Seagate Momentus XT Disaster

Thank You

A3RD wrote:

Do you think that if I replace the cable and get the 750gb Momentus, it would work?
and don't worry I won't sue you even if you're wrong. lol

It should.

I found out why my negotiate speed is only 1.5gigabit/sec and not 3.

http://www.dailytech.com/13+15+MacBook+Pro+Owners+Still+Plagued+with+SATA+II+Iss ues/article16233.htm

It's the firmware, I can't check what I have right now because I'm not in front of my laptop but most likely I am below 1.7. Reading that article, it sounds like not upgrading is a good thing since 1.7 causes even stock hard drives to stall in some cases.

Not sure what implications this has for my situation, but if I can only get 1.5 speed when installing the Momentus drive, what's the point....??

I'm on 1.7, drive firmware is SM12

The maximum transfer rate from the drive itself is 1.23Gb/s, even a 1.5Gb/s bus exceeds the drive transfer rate, it will perform the same as it would on a 3Gb/s or even 6Gb/s bus.

I've been looking around for a SATA cable for my mid 2009 macbook pro running Snow Leopard and this was all I could find. It seems a bit expensive for a cable but what can you do right?

http://bit.ly/Y36BJD

Do you or anyone else know if I need to get the one with bracket or will without be okay?

btw, I also checked out System Profiler and I think I'm unfortunately already on the 1.7 Firmware. Wish I could downgrade since I've read on many posts that the chance of the drive working is greater when on the 1.6 Firmware.

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,5

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Boot ROM Version: MBP55.00AC.B03

SMC Version (system): 1.47f2

Serial Number (system): W8939QAF66D

Hardware UUID: C3E01883-222C-572B-A404-0F3E82E3EFA7

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

I would consider steering away from that one you linked to. It is listed as a Mid 2009 cable, which is exactly the cable modle that's been causing issues. The trick is to get a newer cable to replace it. If you reference the paragraph below, you'll see a product # which reflects the cable which ended up working for me.

I found mine off ebay for $29. Although I'm not sure if the same seller is on there, the description of my product was Original Apple Macbook Pro 13'' A1278 HDD Hard Drive Cable 821-0814-A tested

That's super good to know. Thanks for saving me from wasting 50 bucks!

Oh hey, you mentioned this worked for you. Did you have a mid 2009 13" like me?

I did have a mid 2009 13". From the looks of it, they're the ones that are going through the cable issues. That's why it's important not to get that same 2009 cable, but one from the model after. More specifically, the cables on those models are SATA 1 cables, rather than SATA 2 cables. My 750GB Momentus XT now works like a charm. Hope that helps.

Hi Matt,

I've got a 1260, running 10.6.8 and 4 gig RAM with the 500 GB momentus XT drive revision 28. It ran FANTASTICALLY for about 6 months. Then I started getting spinning beachballs and freezes that wouldn't respond to force quit. I had to hard quit. I ran Apple hardware test with no problems. I then re-installed and updated Snow Leopard, then from the install disks I repaired my disk and permissions. I had been live repairing to no avail before, but when I repaired from the startup disk, there were maybe 100 permissions that weren't right. Since then, I've been running well. So don't give up hope!

The performance bump has been remarkable on my machine..

Hi Bresmi, Tks for your help.

Do you know which cable do I use for a Late 2008 Macbook 13'' (Macbook5,1)? I couldn't find out.

Tks

A3RD

you can downgrade the firmware from 1.7 to 1.6 firmware

For what it's worth, I just upgraded the stock hard drive for my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro 15" 2.66ghz Unibody (purchased in the first 2 weeks of release, late June '09) with a Momentus XT 750gb (st750lx003) - No problems whatsoever - the drive seems fast (after 2 reboots), quiet.

OS X 10.7 & 10.8 gave me the service battery message, but at ~100% battery post upgrade, it was reporting over 4hours charge (4937mAh according to coconut battery 2.8 from the original 6500 mAh - 76%)

The drive is currently installed in my MBP using the original SATA cable. I just swapped drives - no probs whatsoever. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Here are my steps:

1) hooking up the drive with a cheapo NewEgg 2.5" drive SATA USB enclosure (pretty much the cheapest I could find)

2) Formatted/partiioned the drive it with Disk Utility made sure to it was Mac bootable (GUID)

3) Installed OSX 10.8x via a USB drive (My original drive had Lion on it - and with all of the weird issues people have with 10.8, I wanted the ability to go back to 10.7x in the event of catastrophe) the cheapo enclosure required a second USB port for power, so I actually plugged the 2nd usb plug into a netbook I had around, with a USB stick in the MBP's other USB port)

4) migrated all of my files

5) swapped in the Momentus XT internally

racerboy999 wrote:

For what it's worth, I just upgraded the stock hard drive for my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro 15" 2.66ghz Unibody (purchased in the first 2 weeks of release, late June '09) with a Momentus XT 750gb (st750lx003) - No problems whatsoever - the drive seems fast (after 2 reboots), quiet.

The drive performance will continue to improve over the first 10 boots (approx). You have more to come.

Csound, Ive seen you all over these hybrid drive posts this morning as I'm considering upgrading my October 2011 2.0ghz MBP from the standard toshiba 500GB 5400rpm drive to either a 1TB 7200 or a 750GB hybrid seagate-will I have these issues w the 2011 model???