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SSD and spinning beach ball

Hello ~


I just installed a Crucial M4 SSD into my 2011 MBP. I transferred over everything, and it boots in less than 17 seconds. However, now I occasionally get a spinning beach ball that can persist for up to what seems about a minute. At this time, everything is "frozen", I can access no resources on my MBP, other than my mouse pointer.


Is there some OS preference I need to set to tell my MBP it now has an SSD and treat the drive as such? All I want to do is utilze the MBP to it's full potential without the spinning beach ball interruptions. Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.


Thanks,


Chaz

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 10, 2011 5:28 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 18, 2011 3:44 PM

Well, I had to answer my own question it looks like.


As it turns out, Crucial was well aware of the issue, and has taken steps to eliminate the problem. And NO, it has nothing to do with TRIM Support, and NO it has nothing to do with SMS. Is it bad to turn TRIM Support on and SMS off, no, but it doesn't do anything to make the spinning beach-ball to go away either.


Here's the scoop. Crucial's first release of the M4 has a bug that causes long delays in responding to some (perhaps all?) host OS's, Mac OS X 10.6.x happens to be one of them. So, Crucial came out with a "0002" revision of the firmware for their new M4 drives.


To patch it, you need true Windows only hardware with BIOS, and you have to configure the BIOS so that it can update the firmware. To find the instructions and firmware updates, go to the following web site, and find your appropriate model. If you follow their instructions, you should not have any problems. It worked for me.


http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx


Good luck, and happy SSD'ing!

4 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 18, 2011 3:44 PM in response to ChazH

Well, I had to answer my own question it looks like.


As it turns out, Crucial was well aware of the issue, and has taken steps to eliminate the problem. And NO, it has nothing to do with TRIM Support, and NO it has nothing to do with SMS. Is it bad to turn TRIM Support on and SMS off, no, but it doesn't do anything to make the spinning beach-ball to go away either.


Here's the scoop. Crucial's first release of the M4 has a bug that causes long delays in responding to some (perhaps all?) host OS's, Mac OS X 10.6.x happens to be one of them. So, Crucial came out with a "0002" revision of the firmware for their new M4 drives.


To patch it, you need true Windows only hardware with BIOS, and you have to configure the BIOS so that it can update the firmware. To find the instructions and firmware updates, go to the following web site, and find your appropriate model. If you follow their instructions, you should not have any problems. It worked for me.


http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx


Good luck, and happy SSD'ing!

Jun 24, 2011 12:40 PM in response to ChazH

I have a MBP 17" (Early 2011), 2.3GHz, built the week of June 13, so SATA III (6Gb) is supported on both internal ports. Installed a Crucial M4 256GB SATA III SSD, and have had all the same stalling and beachball problems everyone else is having.


I've flashed the SSD to the 0002 firmware, tried enabling TRIM, installed the LPM patch, reset the SMC controller and finally last night, upgraded to 10.6.8.


None of these have worked, and the machine still stalls out with the SSD in the internal HD bay. I'm now going to try returning it for a SATA II SSD, which are known to work fine.


Basically, SATA III is broken in the Early 2011 MBP...

Jun 25, 2011 5:33 AM in response to stembridge

Ok, just to play devil's advocate, and I'm sure you did everything right, but did you very that 0002 is installed, and that TRIM is enabled? You can find out in the System Profiler, clicking on Serial-ATA. Also, you may want to try turning off SMS and zapping the PRAM (now called NVRAM). Also, some have found that after you turn on TRIM, if you turn it off again, that sometimes stops the spinning beach-ball.


It's entirely possible that the SSD drive you have is defective. I must admit the 6Gbps is nice to have!


Good to know that both internal drive interfaces support SATA III, thanks for the tip! I suppose it maikes sense as both use the same chipset, Intel 6 Series, AHCI v. 1.30 supported.


Don't get discouraged!

SSD and spinning beach ball

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