My stock Hitachi 250 GB hard drive's sequential write speed appears to be significantly degraded since the EFI 1.7 firmware update that Apple rolled out yesterday. I've run the test several times, and the results are consistent. Here are the Xbench scores, with pre-upgrade on the left:
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EFI 1.7 Firmware Update Slows Down Stock Hard Drive - Reset Your PRAM
- Thread starter Smoothie
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I just did a PRAM reset, and it seems to have fixed the slow speed. The speeds now match the pre-upgrade speeds. I should have tried this before posting.
I also have the stock 250GB HDD...I did not do any benchmark tests, but is there any downside to resetting the PRAM if it is not necessary?
I am not noticing anything wrong in my day-to-day tasks..
I am not noticing anything wrong in my day-to-day tasks..
I don't think that resetting the PRAM can do any harm. In my case, I didn't really notice the slower speeds. But there were a number of posts from people who had noticeable problems after the firmware update, so I decided to measure my speeds. That's when I saw the slower write speed.
I've run quite a bit of XBenches after the EFI 1.7 fw upgrade, I can notice a very slight decrease in disk performance. Nothing noticeable in real usage (which is what real matters, not a synthetic benchmark), but the slight decrease is there....
What matters to me, is the future proofing, and the fact that putting an SSD in, would not yield capped transfer speeds.
Resetting the PRAM didn't do much for me.
What matters to me, is the future proofing, and the fact that putting an SSD in, would not yield capped transfer speeds.
Resetting the PRAM didn't do much for me.
My stock 250 GB dropped from
80 Write / 81 Read - before the update to
60 Write / 80 Read - after the update.
I restarted and held down "Option - Command - P - R" until it bonged a second time to reset the PRAM and it's back to its original speeds again.
I have a 500 GB WD Blue on the way.
80 Write / 81 Read - before the update to
60 Write / 80 Read - after the update.
I restarted and held down "Option - Command - P - R" until it bonged a second time to reset the PRAM and it's back to its original speeds again.
I have a 500 GB WD Blue on the way.
My stock 250GB (Hitachi HD) also dropped slightly after firmware update. The result showed consistently under xBench. Reset PRAM still showed the same dropped score. It can't never reached the 80MB/s+ sequential write as pre-firmware update.
Although it's synthetics benchmark which probably does not affect real world performance much, I'm also interested to know performance result from people with Hitachi/Seagate/WD 7K SATA 3.0Gb/s drive. Some people have reported SSD SATA 3.0Gb/s drives have experienced problems after firmware update, I wonder if the 7K SATA 3.0Gb/s mechanical HD also experience this performance slow down?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&tstart=0
Although it's synthetics benchmark which probably does not affect real world performance much, I'm also interested to know performance result from people with Hitachi/Seagate/WD 7K SATA 3.0Gb/s drive. Some people have reported SSD SATA 3.0Gb/s drives have experienced problems after firmware update, I wonder if the 7K SATA 3.0Gb/s mechanical HD also experience this performance slow down?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&tstart=0
Here it didn't help! I get a beach ball with while doing almost nothing (browsing the web) from time to time and my browser freezes for about 20-30 seconds every times. Actually, it happens with any application.
I ran into this problem after updating to the EFI 1.7 firmware with my WD 500GB HDD. Resetting the PRAM didn't help, calling Apple technical support didn't help, going to the Apple store and having them look over the laptop for an hour didn't help.
I ended up having to put the stock 250GB HDD back into the Macbook Pro.
Now I am unable to use my WD 500GB HDD that worked perfectly fine before the firmware upgrade.
I wish there were a way to back out the firmware upgrade, but according to everyone I've spoken with, there isn't.
Hopefully Apple resolves this issue soon...
I ended up having to put the stock 250GB HDD back into the Macbook Pro.
Now I am unable to use my WD 500GB HDD that worked perfectly fine before the firmware upgrade.
I wish there were a way to back out the firmware upgrade, but according to everyone I've spoken with, there isn't.
Hopefully Apple resolves this issue soon...
See the post by Dave2412 on page 3 of this thread for a possible(?) solution:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&tstart=0&messageID=9707619#9707619
Good luck!
The poster just updated and it did not work. The updated SATA interface definitely has issues.
