Seagate Momentus XT Disaster

Jumper didn't work for me. ordered a new cable as I now have 2 Sata 2 drive's Seagate XP and WD Blue - neither can I install Lion on. ordered today - Wish me luck!

MacBook Pro 15" A1286 2009 2010 2011 HDD Hard Drive Bracket Cable 821-0812-A

merlep00 wrote:

Jumper didn't work for me. ordered a new cable as I now have 2 Sata 2 drive's Seagate XP and WD Blue - neither can I install Lion on. ordered today - Wish me luck!

Return the Scorpio Blue and replace it with a Scorpio Black, the cable may or may not be causing the SeagateXP issues (which XP is it and what is the firmware revision)

I would change the cable before I did anything else.

Firmware is up to date on the Seagate drive, Seagate also already shipped me a second drive to try and it isn't much better, tried the jumper and that didn't work either that is why I got the WD ( which was a good price ), I have tell the 1st week of Jan to return the WD drive. So Know I have 2 500 GB drives that won't work properly in this computer and deceided to byte the bullet and try the cable ( ordered it today). I have a 2006 Mini with only a 60 Gb drive I may use the WD drive for it if I can get the Seagate to run Lion on the Pro. I know I feel like I am throwing good money after good money but I gotta try. 😟

The replacement drive is a Seagate 500Xt with firmware SD28, yes?

and you should exchange the Scorpio Blue for a Black, I am serious.

Yes the firmware on both Seagate drives is SD28, and will check out the WD blue an Black :). Thank you!

I have a MacBook Pro 15' (mid 2009) [MacBookPro5,4]. I installed Seagate Momentus XT 500 Gb. For me, the only way it worked was by reducing the speed from 3 Gb to 1.5 Gb with a jumper. The speed of of computer is better than before, but probably not what it should be expected.

Here are the characteristics according to the System Report:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia

Product: MCP79 AHCI

Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

ST95005620AS:

Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)

Model: ST95005620AS

Revision: SD28

Serial Number: XXXXXXX

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Rotational Rate: 7200

Medium Type: Rotational

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

As you can notice, the NVidia has a link speed of 3 Gb, but the negotiated speed is 1.5 Gb, that's why I had to jump the Hard Drive to a lower speed.

I have no idea why the controler NVidia can communicate at 3 Gb, but the negotiating speed is 1.5 Gb. I would like to know from people familiar with this what this means, and if I can change the negotiated speed to 3 Gb.

Thanks

The mximum tranfer rate of your drive is 103MB/s (0.38Gb/s) it is much less than 1.5Gb/s, the negotiated speed won't affect it, unless you had 4 drives all working at the same time.

Check your cable, many have improved their link speed by changing it.

Lets please attempt to be nice to each other and try our colective best to solve the issues void of emotion.

The next resonable step for someonme who has more time/desire to solve this is to make a spreadsheet comparing all of the issues, and working examples against what model they are and what model xt they have. Assuming the firmwere is up to date. Then it should be easy to see if there is a rime or reason. trend.

I believe the transfer rate of 103mbs is the speed of the rotational part of the drive, not the speed of the temporary memory that makes this drive so great. A drive speed test copies a new file to and from the drive wile I believe the items stored in temporary memory are based on what gets used the most. Does anyone know more about this?

Confirming the last post and my above comment, I used black magic disk speed test running from the start up drive with the destination drive being the second internal XT 750 listed as having a 6mbs nagotiated link speed on my macmini5,1 OS 10.7.4 2gb ram. The results were 95mbs +/- 5. But I know perfectly well that the drive is much faster than that doing the normal tasks like booting.

oh, and yes, selecting a drive as the start up device saves time in the boot sequence if there are multiple options and the default drive is either not present or not working properly.

The speed of 103 is the average over a large number of differing read/write tests, it is certainly capable of more, maybe as much as double that but it it still less than the 1.5Gb/s of a Sata I bus.

The FAST algorithm used on the 750 is based on a most regularly used and boot requirements list. The 500 is not, and is not very fast either.

Good news for the Seagate fix. I've replaced the HD cable (as several others have mentioned here) and it works for me too. Relief.

My Seagate 750Gb Momentus was running only on an external drive card - now it runs fine internally. Looks good. Boots fast (Snow Leopard). Quiet .. though some odd 'scraping' noises if the Mac is tilted slightly whilst turned on .... ??!

My MBP was a mid 2009 model 2.53GHz Intel Core Duo (though purchased in the UK early 2010). The new cable was £16.99 (pluspost) via Amazon (search as "MacBook Pro A1286 HDD Hard Drvie Cable 821-0812-A" [NB ‘Drive’ is mispellt “Drvie”on the relevant webpage!]

The NVIDIA readings are now:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia

Product: MCP79 AHCI

Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Hope this helps others with the same issues.

Thats super news. is that the 4th one that was fixed with a new cord?

Which is like .001 seconds...lol. However, you stated the suggestion like it was part of the solution to the whole drive working....nice try. Great suggestion...not. We ought to take up a collection for CSound and send him to a Miss Manners course. Maybe that would help his demeanor on this message board, but I doubt it. Narcissists usually don't realize that they have a problem.

Anyway, I had to give up on the whole seagate momentus thing, I just don't have that kind of time. So I put a 256gb SSD drive in the Macbook Pro and it has worked flawlessly with link speed at 3GB/s. I put the Seagate Momentus in a Mac Mini and have had no problem with that. Headache solved. Some things just aren't worth the time.

Don Roedl wrote:

Which is like .001 seconds...lol. However, you stated the suggestion like it was part of the solution to the whole drive working....nice try.

I made no suggestion, do you have comprehension issues?

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP544?viewlocale=en_US

2.53 processor

Well I got a Sata 2 from ebay ( verified will seller before purchasing ), Installed it and tested with original HD worked fine. Then bit the bullet and installed the Seagate Momentus drive from Leopard - Snow Leopard - Lion no glitches. The new cable did the Job! Now to install all the extra software.

*NEW OEM MacBook Pro A1286 HDD Hard Drvie Cable 821-0812-A 821-0989-A 821-1198-A

Actually there aren't many day that go by on this forum without a post about a 2009 MBP drive problem and most of the time it is the cable that has failed. So Apple used Low End parts in the original building of that model and this is why so many people have had problems, not only with the Seagate XT series drives.