Apple Releases Fix for MacBook Pro Hard Drive Issues

[Michael73]

Lucky for me I guess....my MBP 5,1 has got a Hitachi HTS543232L9SA02 (320GB) hard drive.

At some point I was thinking about replacing the hard drive with a larger 500GB seagate 7200RPM drive. Are all of these the ones effected or only ones shipped by apple?

 

[AidenShaw]

Well, even the machines which are compatible with K64 won't be running K64 for a long time. No 3rd party kexts are ready for K64 yet. And Apple NEVER promised K64 as default on SL. Only 64 bit GUI apps. They'll probably switch to K64 with 10.7 and people who want to experiment until then may do so on their own.

It will be interesting to see how Apple advertises the x64 OS.

It seems that they'll have a hard time making much ad copy on it if they don't have the confidence to actually enable it on the shipping kit.

And why no 3rd party kernel extensions? Isn't that the point of WWDC and ADC - to get the bits to the 3rd parties so that the 3rd party software can be ready when the system ships? (Are there many 3rd party kexts? Some examples?)

It's beginning to look like true 64-bit is like one of the "missing features" in Vista that was dropped to make the schedule (one of the schedules, at least). Promised, but not really there at the end....

 

[baobabwired]

Battery Life Improved

Hey, My battery life indicates 8:30 H after drive update. Before never passed 3:20 /4:00 h Let's see if this dream is real.

MBP 17 Late June - Snow Leopard 10a432

 

[Michael73]

Hey, My battery life indicates 8:30 H after drive update. Before never passed 3:20 /4:00 h Let's see if this dream is real.

MBP 17 Late June - Snow Leopard 10a432

I thought I'd read somewhere that developers who were testing SL on MBPs were seeing some crazy long improvements in battery life according to their battery life indicator. What I don't remember reading was any follow up to see if the indicators matched real world testing. If SL does extend battery life for any meaningful period like even another hour per charge cycle, forget every other under the development included in SL, that alone makes the upgrade well worth the $29!

 

[parapup]

It's beginning to look like true 64-bit is like one of the "missing features" in Vista that was dropped to make the schedule (one of the schedules, at least). Promised, but not really there at the end....

(Reads 3 times and misses the light bulb on head smilie)

For a moment I thought you meant to say 64-bit feature in SL was starting to look like the 64-bit feature in Vista - missing and not there yet.

But clearly you meant the feature was missing in SL compared to Vista and it is looking like is will not be there yet as promised.

But I think the lack of it will not make a material difference to most people - it is not like they weren't already taking advantage of >4Gb RAM and even running 64-bit apps in a few cases.

Sure it does reflect poorly on Apple's inability to have squeaky clean true 64-bit OS in 2010, but it could be that their priorities are different than Microsoft which seems to have interest in pushing their platform off of a legacy and making 64-bit mainstream.

(Microsoft disabled >3.2GB RAM support on 32-bit XP/Vista as it is clearly not elegant and so as more machines get 4GB - consumers are automatically going to ask for 64-bit and then the vendors have to make 64-bit drivers available or lose the sale. They have also had a huge push to get drivers to 64-bit and in WhQL - so any device driver gets automatically to the clients via Windows update - no hunting required)

Apple did a lot a hackery - >4GB RAM support for 32bit kernel which was also able to run 64-bit apps - and clearly they are finding it hard to move away from it as people simply don't find it a problem - they aren't missing anything so to speak.

 

[baobabwired]

... no beep and click and pop .... BUT STILL FREEZE

STILL FREEZING HERE . 3 times, 15-30 secs in the last 2 hours . Just ordered a NON seagate NON 7200 HD.

 

[AidenShaw]

But clearly you meant the feature was missing in SL compared to Vista and it is looking like is will not be there yet as promised....

I meant that early descriptions of Vista "promised" some interesting and useful things that weren't shipped in the final Vista product.

The early messages about 10.6 talked about the advantages of true x64 support, yet it looks like the final 10.6 is going to appear to fall short of those promises.

That's the parallel - over-promise and under-deliver for both Microsoft and Apple.

...as people simply don't find it a problem - they aren't missing anything so to speak.

Except perhaps better security and performance, especially for those 64-bit apps.

(Microsoft disabled >3.2GB RAM support on 32-bit XP/Vista as it is clearly not elegant and so as more machines get 4GB - consumers are automatically going to ask for 64-bit and then the vendors have to make 64-bit drivers available or lose the sale. They have also had a huge push to get drivers to 64-bit and in WhQL - so any device driver gets automatically to the clients via Windows update - no hunting required)

Large memory support wasn't "disabled" on XP/Vista, Microsoft never supported PAE (64 GiB RAM support) on the desktop systems - that was a feature to upsell to Windows Server.

The "huge push" for x64 is right - you don't get to use the "Works with Vista" logo on your box unless both x86 and x64 are supported. There's basically no issue with buying stuff and having it run on Vista/Win7 x64 - almost all hardware and software works fine. (Trying to connect your 5 year old PCI card for your legacy device, not so much joy.)

 

[parapup]

That's the parallel - over-promise and under-deliver for both Microsoft and Apple.

I see - at least Apple kept the price down, but then you can argue that Vista was much more of fundamental change than SL is. (We got a whole new UI, 64-bit mainstream and also a lots of under the hood changes.)

Except perhaps better security and performance, especially for those 64-bit apps.

Well it is debatable - not many desktop apps benefit from 64-bit - there is nothing specific security related that I can think of that 64-bit apps can take advantage of and 32-bit ones cannot - except may be for better address space layout randomization but that's more of a band-aid than addressing any real issue.

Large memory support wasn't "disabled" on XP/Vista, Microsoft never supported PAE (64 GiB RAM support) on the desktop systems - that was a feature to upsell to Windows Server.

It was disabled - you cannot get a 32-bit XP/Vista machine to recognize and use more than 3.5Gb RAM. And I think the reason they crippled it for was a genuine one - if you have any experience with how badly written the consumer device's drivers are written - Microsoft found most could not handle the breakage of <4GB address assumptions resulting from PAE. Given that they sell Vista x64 and used to sell Win XP x64 for same price as 32-bit counterparts this reasoning sounds even more genuine.

(Trying to connect your 5 year old PCI card for your legacy device, not so much joy.)

Well there are going to be some insurmountable issues - the vendor for that card may not be around and it's not like Microsoft has the sources for the driver - and they have to make some reasonable compromises.

 

[AidenShaw]

Well it is debatable - not many desktop apps benefit from 64-bit - there is nothing specific security related that I can think of that 64-bit apps can take advantage of and 32-bit ones cannot - except may be for better address space layout randomization but that's more of a band-aid than addressing any real issue.

Hmmm, Apple says:

Nearly all system applications — including the Finder, Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat — are now built with 64-bit code. So not only are they able to take full advantage of all the memory in your Mac, but the move to 64-bit applications also boosts overall performance.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/#64bit

So, one question would be whether the TLB issues with x86 kernel/x64 apps counteracts the x64 app speedup.

A second question is whether randomization and NX are available to x64 apps on an x86 kernel, or whether you need both to be x64. (Windows supports randomization and NX on x86, so it's not a hardware issue.)

It was disabled - you cannot get a 32-bit XP/Vista machine to recognize and use more than 3.5Gb RAM. And I think the reason they crippled it for was a genuine one...

This is a semantic question. If something isn't there and was never there, is that "disabled"? Is there a distinction between "missing" and "disabled"? Anyway, the end result was the same.

I don't have experience with "consumer driver" problems, and we run a number of workstations/PCs with x86 Win2k3 with PAE enabled for >4GiB support. We've been lucky, I'm sure there's stuff out there that's poorly written.

For a long time there was no 64-bit desktop (or even server). If you needed to run with 16 GiB on a system, your choice was x86 Server only. Client would not have PAE.

 

[parapup]

Hmmm, Apple says:

That's marketing bs - Unless they screwed up badly even further, Mail.app should not need additional registers and memory more than 4GB!

So, one question would be whether the TLB issues with x86 kernel/x64 apps counteracts the x64 app speedup.

Sure there will be some speed up on full 64-bit due mainly to additional registers but whether or not it is significant in real life is debatable.

This is a semantic question. If something isn't there and was never there, is that "disabled"? Is there a distinction between "missing" and "disabled"? Anyway, the end result was the same.

Actually if you look at MS KB Article they say it was disabled post SP2 and you wouldn't want to use pre-SP2 crap anyways!

For a long time there was no 64-bit desktop (or even server). If you needed to run with 16 GiB on a system, your choice was x86 Server only. Client would not have PAE.

Right - even though XP SP2 *has* PAE enabled - the kernel memory manager ignores any physical addresses beyond 4GB.

 

[kitty1920]

My hubby had this issue with his Seagate 7200 500gb in his 17 MBP he got in late June. It never seemed to do it when we were at Apple.. Couple weeks later, a line appeared across the screen. Apple replaced it with a new 17 inch MBP. No more beeping (and no lines).

 

[AidenShaw]

Sure there will be some speed up on full 64-bit due mainly to additional registers but whether or not it is significant in real life is debatable.

Yes, you're right here. I forgot that the "TLB problem" also applies to x86 kernel + x86 app.

Actually if you look at MS KB Article they say it was disabled post SP2 and you wouldn't want to use pre-SP2 crap anyways!

Right - even though XP SP2 *has* PAE enabled - the kernel memory manager ignores any physical addresses beyond 4GB.

Good article. Yes - XP "enables" the PAE mode in the CPU to get the 64-bit page tables with the NX bit. XP does not have the full "PAE support" code of the server operating system, and has even changed the HAL to avoid driver issues. x86 Client and x86 Server have different memory subsystems.

Again, it's a minor difference in semantics. XP runs a subset of the full support for PAE in order to get NX, we both agree.

Enough of the OT tangent on PAE...

 

[fishbert]

a different hard drive interafce problem

All of you complaining about 30 second beachballing and such with other drives... do you have a mid-2009 13" or 15" MacBook Pro with the new SD Card slot?

If so, the problem you are experiencing is likely this one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387 (57 pages)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/729883/ (11 pages)

This problem has received zero press, and has not been acknowledged by Apple.
If you are affected by this issue, please write your local Mac news sites and ask them to cover it.

 

[bytethese]

All of you complaining about 30 second beachballing and such with other drives... do you have a mid-2009 13" or 15" MacBook Pro with the new SD Card slot?

If so, the problem you are experiencing is likely this one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387 (57 pages)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/729883/ (11 pages)

This problem has received zero press, and has not been acknowledged by Apple.
If you are affected by this issue, please write your local Mac news sites and ask them to cover it.

Yes, that's the exact model I have.

Doesn't look like really any solutions, just folks complaining they too have this issue. Some look like they got a logic board replacement to put back the older firmware.

The issue is annoying yes, but not enough for me to go without my laptop for a few days.

Hopefully those threads will get some attention from Apple and they can address it with whatever appropriate action they see fit.

 

[jedijoe]

That covers everybody as the problem has only just started, just checked my drive warranty runs out 2014

Glad to see you're an exception!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3188

 

[jedijoe]

So next on the list of things to do would be:

Actually fix this issue in other machines.

Get 64bit kernels running on all compatible machines (not a huge deal, but embarrassing enough)

and get some freaking usable drivers for Windows!!!

I've been running Snow Leopard booting a 64-bit kernel without issues. Granted I had to set the 64-bit boot via the nvram command in Terminal, but it works well for me

 

[orson3g]

update worked great for me good thing I stick to my Apple products and not aftermarket goods

p.s. there is a reason the Apple charges a lot for their upgrades...(whisping) they are covered under their warranty and will get the all updates that are needed, thats what you are paying for. And let me tell you...it is well worth paying more to have Apple cover it.

and I would much rather have it take a while and have it done right, then having it rushed and ruining my drive, it was well worth the wait

thanks  for not spending all your money on advertising, and actually fixing your machines, and then after all that you still put up with people who complain you're my hero

The hard drive Apple uses is the same one many people bought after market, dumbass. And the 500 GB HD wasn't an option at the time many people ordered their notebooks.

Wanker.

 

[Achiever]

i am laughing right now. Folks expect Apple to warranty thing they didn't sell. What are you smoking and can you send me some. seriously

if you changed the drive in your computer to something that wasn't what Apple put in, then you are on your own. go contact the company that made the drive.

i'm going to have to label this one a complaint FAIL

The only "FAIL" is in your imbecilic critique. First of all, not one of the posts you quoted ever suggested that Apple owed a "warranty" of any kind on the replacement drives. What all three quotes did point out, however, is that the replacement drives some end users were having issues with in some earlier models were the EXACT SAME DRIVE that Apple created the firmware upgrade for, but were merely installed later on by the end user. As such, the conflict between the drive and the machine IS IDENTICAL; an incompatibility between Apple's motion sensor technology and a similar technology found in the drive. In essence, the redundancy of similar technologies in both devices is causing the conflict and again, we're talking about the same drive Apple is offering as the BTO option that was simply installed by the end user on a previous model. It is unclear why Apple's fix should be offered as a stand alone to help users having the identical problem on the previous generation machine as it should be the SAME SOLUTION.

Finally, it is probably worth noting to you that replacing your HD does not void your Apple warranty in any way if you don't tangentially break something else. This is at least a tacit acknowledgment by the company that they do not disapprove of the practice. Moreover, during the introduction of the new unibody MBs and MBPs last year, Jobs went out of his way to show how easy it was to access and swap out the HD. If they had serious objections to the practice of swapping out HDs, I sincerely doubt they would have shown us how easily it could be done during the products introduction.

 

[Porco]

Just a simple question to the people who bought the affected drives after the Macbook Pro - does the update not work regardless or something? How can they tell if it's the exact same drive (well, except for being the apple logo on the label presumably)?

Is the firmware in the Apple-supplied drive a particular, Apple-only version? If so, the drive you bought elsewhere isn't exactly the same, is it?

Note I'm not saying it doesn't suck that there isn't a general firmware fix out there from Seagate for everyone with one of the drives, whether from Apple or elsewhere, I'm just curious as to how the firmware update knows if it's from Apple or not if it really was the "exact same drive".

 

[THX1139]

Moreover, during the introduction of the new unibody MBs and MBPs last year, Jobs went out of his way to show how easy it was to access and swap out the HD. If they had serious objections to the practice of swapping out HDs, I sincerely doubt they would have shown us how easily it could be done during the products introduction.

I agree. If they didn't want users to swap out their drives, then they wouldn't have put them in a place for easy access. Hell, it even has a latch instead of screws to open the port!

Besides, what happens when you buy a stock machine and fill up the drive, then something bigger and faster comes along? It's not like you can take your laptop into Apple and have them swap the drive out for the latest model. They won't do it. If you buy a machine that has a 160GB 5400RPM drive, you're stuck with it unless you update it yourself. Having issues updating a hard drive in Apple products is stupid. I bet the Windows camp are having a good laugh.

 

[Di9it8]

Glad to see you're an exception!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3188

Maybe that is the Euro Warranty, 5 years. The current scenario is only affecting drives that are about 6 months old max, so there should be no warranty issues regarding replacement. Lets hope a speedy resolution is found.
Will the next thing be overheating terabite drives?

 

[madmax_2069]

Lucky for me I guess....my MBP 5,1 has got a Hitachi HTS543232L9SA02 (320GB) hard drive.

At some point I was thinking about replacing the hard drive with a larger 500GB seagate 7200RPM drive. Are all of these the ones effected or only ones shipped by apple?

If you dont want to run into the same issue as everyone else is then Avoid Seagate drives ( i recommend to always stay away from that brand cause its pure rubbish)

i have great luck with Western Digital. so far all of my WD drives are all going strong. all of my Seagate drives have died within a year of owning them.

 

[Lounge Deluxe]

[...] is that the replacement drives some end users were having issues with in some earlier models were the EXACT SAME DRIVE that Apple created the firmware upgrade for, but were merely installed later on by the end user. As such, the conflict between the drive and the machine IS IDENTICAL

Apple could use modified firmware for the factory installed drives in their notebooks, making them different drives with possibly different behavior from the ones you can buy retail.

 

[Bemopti123]

Even with the update, which strangely my 15 Macbook Pro Uni 500Gb did at the very least 3X, I can still hear an occasional beep.

The beeps are less frequent but they have not gone away.

I am religiously backing up the HD on a Raid drive whenever there are major changes.

I cannot be bothered to be parted with laptop in order to send it back and get a replacement, which personally I do not believe will be free of this beep phenomena.

 

[oyebto]

If you dont want to run into the same issue as everyone else is then Avoid Seagate drives ( i recommend to always stay away from that brand cause its pure rubbish)

i have great luck with Western Digital. so far all of my WD drives are all going strong. all of my Seagate drives have died within a year of owning them.

i guess for drives its pretty subjective..some claim their WD drives all fail... Seagate's great, but personally, the only drives i had that failed are Maxtors...