Macbook Pro Spinning Beach Ball Freezing Problems

[DanielCalladine]

Hello,

I've just upgraded my 15" MBP from the original 250Gb drive to a 500Gb WD5000BEVT drive. Since the upgrade the OS has been constantly locking up for about 10 seconds at a time, it seems to lock up until the HDD spins up again, so it feels like the HDD isn't spinning up when it's supposed to.

I do remember something about Apple's internal sudden motion sensor conflicting with the hard drives own internal sensor but I thought they had addressed this with an update.

I have gone back to the original HDD and everything's okay again so I don't think there's any issue with the laptop.

Is it possible that this drive isn't compatible with this laptop?

Regards, Daniel

 

[MacDawg]

I have this drive in an earlier MBP and it works flawlessly

But you are apparently not alone

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/862852/

I believe the motion sensor issues usually produced a Kernel Panic, but that doesn't mean it would be the only issue

Link to article

Among the MacBook and MacBook Pro community there have been several owners who installed aftermarket hard drives already equipped with anti-shock features who reported experiencing Kernel Panic errors whenever their unit was physically moved. This is believed to be due to a confliction between SMS and the new drive's anti-shock function. The Western Digital Scorpio series of notebook hard drives have been the most frequently reported as being susceptible to this problem. In practically all cases, disabling SMS alleviated this problem without any negative performance impact.

I suppose it is possible you got a bad drive
Have you run any hardware diagnostics on the drive itself?

There seems to be quite a bit of discussion about this on the 'net itself
But I have yet to find a consistent solution

 

[DanielCalladine]

Thanks for your reply,

I've had a look at the thread you mentioned and it appears that a lot of people are having this problem.

Does this mean that I can't upgrade the hard drive in this laptop?

What about the MBPs that come customised with the 500gb drives installed, is there something different about these laptops/drives to make them work?

Thanks again, Daniel

 

[binarydev]

You can just disable the motion sensor, it has been discussed here before MRoogle it. People have plenty of success with aftermarket drives, as long as the laptop's sudden motion sensor is disabled(via terminal) or the aftermarket drive does not contain one.

 

[DanielCalladine]

You can just disable the motion sensor, it has been discussed here before MRoogle it. People have plenty of success with aftermarket drives, as long as the laptop's sudden motion sensor is disabled(via terminal) or the aftermarket drive does not contain one.

I did try that but it didn't make any difference, I don't think that the wd5000bevt has an internal SMS?

 

[TennisandMusic]

Thanks for your reply,

I've had a look at the thread you mentioned and it appears that a lot of people are having this problem.

Does this mean that I can't upgrade the hard drive in this laptop?

What about the MBPs that come customised with the 500gb drives installed, is there something different about these laptops/drives to make them work?

Thanks again, Daniel

Yes, this is exactly what it means. I went through several drives on my macbook pro 15" and each one made the machine unusable. You can only use the drives with Apple firmware on them. This is a known problem since the release of the mid 09 models, and will not be fixed. The Apple boards have huge huge threads on this issue.

You basically cannot upgrade the MBP hard drive and have your machine work properly. Just accept it to avoid any more agony, and use the original drive.

 

[TennisandMusic]

You can just disable the motion sensor, it has been discussed here before MRoogle it. People have plenty of success with aftermarket drives, as long as the laptop's sudden motion sensor is disabled(via terminal) or the aftermarket drive does not contain one.

No, this is incorrect. Disabling the motion sensor does not fix the issue. There is no fix for this issue, I went through this myself for quite awhile. The machines work great with the supplied hard drives, but you cannot add an aftermarket drive.

 

[DanielCalladine]

Yes, this is exactly what it means. I went through several drives on my macbook pro 15" and each one made the machine unusable. You can only use the drives with Apple firmware on them. This is a known problem since the release of the mid 09 models, and will not be fixed. The Apple boards have huge huge threads on this issue.

You basically cannot upgrade the MBP hard drive and have your machine work properly. Just accept it to avoid any more agony, and use the original drive.

Really, so no one's able to upgrade their hard drive?

Surely that's quite a big deal isn't it, I thought most people did it themselves??

I wish I had ordered it with a larger drive now then!

 

[psound]

This is getting ridiculous. Can't upgrade the HD??

Freezing every time you encode a video or play a game.

These new MBPs are looking like a lot of hassle.