How many GB/s is the optical drive bay for a Mid 2009 Macbook Pro(5,4)?

I had the near identical problem when putting SSD hybrid drive in my 2008 MacBook Pro Unibody. The ssd hybrid only worked until drive was over 39°C.

I bought a pure SSD and optical drive (60gb) just to boot but had same beach ball problem.

I put standard 320gb into hd bay and momentus-xt 500 into optical bay which to answer your question: 3GBit.

Don't know what bug causes grief at 3Gbit in HD bay but it's a no-go with many if. It most like models.

How did you downgrade your firmware? If I can do that I can put optical drive back inside my Mac.

-awr

Ps. You could probably get just as good a setup using some balsa wood cut to hold drive in exact position as using the drive bay adapter. Google to see what DIY options are there. The adapter is usually very overpriced! Only when bundled is value worth it but you already have the drive.

The older MacBook Pros will not negotiate at 6Gps. At best you'll get 15Gps or 3Gbs. You shouldn't need to downgrade your EFI - it's simply not going to run at the upper limit and neither will your optical bay.

Sorry,

Clinton

lignac wrote:

I've installed a Crucial M4 256GB SSD into the traditional hard drive bay of my Mid 2009, Macbook Pro (5,4). I started getting beachballs immediately after the least bit of intensive CPU usage and pinpointed the problem to be the faulty EFI 1.7 firmware update. I then downgraded to EFI 1.6, and the beachballs ceased, but the problem now is that the Hard Drive controller now only allow for up to 1.5 GB/s interfaces. With that, I'm now only using 25% of the speed potential of my SSD, which is quite frankly a waste of money.

Suggestion. See what firmware you have on your Crucial M4. Clinton and I both use the Crucial M4. Had a few hiccups but when I changed the firmware to 0309, problem got solved. If you're using the newest firmware which is 000F, downgrade to 0309.

Good luck.

I, stupidly, upgraded my firmware on my Crucial m4 512GB with 000f, thinking that I needed the latest and greatest and giving just a cursory glance at the reasons I might need the update. Shortly later, beachballs all around. I not only downgraded the firmware back to 0309 (at the recommendation of a Crucial tech in the UK) but I also reinitialize the drive and restored from a Time Machine back-up.

No more beachballs ever since - everything has been running smoothly for months now. No errors, kernel panics, etc.

If you are running an m4 on a Mac, make certain to use 0309.

Clinton

when I originally installed my M4 256GB, I was amazed how fast it perfomed on my late 08 Macbook Uni.

then there was a price drop for the M4 512GB a month ago and I purchased a few of them. Installed one in my late 2011.

for the likes of me, couldn't figure out why it kept of freezing up on me and it was the first time I actually saw beachballs happening in my Macbook.

had both macbooks side by side, and under system report, my older 256GB was using firmware 0309, negotiated link speed at 3 Gigabit and my late 2011 was using firmware 000F, negotiated link speed at 3 Gigabit.

decided to try and downgrade to 0309 and everything was perfect right after. boot up is at 13 sec. Negotialed Link Speed at 6 Gigabit. No beachball, no freezing.

That was my experience. Thought I'd share it with you in case your firmware is different.