Macbook 5,2 mid-2009 stuck on SATA I

[dksoutha]

Picked up a 5,2 a couple days ago and cannot get the machine to negotiate SATA II speeds. I have tried a known SATA II HDD with no effect. The laptop has no battery, no optical drive, and the 2GBs of installed RAM is PC2-5300 - not the PC2-6400 that shipped with it. An SATA I HDD came with the computer.

The HDD I'm trying to use is a ST9500325AS by Seagate.
The HDD that came with the machine is a Samsung HM160HI.

Any ideas?

 

[EugW]

Maybe you need a firmware update:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201518

I think they shipped with a firmware limited to SATA I.

 

[dksoutha]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

 

[DeltaMac]

That ST9500325AS is a 5400 rpm drive. Seems to hardly be worth the effort
I am pretty sure there is a jumper setting on that drive that would limit the connection to 1.5 Gb/Sec (SATA1 speeds)
(check for a jumper, remove it if present. It would be on the same end of the drive as the SATA connectors)

BTW - the MacBook5,2 came in two different models:
Early 2009 shipped with PC2-5300 RAM
Mid 2009 MacBook5,2 shipped with PC2-6400

Either model SHOULD be capable of negotiating to SATA-2. If nothing else helps, you can try replacing the SATA cable.

 

[dksoutha]

Yeah - gonna chuck an SSD in there soon
The Seagate has no jumpers attached, which should put it into SATA II mode.

System Information tells me this is a Mid 2009, 2.13GHz model. Yet it has 5300 RAM. eBay seller probably swapped the RAM along with removing the optical drive. Is it possible that either the slower RAM, the missing ODD, or the missing battery could put the system into a slower SATA mode?

New RAM, ODD, and battery on the way.

Thanks all!
[doublepost=1499713110][/doublepost]Forgot to mention that this 5,2 has the most recent firmware: MB52.0088.B05 (EFI 1.4)

 

[DeltaMac]

RAM would wait testing on that. (Could be upgraded to 6GB max memory)
ODD, seems unlikely
battery, if missing, can possibly have some affect on the ultimate speed of the CPU.
I'm expecting that replacing the SATA cable for the hard drive would have the greatest likelihood of success, if nothing else makes a difference. (the slow hard drive is not much of a candidate for needing the 3 Gb/Sec, but that's your choice ) Could be that the hard drive itself is just not accepting that higher speed bus. Wait for the SSD for best possibility of SATA speed...
Be sure to try both PRAM/NVRAM, and SMC resets.