Nightmare updating new Plextor SSD

jamesebastian said:

Evening Chaps

I've just purchased a Plextor M5S 256GB SSD.
Firstly, I put it into an external enclosure, downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner and ran the program. Once that was finished I started the machine up from the SSD (still an external device), which worked fine.

Before I opened up my MBP, I remembered I had to update the firmware. This is where the nightmare begins.
Downloaded the latest firmare from Plextor 1.05, which was a RAR file, so I expanded that and was left with an ISO image.
I burnt this to a bootable cd and then shut down the laptop and restarted it holding the 'option' key.
I selected the CD and it began to run MS-FREE (if that's what it's called) but then it got stuck and the message I keep getting is 'Device not matched'...

and I'm pulling my hair out because I have no idea what I'm doing wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Click to expand...

First, check the download again. Did you use this?
http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/download?task=view.download&cid=363
I updated an M5S 256GB and the version was 1.04 not 1.05 at that time. I believe the SSD has to be installed in the HD bay in order to run the firmware update, and I used the downloaded iso file to make a bootable DVD, booting from that in the optical drive. Actually did it twice, once with the M5S and then with the M5P Extreme (getting super fast switching the drives in and out!).
In short, I think you should try it again with the drive in the HD bay, not in an external enclosure.

jamesebastian said:

Top man. Download was fine, the problem was resolved when I installed the SSD in the machine.

Thanks for your help.
How are you finding the Plextor? This is my first SSD. Any tips or settings that you recommend I change?

Click to expand...

So far it has been great, very fast and the firmware seems to be very efficient and compatible with TRIM and the Mac platform. In addition, it's a Japanese company with a good reputation and a long history in the computer industry. One of giants on this forum, Hellhammer, suggested the Plextor back when the M3P was the top of the line, and he certainly knows a lot more about SSDs than most. Now there are several drives on the market that have good reviews and/or that are popular, but I am very satisfied with both of the Plextor drives I am using.
Running a Single user mode boot, Command + s keys held down at boot and then running fsck -fy Trims the drive (I enabled TRIM with Chameleon SSD Optimizer http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/features.php), and it does that very quickly, indicating that TRIM has been active previously as it should, without any user action. To tell you the truth, I cannot tell the difference between the M5P Extreme and the M5S, although the MBP is a faster machine, compared to the Mac mini. The reviews on the Plextor drives are generally very good, some complaints about prices, but I got mine at very reasonable prices.
I also used Chameleon SSD Optimizer to enable noatime (to reduce the number of writes) and have set hibernation to zero as shown below:
In this state the Plextor just works, and works very well.
set the sleep mode to zero:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Remove the image to save space:
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage
Create a blanked file:
sudo touch /private/var/vm/sleepimage
Make file immutable:
sudo chflags uchg /private/var/vm/sleepimage

If sudo pmset -g shows: autopoweroff**1,
disable this automatic hibernation mode (happens even if hibernation mode is set to 0 on the new Mac mini 2012 and iMac, and MBP 2012?)
sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0
Set the safe sleep timer (standbydelay) to 20 hours, default is 4200
sudo pmset -a standbydelay 72000
5. sudo pmset -a standby 0
... bit 3 of hibernatemode encourages the dynamic pager to page out inactive pages prior to hibernation. So this appears to be why swap can used after sleeping (even though hibernatemode is 0, so bit 3 is off). Disable this new, possibly buggy behavior by switching off standby: