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10.8.3 update: issue with HDD in optical bay of MacBook Pro

After updating from 10.8.2 to 10.8.3 the second internal HDD which is placed in the optical bay of my MacBook Pro late 09 gets lost after some minutes. That means it suddenly unmounts (with a warning message about improper unmounting) and can't get activated again. Diskutil will not see it any longer. After a restart its mounted - until it spontaneously vanishes again.


Before everything has been working flawlessly for about 2 years, with SSD in the original HDD Bay an the HDD in a optical bay caddy. Firmware is EFI 1.6 (downgraded, because 1.7 won't work properly with such a constellation).


Has anybody else made similar observations or maybe already found workarounds for this issue? I was forced to go back to 10.8.2 because I need this second drive!

Posted on Mar 17, 2013 5:08 AM

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42 replies

Mar 18, 2013 5:54 AM in response to nz4ypt

I did a complete reinstall of the system (with Mountain Lion installer on a USB Stick) over the existing 10.8.3 and then updated from 10.8.0 to 10.8.2. All user data and presets stayed untouched. No problems, everything works again as it did before.


Guess you could also restore from TimeMachine. But in my case the complete reinstall brought back the Restore Partition (which before was missing on the SSD).


Which MacBook model do you have, also late 09 with modified EFI?


Good luck - and maybe somebody comes up with a solution of the problem!

Mar 18, 2013 6:15 AM in response to pebewe

When you are running Mac OS 10.8.3, what link speed has your SATA drive in teh optical bay negotiated? I know that there were/are issues with some of the newer machines getting a 6 Gbps link, but the hardware only works reliably at 3 Gbps. In that case, they have been seeing similar problems as you.


I recently converted my late 2011 MBP to a setup much like yours, and I was having problems with the SSD inthe primary bay dropping out, but the HDD in the optical bay kept on working with no issues. In my case, I think it was related to the SMS (sudden motion sensor) in the primary bay that was causing the SSD to drop out, as once I disabled that, I haven't had the problem since, but it has also been less than 48 hours, so it may return...


When I look at the SATA section in my System Information for my HDD in the optical bay I see:

Intel 6 Series Chipset:


Vendor: Intel

Product: 6 Series Chipset

Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported


Many people have problems when the device in their optical bay negotiates a link speed of 6 Gbps. You might check to see if your link is trying to negotiate a faster connection than your SSD or HDD can safely work at. If it is, you may need to go with a different drive in that bay.

Mar 18, 2013 7:16 AM in response to GeekBoy.from.Illinois

These compatibility problems were known before, that's the reason why I had to downgrade my MBP '09 to EFI firmware 1.6 which onyl supports 1.5 Gbps link speed. (6 Gbps were dreams of the future in 09...) The original EFI 1.7 which would support the 3 Gbps speed of my Intel 320 series SSD caused serious issues when trying to use the optical bay for an additional HDD. There were many discussions in the boards about that. Apple pointed out explicitly that support of third party 3Giga drives except those originally delivered with the Mac can't be guaranteed.


As I mentioned, my configuration has been working flawlessly for almost 2 years, the problems came with 10.8.3. Obviousely some critical parameters of the SATA Bus were changed.


SMS ist switched off here, I know it might cause problems.

Mar 18, 2013 8:21 AM in response to pebewe

i have EXACTLY the same issue.


after reboot, the optibay-hdd vanishes at some point - im using it to store my music archive, there were some lags while playing and later it unmounts.


diskutil cant see it, system report does, it says "unknown": http://d.pr/i/vpfp


what the **** just happened in 10.8.3?


my macbook pro is mid2009, with EFI 1.6 (i had to downgrade too and disable the 1.7 update), negotiated speed is 1.5Gbit.

Mar 18, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Hargitanandor

These are my console logs from today, regarding the HDD in the optibay.


Are they normal?

3/18/13 9:11:17.730 AM com.apple.backupd[4251]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: BAY

3/18/13 9:17:54.621 AM com.apple.backupd[4251]: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/BAY reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

3/18/13 9:35:12.023 AM com.apple.backupd[4251]: Copied 49034 files (6.01 GB) from volume BAY.

3/18/13 9:36:06.477 AM com.apple.backupd[4251]: Copied 5593 files (68.4 MB) from volume BAY.

3/18/13 10:29:13.112 AM fseventsd[38]: event logs in /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (695 1 1020)

3/18/13 10:29:13.140 AM fseventsd[38]: log dir: /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd getting new uuid: B599C55D-3BD9-489F-9531-9E578596423F

3/18/13 12:16:39.910 PM com.apple.mtmd[60]: open on /Volumes/BAY/.MobileBackups/Computer/2013-03-18-112917/Volume/.autodiskmounted: No such file or directory

3/18/13 12:16:41.447 PM com.apple.mtmd[60]: Cleaning up local snapshot store on volume /Volumes/BAY because it has been excluded.

3/18/13 12:35:05.919 PM fseventsd[38]: event logs in /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (3602 0 7552)

3/18/13 12:35:05.933 PM fseventsd[38]: log dir: /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd getting new uuid: B5BBC546-4A2C-4926-A2A6-999FBF0A4E5B

3/18/13 12:35:57.794 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: Spotlight cannot end the session: 1, for /Volumes/BAY

3/18/13 12:35:58.648 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: open on /Volumes/BAY/.MobileBackups/Computer/2013-03-18-123511/Volume/.autodiskmounted: No such file or directory

3/18/13 3:23:19.241 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: open on /Volumes/BAY/.MobileBackups/Computer/2013-03-18-133511/Volume/.autodiskmounted: No such file or directory

3/18/13 3:23:21.278 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: Cleaning up local snapshot store on volume /Volumes/BAY because it has been excluded.

3/18/13 3:31:29.794 PM fseventsd[38]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd/00000000000e329a (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd

3/18/13 3:31:29.795 PM fseventsd[38]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd/00000000000e329a (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd

3/18/13 4:22:55.945 PM fseventsd[38]: event logs in /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (9235 0 13618)

3/18/13 4:22:55.975 PM fseventsd[38]: log dir: /Volumes/BAY/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 30923182-30A2-4CC4-8406-2EDFEF6F95EF

Mar 18, 2013 9:07 AM in response to Hargitanandor

okay, a rebooted after writing my first post to this thread, now, the hdd is gone, here are the logs:


3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: Failed to issue COM RESET successfully after 3 attempts. Failing...

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: jnl: disk1s2: do_jnl_io: strategy err 0x6

3/18/13 5:04:08.000 PM kernel[0]: jnl: disk1s2: write_journal_header: error writing the journal header!

3/18/13 5:04:09.314 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: open on /Volumes/BAY/.MobileBackups/Computer/2013-03-18-162326/Volume/.autodiskmounted: No such file or directory

3/18/13 5:04:09.000 PM kernel[0]: jnl: disk1s2: close: journal 0xffffff803128ecc0, is invalid. aborting outstanding transactions

3/18/13 5:04:10.889 PM com.apple.mtmd[70]: Cleaning up local snapshot store on volume /Volumes/BAY because it has been excluded.

Mar 19, 2013 4:13 AM in response to pebewe

FWIW, have you tried a PRAM and/or SMC reset? Sometimes

this can resolve hardware configuration problems by forcing a

a reload of the hardware parameters.


Also FWIW, there is always a risk of problems with OS updates anytime

you have a system that is not a standard/supported production

configuration. The problem may be corrected with future update

but as this is not a production configuration Apple is not neccessarily

responsible to fix it.

Mar 20, 2013 3:41 AM in response to pebewe

I have a MBP mid 2009 had to downgrade to EFI 1.6 to make it work. With the HDD. Just upgraded to 10.8.3. Now locked up with spinning wheel.

It would seem from all the coments that there is a problem with compatibility with this particular MBP. Apple don't seem willing to acknowledge the problem but we all know it exists

I guess I'll have to downgrade to 10.8.2. I hope it all works OK

10.8.3 update: issue with HDD in optical bay of MacBook Pro

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