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Level 1

4 points

No boot condition after upgrade to 10.8.3, EFI 1.6, Mid-2009 15" MBP 2.53Ghz

Hi,

I've got a Mid-2009 15" MBP. After I upgraded to 10.8.3, my computer got into a situation where, upon waking from sleep, it became unresponsive, and then gave me the "no entry" sign after I hard-rebooted it.

I took the drive out, put it in an external enclosure, found that it booted via USB. I then put the drive back in the computer and to my surprise, it booted and worked properly -- for about a week, at which time the problem recurred.

Some more detail: a while back I upgraded the HDD to a Seagate Momentus 7200 750GB, model ST9750420AS. I encountered poor performance, spinning beach balls, refusal to wake from hibernate, etc. I came upon the EFI 1.6 monster thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2054387) and downgraded my EFI to 1.6 and kept it there. Everything worked great for more than a year, until the 10.8.3 update and no boot.

It looks like some people who downgraded to 1.6 are having issues with 10.8.3 as well, but with an HDD/SSD in the optical drive (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4895074). I can confirm I'm having issues with it when the optical drive is intact and I'm using a SATA HDD in the HDD bay. This is a supported configuration (my owner's manual even has instructions for upgrading the HDD).

The second time it happened I tried what the folks in the second thread above did and downgraded to 10.8.0, then upgraded to 10.8.2. I can say that at this time it seems to be working. So my questions are:

1) Is 10.8.2 the last Lion update this MBP will ever be able to install?

2) Has anyone who was previously running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.2 had this issue and had success with the 10.8.3 / EFI 1.7 combination (upgrading both at the same time)?

3) Has Apple or anyone else found a definitive list of HDD/SSDs that work reliably with this rather finicky logic board/disk controller?

4) Anyone else running EFI 1.6 / 10.8.3 having a similar experience? Should I be worried about the longevity/integrity of my hardware at this point?

Thanks. Please chime in especially if you have a similar configuration/experience.

Alex

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 26, 2013 5:27 PM

Best reply

Scott Buchanan1

Level 1

25 points

Posted on Mar 26, 2013 7:52 PM

I just four days going through this pain. I had a wd7500 drive which I had previously downgraded the EFI to 1.6 to get to work. I upgraded to 10.8.3 and the system would only boot about 1 in 10 times. Once booted it worked fine. I assumed that the drive had gone bad and had WD send a replacement under their warranty, which they did very promptly. I installed and restored from Time Machine (an amazingly painless process) and had the same problem. I then thought I had a logic board problem and was getting ready to go to the apple store when I decided to put the original disk back in. Poof, booted right up. I had resigned myself to getting a new disk. In doing so I figured I'd update the EFI back to 1.7 in preparation for that and low and behold everything is now working just fine.

In conclusion, for me, after upgrading to 10.8.3, upgrading to EFI 1.7 made everything work again.

View in context

46 replies

Mar 28, 2013 7:47 AM in response to siebenundzwei

@siebenundzwei

Sorry for not being clear. What I meant is putting back in my original WD7500 drive. I had two during my debugging.

Mar 29, 2013 1:57 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

@Scott

please post the modelnumber of you 750 GB WDC drive

Mar 29, 2013 7:50 AM in response to siebenundzwei

Please look at earlier posts before requesting info. I had already been asked that question.

WD7500BPKT which I believe is the Scorpio Black but that is the model number.

Mar 31, 2013 1:03 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

@Scott

Thanks for you replys.

But I like to know the exact modelnumber/revision as its shown in systemprofiler.

There are different drive revisions. For example:

WD7500BPKT-00PK4T0

WD7500BPKT-22PK4T0

WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0

Systemprofiler provides the following information about my drive:

WDC WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0 Media

Mar 31, 2013 8:03 AM in response to siebenundzwei

Media Name: WDC WD7500BPKT-22PK4T0 Media

cbucks

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2013 11:54 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Hi Scott

Just to confirm does your drive look like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136835

I recently purchased a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 1 TB drive and have a MacbookPro5,4 with OSX 10.8.3 and EFI 1.7. When I install the Toshiba drive all I get is a file folder with a blinking question mark. When I take the drive out and use a usb adapter I can boot to the drive via usb. I have somewhat given up on this drive and wondering if this is the drive you have and whether it is working on 10.8.3 EFI 1.7?

Anybody else have other drives that are successfully working on 10.8.3 EFI 1.7 with MacbookPro5,4?

Mar 31, 2013 12:02 PM in response to cbucks

@cbucks

Yes that's the drive I bought last May.

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 5, 2013 7:40 AM in response to abarsam

A belated update on this.

A few days ago I happed to come across this document for my ST9750420AS:

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/7200.5 %20(Desaru)/100610629a.pdf

In it, it states:

"Serial ATA drives are designed for easy installation with no jumpers, terminators, or other settings. It is not necessary to set any jumpers on this drive for proper operation. The jumper block adjacent to the signal connector is for factory use only."

HOWEVER, one of the jumper configurations is "Limit data transfer rate to 1.5 Gbits per second". On a lark, I tried putting a jumper into it. System (EFI 1.6 / ML 10.8.2) booted and behaved fine; Profiler confirmed 1.5G SATA connection.

I then updated EFI to 1.7. So far so good. I then updated ML to 10.8.3.

The system is now running stable for a few days, including SafeSleep.

I'm not sure about the WD drives, though. According to:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/981/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdG ltZS8xMzY1MTcyNDU3L3NpZC9RMm1YeFltbA%3D%3D#satadesktopjump

There *are* jumper settings for the WD mobile SATA drives, but they are only for "reduced power spinup" and "spread spectrum clocking". I don't know if those are relevant, but may be worth trying.

It may also be worth asking WD if it's possible to limit the WD7500 drives to SATA 1.5 via software/firmware update. That really seems to be the thing that made my MBP and this drive finally play nice.

I hope this helps someone. Thanks for all your thoughts.

Swndr

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2013 8:03 AM in response to abarsam

Thanks for this. I've opened a support issue with Western Digital and will report back.

My situation is:

Late 2009 MBP

Western Digital Scorpio Blue HDD (worked fine for a year)

EFI 1.6 (had to go down from 1.7 for the known issues)

Also unable to boot after updating to 10.8.3 so now back on 10.8.2 (temporarily I hope).

Apr 5, 2013 8:09 AM in response to Swndr

You may want to look at

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1337/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvd GltZS8xMzY1MTc0NDUyL3NpZC9JbjFLRlltbA%3D%3D

for the jumper setting for the WD7500BPKT drive. I'm still using mine at 3GB but if you want to downgrade this seems to be the jumper.

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 5, 2013 8:13 AM in response to Scott Buchanan1

Scott, I believe that's for the desktop SATA drives. I think the mobile SATA drives have only a four-pin jumper block. Actually, this should be the link above, I got the wrong section in my above post:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/981/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdG ltZS8xMzY1MTcyNDU3L3NpZC9RMm1YeFltbA%3D%3D#satamobilejump

Swndr

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2013 8:22 AM in response to abarsam

Thanks both. Before I take my computer apart, does the jumper shunt come with the drive and can it be moved without tools? I don't know about any of this stuff tbh.

WD came back to me saying:

'I need to inform, that solution to your issue lies in a matter of Apple Support.

Unfortunately we do not support issues related to the Mac Operating System.'

What a surprise...

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 5, 2013 8:25 AM in response to abarsam

I can't speak directly to your WD drive, but my Seagate drive didn't come with a shunt. I had to cannibalize one from a broken drive on a machine in our lab.

That response from WD sounds like it might be worth escalating to someone higher-up than first-line support. Point them to this thread and the linked ones so they can see the issues are widespread.

Hope this helps,

Alex

May 20, 2013 10:11 AM in response to abarsam

Hello Alex,

Are you still running smoothly with your Seagate drive jumped for 1.5gb/s data on EFI 1.7 and OSX 10.8.3.?

I'm in the same boat as everyone else here...

Mid-2009 MBP (15"). I upgraded to a WD 500gb Scorpio Black drive and had the boot/SBOD issues on EFI 1.7. Downgraded to 1.6 and all was good... until 10.8.3.

Been pulling my hair with the bad boot ups and freezing when coming out of sleep mode.

Every few days I would use DiskWarror to reorganize out of order sectors on my disk.

That would work for a few days or weeks, but issues always returned.

Eventually RMA'd the drive with WD hoping it was something that SMART scans weren't reporting.

But fresh drive and fresh installs only had the same problems...

Quite relieved to finally find a thread where folks having the same problems as me.

Now, I'm trying to decide whether to just stay on my current drive with EFI 1.6 and OSX 10.8.2 or get a Seagate drive with data transfer throttling and hope I can continue updating OSX versions.

I tell you... its pretty sad that Apple is not dealing with this issue head on. Its been going on for some time now with EFI 1.7. If this was a PC laptop, I get MS not dealing with it. Go buy another $500 laptop that's more current. But this is a $1500 piece of equipment that should not be relegated to a paper weight after less than 4 years. Shame on Apple.

Thanks

Josh

abarsam Author

Level 1

4 points

May 20, 2013 10:39 AM in response to tater-316

Hi Josh,

I'm happy to report that my MBP has been running smoothly on the Seagate ST9750420AS for the last couple of months ever since I jumpered it to 1.5GB/s. EFI 1.7, ML 10.8.3.

I can't guarantee it'll work for you, but for $60-70 I think it'd be worth a shot.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Alex

No boot condition after upgrade to 10.8.3, EFI 1.6, Mid-2009 15" MBP 2.53Ghz