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Crucial M4 revive?

Blue604 said:
After reading lots of user reviews on amazon, neweggs and other sites, I realize the problem is Macbook Pro 13" 2009 the optical drive doesn't do well with SATAIII SSD. Only the old SATAII SSD would work. So if you get sataIII, should put it in main HD bay.
Click to expand...

I have a brand new MBPro 15 mid 2012 and i had still a lot of issues with my M4 256 seated in the optical bay!
In system INFO it's reported SATA III 6 gigabytes!
Finally i could successfully fix the mess in doing something rather simple:
I opened the NewModeUS optical bay, put one layer of chaterton (isolation tape) + one layer of thick US aluminium + a third layer of Isolation tape.
I did exactly the same shielding on the small short Apple lid that connects the optical bay to the mother board.
After this shielding improvement everything works terrific!
Another thing is mandatory: put the hibernate mode to 0 to avoid a system crash after resuming from deep sleep mode!
Hope this helps!
Bernard
 
gr8tfly said:
I have the 512MB M4 with 000F.

My Early 2009 17" has been up nearly 24/7 since I installed it mid-October, so I haven't done many sleep cycles.

I just tried one, and it works fine on wake.

Perhaps as a side note, I do have Energy Saver "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" disabled.
Click to expand...

Blue604 said:
After reading lots of user reviews on amazon, neweggs and other sites, I realize the problem is Macbook Pro 13" 2009 the optical drive doesn't do well with SATAIII SSD. Only the old SATAII SSD would work. So if you get sataIII, should put it in main HD bay.
Click to expand...

Phew. I have a 512GB M4 (000F firmware) in the HDD bay of my 2011 i7 MBP. Glad you figured out it was a SATA II-to-III issue in the optical bay and not an M4 thing. Mine has had zero problems and is quite fast. I have disabled putting the HD to sleep, set sleep mode to zero so it doesn't write the RAM contents, and enabled TRIM FYI.
 
Blue604 said:
After reading lots of user reviews on amazon, neweggs and other sites, I realize the problem is Macbook Pro 13" 2009 the optical drive doesn't do well with SATAIII SSD. Only the old SATAII SSD would work. So if you get sataIII, should put it in main HD bay.
Click to expand...

That's correct with an "old MBPro" that doesn't bless SATA III!

For the newest mid 2012 MBPros 15 people must be aware that the optical bay was designed by Apple to receive a SUPERDRIVE but not a super fast SSD Sata III. OK the secund SATA bay is SATA III compliant and designed to work reliably with the SUPERDRIVE! What i discovered with an M4 256 SATA III SSD inside the optical bay, is a lot of issues such as beach balling!
These issues are now fixed with Isolation tape + Thick US aluminium!
I'm very happy with this DIY Fix...
I also could swap the disks, putting the SSD in the HD bay and the spinning moved to the optical bay! This was my previous setting on my early 2011 MBPro i recently sold because of the USB3 available on the new mid 2012!
On the 2011 MBPro i could run Bootcamp installed on the spinning disk seated in the optical bay. The only big problem was, i had to put back the Superdrive in the optical bay to successfully install Win7 on the Bootcamp partition: This is no more the case with the 2012 MBPro: i could install Win 7 using a thumbdrive key of 8 Gigas! that's very handy to repair or restore Windows in case you have an issue such as unable to reboot...
One thing is puzzling me with the new MBPro 2012 is that Bootcamp only works when the spinning HD is in the original HD bay, that's why I had to migrate the SSD into the optical bay, discovering a lot of new issues such as beach balling or unable to revive after the deep sleep!
I was told that going to sleep on the SSD moved in the optical bay may occur some freezing or system crash!
So i put in the Terminal the Hibernate mode to 0!
This morning it took about 10 minutes to resurrect my MBPro after the deep sleep and worse, my SSD has vanished on the desktop???
After rebooting from the Spinning HD i could shut down properly and half an hour later i was again able to boot from the miraculous SSD reappairing like Jesus walking on the see!
;-)
If someone could explain why i have to install the spinning drive in the main HD bay to have Bootcamp partition able to boot from, i may appreciate!
On another hand, since i was obliged to have the M4 Crucial 256 SSD migrated in the optical bay, this new unexpected situation allowed me to fix the bloody beach balling issues!
I hope this helps!
Bernard
 
But when I put wd black 7200rpm hdd in optical bay it works fine as bootcamp and osx.

Why ssd doesn't work in optical bay?
 
I have the M4 512g 010g in my machine and it has been flawless. The consensus is that there will be a problem with a sata3 drive being installed in the optical bay since that is a sata2 connection. The drive itself is not at fault in that case.
 
Nothing to do with the connector, this is a widespread problem with the M4's firmware. I highly suggest 0309. On 010G and 000F I would randomly have the drive become totally unresponsive as in upon hitting the power button (home built desktop), it would not even be recognized in the bios. The only fix was to let it sit in the bios menu for 10-15 minutes to allow the drive to initiate and then reboot. On 0309 I've been totally fine the past few weeks.

E: Before the, "I have 010G and mine is fine" comments start, that's great for you, but you are gambling because this is a widely known issue with the newer firm wares. One of them makes the drive randomly freeze after hitting the 500 hour power on mark. If you search google for crucial m4 firmware issues then you'll probably find other forums with people posting about the same issues. I just wanted to clarify where I'm getting my info from because I definitely did a lot when I thought my drive was failing.
 
Last edited:
Another M4 firmware was out on dec 4th 2012

040H

I will see if this works out
 
Blue604 said:
Another M4 firmware was out on dec 4th 2012

040H

I will see if this works out
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm going to skip this update too. As in the last update it is mainly to optimize for Windows 8:

"Like firmware version 010G, version 040H has improvements
over versions 000F and earlier which are specific for
Windows 8 and new UltraBook systems, although systems
running Windows 7 and other operating systems may also
see improvements. Any m4 firmware version will function
normally in Windows 8, even without these performance
improvements."
 
FuNGi said:
Yeah, I'm going to skip this update too. As in the last update it is mainly to optimize for Windows 8:

"Like firmware version 010G, version 040H has improvements
over versions 000F and earlier which are specific for
Windows 8 and new UltraBook systems, although systems
running Windows 7 and other operating systems may also
see improvements. Any m4 firmware version will function
normally in Windows 8, even without these performance
improvements."
Click to expand...

You missed this line:

- Improved robustness in the event of an unexpected power loss. Significantly reduces the incidence of long reboot times after an unexpected power loss.
Click to expand...

Anyway this issue is pretty common with 010G firmware. Most people who were effected downgraded to 000F but it wouldn't hurt to try 040H.
 
Improved robustness in the event of an unexpected power loss. Significantly reduces the incidence of long reboot times after an unexpected power loss.

What does "improve robustness" mean? Does it mean wake/sleep issue that I have?
 
This is with 040H firmware on M4 512GB, 2009 Macbook Pro 13" in main bay. I don't see any speed difference than 010G.
BlackMagic: Write: 205MB/s, Read 267MB/s
 

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