I've got a mid-2009 MBP 5.4 and I've upgraded to Mountain Lion and upgraded the EFI to 1.7. I've downgraded it to 1.6 like everyone else here after major freezes. It was virtually unusable from first boot. Well, I am now typing this after the upgrade and only freezes with SSD-intensive tasks, ie..e file copying, maybe backup. However it's a lot more stable and actually looking useable. The 120GB OWC SSD doubled in speed from 110 to over 250mb/s. This actually did make quite a difference to everything (unlike before). I think I'll stick to it and see how it goes. Everything else is much snappier, just the file copying produces beach balls so far. At least it works, unlike before.
does downgrading the efi from 1.7 to 1.6 clear all data on the hard drive?
to my knowledge, no. perhaps someone can reconfirm?
Thank you guys. I've already upgrade to Seagate 750gb hybrid on my 17'' 2009, running on 3gbs and very smooth. Wanted to do the same on another 15'' 2009 with EFI 1.7 and failed at installation, and stop sign or question marked folder sign appeared when booting up.
Just came back from an apple genius bar and was told the one-week-old hard drive was defective. I know it's not because it worked and booted normally in external USB. Requested them to replace the cable, they did, but for sure a 2009 version, still failed. Fortunately I have an applecare for over $300 and everything went free. But they're not helpful in this case, not at all.
Following the instructions above and down to 1.6, the installation passed quickly , boot successfully, disk running at negotiated 1.5gb, like the stock one, but feels much faster. Finally it's usable!
So in my case with the XT 750gb, it's definitely the problem with the EFI instead of the hardware. The 1.7 just doesn't accept the new hard drive.
Running a fresh installation, I will transfer data over, if still OK, will try to upgrade EFI to 1.7 again to see what happens. It'll be very interesting if only a paired disk with 1.6 will work with 1.7 upgrading, but not a new disk. Anyway, the worst is to downgrade again.
EFI 1.7 update is not even available for the Retina MBP, so you must be mixing things together.Is it possible to downgrade the new EFI on the retina MBP?
The new EFI is causing nothing but trouble for me.
Sound like I have to get a Mercury OWC drive! Can anyone else confirm that this drive is working with EFI1.7 and running at 3Gbps?I decided to upgrade my mid-2009 15" MBP (MacBookPro5,4) to an SSD rather than dropping the big bucks on a rMBP. I already went through the whole 1.7/1.6 downgrade routine when I upgraded it to a conventional 500GB drive last year so I was ready for it. OWC was confident that the Mercury Electra 3G would work with 1.7 so I ordered the 120GB model for testing. It ran fine at 1.5Gbps with the 1.6 firmware and continued to work fine at 3.0 after upgrading to 1.7. Boot time dropped from 1:25 to 20 seconds so it really smoked.
Based on that success, I ordered the 480GB model and cloned the existing system disk on to it. It's a faster drive than the 120 due to the number of channels used so boot times with it are 15 seconds and Black Magic Speed test shows write speeds about 20% higher and read speeds about 50% higher than the 120GB model. I've very pleased with it at this point.
The 120GB OWC went into my niece's 2008 aluminum MacBook where it runs without any issue at 3.0Gbps.
I'm not sure what's in the OWC secret sauce but while I had the machine open, I tried four other drives I had on-hand and they all worked at 1.5Gbps w/ 1.6 and all had problems trying to run at 3.0 on 1.7. The drives are: 1) Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (SATA2), 2) Samsung HN-M500MBB (SATA2), 3) Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (SATA3), and 4) Western Digital WD500BEVT (SATA2).
What a nightmare after getting this drive. I am trying to install Momentus XT 500GB on mid-2009 13" MBP. Hard drive's firmware was update from stock ST27 to SD28. My MBP is running Lion 10.7.4. Here is the story: