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Level 4

1,488 points

Apparent incompatability or problem with new SSD

Hi all,

recently upgraded to 10.9 with few issues. Cloned my drive to external. Went about top upgrade my 5-year-old laptop:

MacBook Pro 5,4 (Mid2009) 4GB 250HDD --> Crucial M500 6G SSD + 8GB RAM.

This is a machine with a 3gbps SATA-2 contorller. Some reports of issues with 6G drives, but crucial swore up and down this worked fine in their lab.

INstalled drive. Updated firmware. Booted externally. formatted (HFS+ Journaled). Checked good.

Began clean install of 10.9. Took 4+ ours, including nearly 2 hours for last "one minute remaining". Somethign is very wrong.

Nevr would boto internally. Re-booted external (USB), copied fioles to SSD. Slow, and again, last 10% agonizingly slow. Eventually finsihed.

Tried duplicating those ifle sinternally SSD-SSD. Same or worse - started med-fast, took forever to complete.

Re-installing the OS will nto be helpful if the SSD wont perform.

Any thoughts, tests or swear words i may not have in my repetoir?

Grant

MacBook Pro (15-inch 2.53 GHz), OS X Mavericks (10.9), 4G/250G

Posted on Dec 21, 2013 7:07 AM

32 replies

Dec 21, 2013 11:38 AM in response to Grant Lenahan

Good luck - you may want to see if Terry Lorenz is available when you call.

Clinton

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 21, 2013 12:03 PM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

Used cable? Really?

Seems likely to be someone else's removed problem! no?

The one i pointed to was new, but $25...

any advice...

Grant

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 21, 2013 5:13 PM in response to Grant Lenahan

FYI:

1. TRIM, if anything, made it worse

2. SSD out, mechanical in, RAM in, all is well (or as well as can be hoped for)

Plan to buy the cable and give it a try. Also want to talk to Crucial Monday.

Failing that maybe the fastest 7200 rpm big cache regular drive i can get my hands on.

Any reason to remove and disconnect battery? With unit off there should be no power on that connector, and io certainly hope its ground-make-first-break-last anyway.

I dont have that fancy pentadriver P6. Nor does the local hardware.

Grant

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Dec 22, 2013 12:48 AM in response to Grant Lenahan

There used to be a "Velociraptor" disk 10'000RPM, by Western Digital (not the best name at the moment according to a lot of other threads).

There used to be Seagate "Momentus XT", a sort of fusion drive: I have seen a lot of issues about it.

All a problem by the controller. Again Crucial has the best controller.

Try the cable.

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 22, 2013 6:26 AM in response to Lexiepex

Yea, i already looked at the momentus (ok, since its SATA-2) or the modern hybrids (just claled hybrid) but all appear to be flaky. I'd rather have lsow but steady. I'll try the cable first and go for fast but steady. :-)

Happy Holidays to all,

Grant

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Dec 22, 2013 6:41 AM in response to Grant Lenahan

Like to hear your adventures later 😀

happy holidays to you too.

Lex

Dec 22, 2013 6:56 AM in response to Grant Lenahan

Grant - have you tried calling the Crucial helpline? It's a free number and in the past, when I called them about installing some RAM, they painstakingly took the time to talk me through the whole process whilst I physically took the computer apart and installed the new RAM. Give it a try!

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 22, 2013 6:58 AM in response to Tom in London

Thanks for the suggestion... but oh yes, i have, you likely missed my initial post. Friday night i talked to htem before proceeding, and they left me with - "in any event, we're always here to help". Then they closed for the weekend, leaving me stranded.

I emailed them and they told me TRIM was nto working correctly. TRIM is disabled on Macs.

Strike effing two :-)

Grant

Dec 22, 2013 7:00 AM in response to Grant Lenahan

Oops sorry Grant - didn't see that.

I've read somewhere that TRIM only works on SSDs supplied by Apple.

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Dec 22, 2013 7:05 AM in response to Tom in London

Please Tom, stop bursting in, while not having read the whole thread. All has been said already even Trim.

Dec 22, 2013 7:16 AM in response to Lexiepex

You're the one who burst in. I already concluded my exchange with Grant. So what do you want?

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 22, 2013 7:34 AM in response to Tom in London

All is well, i appreciate the effort in any event. But yes, that ground is well plowed.

Waiting for a cable now, and, as an engineer, hating the fact that i cannot actualyl test the sucker :-)

All i can do is swap the part and hope.

Grant

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 23, 2013 1:41 PM in response to Grant Lenahan

FYI, and no replies needed - i spoke to Crucial this am and they had the same cable problem with their MacBookPro 5,4 - bad cable. I'm very hopeful it will cure the problem.

Two others comments:

1. Crucial suggest enabling TRIM with a 3rd party utility

2. Crucial told me that after install with no TRIm to "idle" the drive with power but no signal applied. I have it in a SATA-USB bridge with no USB cable....

If and when it works I'll post benchmarks.

Grant

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Dec 23, 2013 11:44 PM in response to Grant Lenahan

Hi Grant,

1. Up and till Mavericks, I would agree on the trim command, but with Mavericks I am very hesitant to install it, as I explained earlier. If you really can not resist do not use TrimEabler but Chameleon (and then ONLY the trim, not the other "goodies".

2. The second advice they gave is exactly because the Crucial controller (Marvell) is very good: idling without trim command and no signal lets the Garbage Collection that is in the controller do it's job ("erasing" free space) uninterrupted. You will not notice the effect afterwards, unless the drive is almost full.

Lex

Grant Lenahan Author

Level 4

1,488 points

Dec 29, 2013 7:29 AM in response to Lexiepex

I have not forgotten to update you helpful folks, but still no sign of my new SATA cable....

early HNY.

Grant

Apparent incompatability or problem with new SSD