13", 15" MacBook Pro Owners Still Plagued with SATA II Issues

[vijayninel]

13", 15" MacBook Pro Owners Still Plagued with SATA II Issues

SATA II nightmares continue for MacBook Pro owners

It's been nearly three months since Apple released its 1.7 firmware update to address performance limiting issues with the initial 1.6 firmware that shipped with the latest 13" and 15" MacBook Pro notebooks. The 1.6 firmware limited interface speeds of SATA II drive to just 1.5 Gbps instead of the full spec speed of 3.0 Gbps.

The documentation provided with the 1.7 firmware update notes that:

MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 addresses an issue reported by a small number of customers using drives based on the SATA 3Gbps specification with the June 2009 MacBook Pro. While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbps, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.

The key phrasing here is "Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported." Given that the latest 13" and 15" MacBook Pros have a SATA II interface and that most HDDs and SSDs use a SATA II interface, this wording by Apple is quite peculiar. The SATA II interface is after all a storage standard that is used by nearly every new notebook and desktop computer sold today.

Considering that a 128GB SSD option on a 13" MacBook Pro is going for $400, many owners have purchased cheaper alternatives from the likes of OCZ and Patriot which offer Indilinix-based SSDs that offer performance that rival Intel's X-25M lineup. These Indilinx drives are also much faster than the Samsung-supplied SSDs offered by Apple. However, owners are finding out that Apple's implementation of the SATA II specification on 13" and 15" MacBook Pro models coupled with the "fixed" 1.7 firmware are causing a lot of headaches.

An 89-page thread on the Apple Discussion forums tells the tale of numerous users battling with SATA II SSDs not originally supplied by Apple and also with traditional SATA II HDDs from the likes of Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. User IanBurrell, the 13" MacBook Pro user that started the original thread on June 23, detailed his problems with a 320GB HDD that he took from an older MacBook to put in his new machine, "After the firmware update yesterday, the machine has started freezing randomly; the spinner comes up sometimes when reading or writing to the drive. The hard drive, a WD Scorpio Blue, supports SATA II. My suspicion is that there are intermittent data errors when using the SATA 3 Gbps interface. It could be an incompatibility between the controller and drive or the ribbon cable isn't good enough for newer SATA."

Vitaeergo confirmed these issues with a post stating, "I had an Intel X25 installed in my new (2 days old) MBP 15 which worked splendidly before the update. Afterwards, the MBP won't even recognize the drive, although I can use the drive in other machines."

User mvillarreal posted this morning, "A couple of days ago i upgraded the HD of my Macbook Pro unibody with a Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s. And i stared to have the same problem as everybody. The MBP works fine most of the time but something triggers a pause in the hard drive, monitoring with the Active Monitor when copying a 34 Gb file, the hard drive does to 0 for about 15 to 20 sec. every 1.8 to 2 Gb copied."

Some users, however, are even having problems with their SATA II drives that were originally supplied with their MacBooks after performing the 1.7 firmware update. "I'm experiencing the freezing (spinwheel etc) very often as well, but I just have the standard 250gb hard drive that comes in the high end 13 inch macbook pro. It only started after the firmware upgrade, too. Does that make sense," noted 13" MacBook Pro user Kevin222.

Apple has still not responded to user complaints over the SATA II issues -- in fact, some users have even gone so far as to use an unsupported 1.7 firmware-to-1.6 firmware downgrade tool to bring their machines back to "safer" 1.5 Gbps SATA I transfer speeds. Some users have speculated that the problem is simply a poorly designed SATA cable between the HDD/SSD and the motherboard or a faulty SATA II implementation that Apple fails to acknowledge. Previous MacBooks and MacBook Pros using the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M platform don't have these SATA II issues, so the latter could be possible.

Despite the problems, Apple remains mum about the issues and doesn't appear to be willing to talk about them or a possible fix.


Source: DailyTech - 13", 15" MacBook Pro Owners Still Plagued with SATA II Issues

[KiD0M4N]

I had noticed that a few times... basically the OS being over jealous at times with the HDD power savings.

Using HDAPM and setting the HDD to high performance mode solved it for me. Just another day in the Macworld. Unfortunately, most of the Mac users are not tech savvy enough to figure all that out. Waiting for Apple to package something up and present it.

[TheDevil]

^^Kid0 is it an effective fix or just a band-aid remedy?

P.S: Actually, thats whats keeping me from pulling the trigger on a MBP 13. (and the MMC sticking out almost more than half its butt outside the body , Serious design flaw IMO)

[Ad1tya]

^^ You use an MMC all the time?..

Thought people only use it to transfer photo's etc.

[abthegreat]

okies kido will try it my mbp 15 tends to hang without any cpu load if i am seeing a muvee and transferring files or anything over stressing on the hdd,the power saving was what i thought but never researched upon it

Where do i find this /usr/local/bin??

[KiD0M4N]

Originally Posted by TheDevil ^^Kid0 is it an effective fix or just a band-aid remedy? P.S: Actually, thats whats keeping me from pulling the trigger on a MBP 13. (and the MMC sticking out almost more than half its butt outside the body , Serious design flaw IMO)

Originally Posted by abthegreat okies kido will try it my mbp 15 tends to hang without any cpu load if i am seeing a muvee and transferring files or anything over stressing on the hdd,the power saving was what i thought but never researched upon it Where do i find this /usr/local/bin??

Its a very effective fix. Please don't play around without knowing what exactly you are doing.

You might have to create /usr/local/bin as it might not exist already.

mkdir -p /usr/local/bin

Make sure you chmod a+x hdamp

Rest should be pretty self explanatory: http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

[CompanionCube]

ah! is that why my macbook copies data @ 2MBps speeds

[KiD0M4N]

Originally Posted by CompanionCube ah! is that why my macbook copies data @ 2MBps speeds

Nope that would be some other issue altogether.

[TheDevil]

Originally Posted by Ad1tya ^^ You use an MMC all the time?.. Thought people only use it to transfer photo's etc.

Why not use it all the time if there's an option to? And there I was foolishly thinking that MMC cards could hold everything :error:.
Aaah Well, Now we all know what to expect at the next WWDC

Originally Posted by KiD0M4N Its a very effective fix. Please don't play around without knowing what exactly you are doing. You might have to create /usr/local/bin as it might not exist already. mkdir -p /usr/local/bin Make sure you chmod a+x hdamp Rest should be pretty self explanatory: hdapm Download page

Now there's something that looks like Aramaic/Hebrew to me!!
Please make a Guide for us Ub3r Command Line n00bs, we will bless you with Old Age, more and some more good 's too.

[initpidzero]

LOL, they are simple unix commands, look for them very easy to figure out.