doing anything really

Personally, I didn't see anything on the Mac that suggested that resetting the smc actually worked. I figured it worked because before I did, my link speed was only sata 2.

As far as those instructions are concerned, those are exactly what I used.

I just purchased a 2011 MBP 17" with 2.3GHz i7 and 8GB of RAM. Took the 128SSD option, as I wanted to upgrade to the Intel 510 250 as soon as it would become available. (The 128SSD is virtual identical to the HDD pricing and I was hoping I could reuse it in another machine).

I put the Intel 250SSD into an external casing, formatted it, carbon copied all of the boot drive on it and swapped the drives.

From the very first moment the system would not boot up on the Intel 510 250GB SSD. I could only boot from the now external 128 Apple SSD. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to work. Did the SMC reset, it shows 6Gb speed in the system info, but any action to access the drive pretty much freezes the system and does the spinning ball dance.

After a long night trying to make it work, I switched back and tried an Intel 160GB SSD (prior generation) - it worked right from the get go, but obviously not at the speeds that you should get from the new 510 series - if it works.

I have found threads on the net with people with 13 and 17 MBPs having these problems. Also found that Anandtech did a test with a MBP 15 without issues. Not sure if it has to do with the fact that my system had an Apple ssd in it before, but so far no luck.

yesterday afternoon
just took my new MackBook Pro 17'
i7 2.3GH;8GB;512SSD
i love my new toy,hehe
i can't beleave just 1s to turn off

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!

"Apple should really fix these problems!"
What problems are attributable to Apple? You buy a computer from Apple, you install a module that hasn't been recommended by Apple, and you experience a problem. What do you see as Apple's involvement? Should Apple perform compatibility testing on every SSD that is available? I don't think so.

Whether the issue is entirely Apple's fault or not, the hard drive is a warranty supported replaceable item. That being said, the proper function of that SATA III port is Apple's responsibility. Again, I'm not sure whether issues are with the MacBook Pro, or the drive. But it does warrant some response by both parties.

Perhaps the issue is with how people are installing OS X. Is everyone installing it from the disc that came with the MBP, or just imaging using another? There are changes in the build needed to run the MBP properly. I would advise against imaging it.

Can anyone confirm that they're having issues clean installing right from the provided CD, then restoring with Time Machine?

Intel and Apple work together very closely. Apple is a major development partner, naturally a user replaceable item like the drive coming from Intel, one would expect it works as advertised.

As far the the problem itself:
It might very well be procedural, but I have no way of testing all possible options or undo every prior steps.
As per Intel support website for the 510SSD I downloaded the free Carbon Copy to perform the drive re-image. Would not have done that but as Intel lists that as the Mac solution I assumed that is the way to go. Ran CC and copied the primary drive onto the new Intel SSD in an external enclosure. An hour later, I swapped the drives and the system would not boot.

I could still boot from the original SSD (Apple 128GB) in the external enclosure, but as soon as you would access the internal drive, the system would freeze. You could not even re-partition the drive.

Next I swapped the drives again and switched the procedure: I re-partitioned the Intel 510 SSD in the external enclosure to just have free space, then I installed it inside the Mac, booted from the original SSD in the external enclosure and fired up the OSX disk utility. Now I could Erase and Format the drive inside the MBP. This time I did a restore from the original drive in the external enclosure onto the newly partitioned 510 SSD. The restore starts out great. RUnning at about 30MB/s (USB limit) the copy starts. Then you start seeing random drops to 0 for up to 20-30 secs. 4h later the entire drive is copied. Still no chance to boot from that drive. Ended up getting several grey screens with stack traces.

Given that the restore from the OSX disk utility is locking up at times, I don't think that doing an install from the DVD would make any difference. FYI I have all the latest Apple patches installed on my system. FYI Yes I do have a full Time Capsule backup of that and all my other Apple computers.

Had no choice but to go back to the prior config. Right now I am running the Intel 160GB SATA II drive, without any issues.

PS: I tried with and without the SMC reset on for every attempt I made.

Message was edited by: fxstein

carl wolf wrote:
"Apple should really fix these problems!"
What problems are attributable to Apple? You buy a computer from Apple, you install a module that hasn't been recommended by Apple, and you experience a problem. What do you see as Apple's involvement? Should Apple perform compatibility testing on every SSD that is available? I don't think so.

Geez.

Apple provides a SATA III interface, and internal HDD are a user replaceable part.

Apple provides no BTO SATA III drives, and virtually no 3rd party SATA III drive works.

Yes, this is Apple's responsibility.

Hello,
I am posting my experience for information purpose only. I installed an Intel 510 SSD into a MBP2011 17'' by replacing the HDD. First time I tried to install the Mac OS on the SSD the installation failed. I reformatted the SSD by writing zero's everywhere and I was able to succesfully install the Mac OS the second time. It booted up correctly; however, after rebooting the mac two times I contantly experienced the colored rotating wheel: everything freezes for a long time (the mac is unusable). I tried with 3Gb negociated speed and 6Gb negociated speed (6Gb can be set by resetting the SMC): nothing works in both cases. Let's hope Apple proposes a fix ASAP. Any input is appreciated.
A frustrated Mac user.

Thanks for the input, but it seems that you're still cloning the drive. As far as I know, SSDs have a difficult time with cloning due to alignment issues:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=331153

As stated before, I suggest reformatting and reinstalling OS X from the DVD provided to the internal SSD of your choice. From there, either reinstall all your apps manually, or restore the drive using Time Machine.

I just want to make sure that this sequence doesn't work. It worked for me, and I haven't seen anyone try it and complain that it's failed.