MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 Problems

[yoak]

Originally Posted by djeans

I get the sme forbidden sign when trying to downgrade firmware. Has anyone figured this out yet?

Do you have the same mbp as me?
Looks like the fix dosen´t work on this model.
I did reset the PRAM (hold down alt+R & cmd+P on start up) and it improved the performance a lot on my mbp. I still get the odd beach ball, but not nearly as often as before

[Eatsleepdrivesc]

Do I need to downgrade? I have a mid 09 17" MBP. and the same thing happened to me too i got the do not cross sign. I just got a samsung 830

[Eatsleepdrivesc]

Am I getting the full speed that my MBP can handle? I think so?!

[ifraaank]

Originally Posted by Eatsleepdrivesc

Am I getting the full speed that my MBP can handle? I think so?!

How do you get negotiated link speed at 3gbps? I'm only getting 1,5 with my standard HDD? If it's the Samsung SSD I'm definitely getting that one...

And yes, I think you are.

[irontony]

Macbook Pro 5,4 mid 2009 model - OSX 10.7.5

Factory HD failed.

Brought new Western Digital 500GB Blue model WD5000BPVT and it take 3x longer to do anything. Installing, booting, and would freeze randomly.

Long story short had to replace it with a non "BPVT" version.


So got the Black version WD5000BPKT

Black version acted as expected however would experience "beach ball of death" randomly for no apparent reason.

Again long story short I had to flashback to EFI v1.6 as others have suggested. SATA link speed is now down to 1.5 (SATA 1 speed) but I have a stable system again.

(obviously I did the usual troubleshooting first, reset PRAM, repair disk, reinstallation's, test other HD's etc)

[Eatsleepdrivesc]

Originally Posted by ifraaank

How do you get negotiated link speed at 3gbps? I'm only getting 1,5 with my standard HDD? If it's the Samsung SSD I'm definitely getting that one...

And yes, I think you are.

Yep. Its a Samsung 830 256GB!

[ifraaank]

Originally Posted by Eatsleepdrivesc

Yep. Its a Samsung 830 256GB!

I got one for christmas, and i get the "Negotiated link speed" at 3Gbps!! This is faster than the standard drive. Before it was at 1.5Gbps. And I didn't downgrade or anything! I'm really happy now!

I am getting write speeds at 200MB/s and read speeds at 250MB/s!

[Eatsleepdrivesc]

Originally Posted by ifraaank

I got one for christmas, and i get the "Negotiated link speed" at 3Gbps!! This is faster than the standard drive. Before it was at 1.5Gbps. And I didn't downgrade or anything! I'm really happy now!

I am getting write speeds at 200MB/s and read speeds at 250MB/s!

Same!!!

[phased]

wow, after reading this thread i'm well confused. i was hoping to install a 256GB SSD into my mid-2009 MBP 3.06GHz 17" but now i'm plainly afraid. i don't have the know-how to work through all these potential issues.

is there a known way to successfully and painlessly do what i'm trying to do? i've got a factory 7200RPM HDD in there already which i'd be willing to move to the optical bay (i now understand it might be easier to have the SSD where the HDD normally lives).

i've always been looking at the crucial m4 256GB (the v4 would be apt but is apparently a little dodgy. plus i don't mind the idea of future-proofing the SSD should i update to something capable of SATA 6Gb/s in the near future). although i now notice i can get a Samsung 830 256GB for a little less locally.. is this a better option?

i'm not sure if this is topical, but my system information shows:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

and is my 17" vintage a different beast to the 15", or only the 13"? either way, seems i've got a tricky model to upgrade..

thanks for any words of wisdom, guys.

[Tenashus1]

Originally Posted by phased

wow, after reading this thread i'm well confused. i was hoping to install a 256GB SSD into my mid-2009 MBP 3.06GHz 17" but now i'm plainly afraid. i don't have the know-how to work through all these potential issues.

is there a known way to successfully and painlessly do what i'm trying to do? i've got a factory 7200RPM HDD in their already which i'd be willing to move to the optical bay (i now understand it might be easier to have the SSD where the HDD normally lives).

i've always been looking at the crucial m4 256GB (the v4 would be apt but is apparently a little dodgy. plus i don't mind the idea of future-proofing the SSD should i update to something capable of SATA 6Gb/s in the near future). although i now notice i can get a Samsung 830 256GB for a little less locally.. is this a better option?



i'm not sure if this is topical, but my system information shows:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

and is my 17" vintage a different beast to the 15", or only the 13"? either way, seems i've got a tricky model to upgrade..

thanks for any words of wisdom, guys.

I'm not sure how this addresses your question but, the Sandisk Extreme SSD has the exact firmware ready (r211m) to run a mid 2009 MBP at a negotiated link speed of 3.0. Very smooth install of the drive, and then easy burn of the ISO to complete the firmware upgrade with a CD : http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/de...12314/kw/r211m

[phased]

Originally Posted by Tenashus1

I'm not sure how this addresses your question but, the Sandisk Extreme SSD has the exact firmware ready (r211m) to run a mid 2009 MBP at a negotiated link speed of 3.0. Very smooth install of the drive, and then easy burn of the ISO to complete the firmware upgrade with a CD : http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/de...12314/kw/r211m

thanks, tenashus1. that certainly does address my question by means of a recommendation. so then, is the sandisk my only 'out of the box' option?

to be frank, i'd prefer to stick with the M4 or 830, as they seem to be better SSDs looking into the future. i just spoke with a representative from crucial and he was pretty adamant the M4 would work just fine, out of the box, and at a link speed of 3.0 in my vintage MBP. has there been firmware upgrades since all of these problems were encountered? and is this SATA thing the only potential issue i'm facing? has anyone installed an M4 into their non-13" 2009 MBP recently with success?

(out of interest - whilst my link speed is 3.0 (SATA II, right?), my negotiated link speed is currently reading only 1.5 with my stock 7200rpm - is this normal?)

[Tenashus1]

Originally Posted by phased

thanks, tenashus1. that certainly does address my question by means of a recommendation. so then, is the sandisk my only 'out of the box' option?

to be frank, i'd prefer to stick with the M4 or 830, as they seem to be better SSDs looking into the future. i just spoke with a representative from crucial and he was pretty adamant the M4 would work just fine, out of the box, and at a link speed of 3.0 in my vintage MBP. has there been firmware upgrades since all of these problems were encountered? and is this SATA thing the only potential issue i'm facing? has anyone installed an M4 into their non-13" 2009 MBP recently with success?

(out of interest - whilst my link speed is 3.0 (SATA II, right?), my negotiated link speed is currently reading only 1.5 with my stock 7200rpm - is this normal?)

Crucial offers similar firmware support for Mac. M4 is good. I have one on my 2012 cMBP and it's doing a fine job. Speedy at 6.0. Take a look at the Sandisk reviews on Amazon. Very favorable and reliable. I have one running on my wife's mid 2009 MBP with the most recent firmware and it's running a smooth 3.0. Samsung, while great, does not currently offer firmware updates for Mac. That was a deciding factor for me in buying Crucial and Sandisk for my machines.

I don't have the answer for your last question though on the 7200rpm HDD. All I can say is there's no comparison in performance between an HDD and and SSD. The SSD trumps the HDD by far even at 3.0.

[phased]

Originally Posted by Tenashus1

Crucial offers similar firmware support for Mac. M4 is good. I have one on my 2012 cMBP and it's doing a fine job. Speedy at 6.0. Take a look at the Sandisk reviews on Amazon. Very favorable and reliable. I have one running on my wife's mid 2009 MBP with the most recent firmware and it's running a smooth 3.0. Samsung, while great, does not currently offer firmware updates for Mac. That was a deciding factor for me in buying Crucial and Sandisk for my machines.

I don't have the answer for your last question though on the 7200rpm HDD. All I can say is there's no comparison in performance between an HDD and and SSD. The SSD trumps the HDD by far even at 3.0.

thanks again for your response, tenashus1. i do note OWC have some nice options too, albeit a little more expensive - they're as good a option as sandisk or crucial for my mac?

buying a kit from them with their noted data doubler included might just be my best (easiest) option:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDMBSSD240/

[Tenashus1]

A little overpriced at times, but good from what I've read. The OWC Electra is made for 3.0 gb.

[magidragoon]

I have a MacBook Pro 5,4 mid2009 model. After my HDD died I replaced ith with a Western Digital WD5000BEKT model. I had the beach ball issues and used the downgrade to get to EFIv1.6 with SATA1 speeds.

While I no longer have the beach ball effect, I do have applications hang sometimes (not the same type of hang as the SATA2 issue as only the single application quits responding). Generally my computer's performance is weak.

Has anyone else had this after replacing the stock drive with a model effected by the 1.7 firmware? I have also upgraded to Mountain Lion which could be the issue also?

[davidlv]

Originally Posted by magidragoon

I have a MacBook Pro 5,4 mid2009 model. After my HDD died I replaced ith with a Western Digital WD5000BEKT model. I had the beach ball issues and used the downgrade to get to EFIv1.6 with SATA1 speeds.

While I no longer have the beach ball effect, I do have applications hang sometimes (not the same type of hang as the SATA2 issue as only the single application quits responding). Generally my computer's performance is weak.

Has anyone else had this after replacing the stock drive with a model effected by the 1.7 firmware? I have also upgraded to Mountain Lion which could be the issue also?

Considering the relatively low price of hard drives, I think your best bet is to buy a Hitachi or Seagate (non-XT model) 500-750GB HD. I had no issues with either on my former 2009 MBP. The firmware on the WD drives and the Mac just don't work well together (but the WD will work fine in a USB/Firewire case). I used firmware 1.7 (3Gibit) with no problems either. If you want an SSD, I have heard the Crucial M4 works with the 2009 and firmware 1.7.

[magidragoon]

Originally Posted by davidlv

Considering the relatively low price of hard drives, I think your best bet is to buy a Hitachi or Seagate (non-XT model) 500-750GB HD. I had no issues with either on my former 2009 MBP. The firmware on the WD drives and the Mac just don't work well together (but the WD will work fine in a USB/Firewire case). I used firmware 1.7 (3Gibit) with no problems either. If you want an SSD, I have heard the Crucial M4 works with the 2009 and firmware 1.7.

Thanks for sharing your expirence.

Is your 2009 MBP the "5,4" model?

I just realize I have a spare hitachi 160GB SATA2 hdd from my PS3 (which I replaced with a larger capacity WD drive). I will try it and see if it works with EFI 1.7 as a Hitachi drive worked for you.

I am tempted to try a Crucial M4 if others have had success as SSD has breathed new life into my Core2Duo era desktop. I did try an OCZ in the macbook once as a test (before I put it in my desktop) which was not even recognized as existing by the MacBook.

[phased]

Originally Posted by Tenashus1

Crucial offers similar firmware support for Mac. M4 is good. I have one on my 2012 cMBP and it's doing a fine job. Speedy at 6.0. Take a look at the Sandisk reviews on Amazon. Very favorable and reliable. I have one running on my wife's mid 2009 MBP with the most recent firmware and it's running a smooth 3.0. Samsung, while great, does not currently offer firmware updates for Mac. That was a deciding factor for me in buying Crucial and Sandisk for my machines.

I don't have the answer for your last question though on the 7200rpm HDD. All I can say is there's no comparison in performance between an HDD and and SSD. The SSD trumps the HDD by far even at 3.0.

so i went ahead a bought the 240GB extreme. pretty excited to get this thing installed! just a few questions before i get started on my mid-2009 MBP 17". as mentioned, i'm looking to move my HDD to the optical bay, SSD where the HDD was, clone the HDD over to the SSD and erase the HDD to use it simply as multimedia storage (wow, that was a mouth-full).

i understand the sandisk R211m firmware upgrade requires booting from a CD - in which case i'll need the optical drive in place for the moment.

do i need clone my HDD (OS X, apps, etc.) onto the SSD prior to running the firmware upgrade? in which case, am i best off installing the SSD, leaving the optical drive in place, cloning the HDD to the SSD via a USB 2.5" sata enclosure (this can be done, right?), running the firmware upgrade, (make sure everything is cool), erase the HDD, then open her up again and remove the optical drive and replace with now empty HDD..

longwinded I know but with my limited knowledge this seems to be the best approach - logistically speaking. more than happy to be corrected though!

oh, and by the way, is there anything else I need do to my OS X or SSD? do i need to install this MBP EFI firmware update 1.7 too? how about trim?

apologies for all the novice questions, guys - your help is appreciated.

EDIT: having just rethought what is in bold above, perhaps it is better to clone my HDD to the SSD prior to installation. that is to do so whilst the SSD is the the external enclosure. then i can swap the HDD to the optical bay and install the SSD in one fell swoop, right?

[Reznichenko]

Hey people! None of the rapidshare etc links work. Can somebody please share the EFI 1.6 downgrade disk image? Thanks in advance!

[titch124]

just a note to say - be carful what update you run -

i have a late 2009 MBP, which i had downgraded to 1.6, and was working fine, last night i ran a mountain lion update (not the EFI firmware) and i can now no longer use my hard drive

the drive still works fine , just not in my mac book, i cant tell you which update i ran ( 1 java , 1 ML) but just giving all a warning

[titch124]

Originally Posted by titch124

just a note to say - be carful what update you run -

i have a late 2009 MBP, which i had downgraded to 1.6, and was working fine, last night i ran a mountain lion update (not the EFI firmware) and i can now no longer use my hard drive

the drive still works fine , just not in my mac book, i cant tell you which update i ran ( 1 java , 1 ML) but just giving all a warning

After doing some searching , the update was to 10.8.3 , which makes changes to the sata bus ,

so if like me you have a mid 2009 macbook pro , i would not advise updating to 10.8.3

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4895074

[jiangshen]

the hotfile/rapidshare links don't work anymore!! can anyone pls send me the install files for EFI 1.6 downgrade. Much appreciated.

[wonderpus]

Originally Posted by jiangshen

the hotfile/rapidshare links don't work anymore!! can anyone pls send me the install files for EFI 1.6 downgrade. Much appreciated.

Thankfully, another forum user copied the files to his/her Dropbox account. I used these successfully yesterday to downgrade my 2009 MBP and get a WD drive working.

See this post:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...&postcount=768

And here is the direct Dropbox link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tqmr4w8gl49e1w2/sKwwRRf1XH

[dscottbuch]

I was in the same boat. I had gotten the WD7500BPKT back in May of 2012 and found this thread and downgraded the EFI on my Mid 2009 MBP to 1.6 and everything was working great. I upgraded to 10.8.3 and my system had tremendous problems booting with a successful boot only occurring every 5-10 times. Once booted everything ran great. The problem in the verbose boot was it would not mount disk02s even though the disk could be read fine from the recovery partition. I assumed the disk had gone bad and got a replacement from WD free. Installed and no joy. I assumed I had a logic board problem but then I thought to put in the original disk I had replaced last May and voila everything worked.

As I was now stuck buying a new disk I though I might as well try upgrading the EFI back to 1.7 and, again, voila, everything worked just fine with my original disk which I had not touched!!!!

So it looks like Apple might have compensated for the issue introduced with the 1.7 firmware in 10.8.3. You might want to try re-upgrading to EFI 1.7.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

[fastechs]

I just tried to upgrade my MacbookPro5,4 Late 2009 Model with a new Toshiba 1TB 2.5 SATA hard drive Model MQ01ABD100. The drive will boot when I plug in via a USB adapter and hold option to boot however will not boot when inside the unit (all I get is the blinking file folder icon with a question mark). However if I take the drive out and plug in via USB the drive boots perfectly so it is something when inside the unit. The hard drive appears to have jumpers but I can't find anywhere on the internet as to what settings the jumpers are. I was thinking of perhaps setting to 1.5Gbps if I could find these settings for this drive. Has anybody successfully using a 1 TB hard drive traditional SATA drive? If so what model do you recommend and did you have to change jumpers? I have Mac OS 10.8.3 with EFI 1.7. I tried downloading the EFI again and it says I am already up-to-date and wouldn't let me re apply. Your help is much appreciated in advance!