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OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Problem

All companies spread marketing BS, even Apple.

All I care about is if the product works or not and if it doesn't, can the company be trusted to easily repair/replace the product?

Atm, all SandForce driven SSDs have this issue, sadly. But nonetheless, I trust that OWC has better customer service than OCZ. OCZ has a much better support forum but when it comes to RMA'ing drives, it's a pain in the ass.

As for the Mac OS Updater, OWC stated on their blog that they are working on making an updater themselves because SandForce won't/can't deliver the goods.
 
Anyone know if this happens if your OWC mercury extreme pro is the 2nd ssd in your laptop.. where the cd rom drive would be in?
 
systimax said:
Anyone know if this happens if your OWC mercury extreme pro is the 2nd ssd in your laptop.. where the cd rom drive would be in?
Click to expand...

you'll necessarily need to take the cd rom out of your macbook, in order to accomodate a 2nd hard/sdd drive.
you can put the cd drive in an externa enclosure like optibay for example.
 
Ok here it is.

310 has no problems...request your drive with the 310 firmware.

343 and 360 have sleep problems.

All sandforce drives have these problems.

All the sandforce drives are damn near the same, mostly just rebranded.

Dont like OWC, go buy OCZ and have the same problem with sleep.

I bought OWC because it was cheaper. Dont want sleep problems, get firmware 310 or go buy another drive that isnt on Sandforce...Crucial or Intel.

I dont know how many times it has to be stated. 310 does not have any issues, there is nothing in 343 or 360 that makes it beneficial to have over 310. Tell OWC when you order you want 310 firmware. Editing sleep settings on 343 or 360 does not fix the sleep issue.
 
tjb1 said:
Ok here it is.I dont know how many times it has to be stated. 310 does not have any issues, there is nothing in 343 or 360 that makes it beneficial to have over 310. Tell OWC when you order you want 310 firmware. Editing sleep settings on 343 or 360 does not fix the sleep issue.
Click to expand...

Does this - with 100% certainty - also hold for the 2011 MBP models??
 
Tamasi said:
Does this - with 100% certainty - also hold for the 2011 MBP models??
Click to expand...

No. I'm on FW 310 on my 2011 MBP and I can't get my computer to "automatically" sleep. The screen will go dark and the keyboard backlight will turn off but the sleep light on the front never starts to pulse -- it remains fully illuminated. On the flip side, the computer doesn't lock up either once it's awakened from this "napping" state (which it does do with either 343 or 360). I honestly don't know whether its failure to completely sleep has to do with the SSD or something else.

Manually sleeping the computer (either from the Apple menu or by closing the lid) works fine.
 
systimax said:
thanks, I also understand the firmware version and what works and what doesn't.. The question remains though if the issues are only on the primary controller and not the controller that the cd uses regardless of what firmware works on boot.

also fyi some crucials have there own issues that I would watch out for as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2974/crucial-s-realssd-c300-an-update-on-my-drive
Click to expand...

The problem is the drive firmware, not the connection point used by the optibay or hdd bay.
 
tjb1 said:
Ok here it is.

310 has no problems...request your drive with the 310 firmware.
Click to expand...

This is incorrect. I had a OWC SSD with FW 310 in a 2008 MBP and it had the auto-sleep lockup problem. I disabled auto-sleep and all was well.

So to review, I bought a OWC SSD in November 2010 and it had a firmware bug that OWC publicly acknowledged and promised a fix and a OS X updater. Here we are six months later and neither has materialized. As a consumer, I don't really care if it is OWC or Sandforce's fault.
 
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to>>>>>>>>>tjbi

(1) i assume you have f/w 310 with u're owc drive?

(2) have you enabled trim with f/w 310 using cindora's patch, i know from others that trim was successful with f/w 343/360

weaselboy has really convinced me to consider n intel drive - do not mind slight performance compromise in return for reliability. Altho', i'm praying the V3 will present without issues for us 2011 SB MBP owners
 
tjb1 said:
The problem is the drive firmware, not the connection point used by the optibay or hdd bay.
Click to expand...

Again I understand that. Why isn't anyone addressing the question that I proposed?

Has anyone tested the SSD in the optibay and still have the same problem with sleep when they have a known working hard drive or known working ssd (like my intel x25) in the primary/HD bay?

That is the question. Can anyone answer that? I don't need any other information on that question. Its a I have tested and Yes still problems or No the problem is only in the primary HDD bay.

If you would like to offer suggestions on the theory thats fine.
The theory is that since the optibay usually does not effect sleep I assume that using the OWC in the optibay would not exhibit the same results as when it is in the primary hdd bay. If you respond to the theory please first answer above question if you have tested.
 
RMA fixed sleep issue

I had sleep issues with a 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro bought at the end of
December with 343 firmware. I was unable to upgrade the firmware to 360.
It would update 64 sectors then fail. I had to send my drive in for a parameter change that was done on drives sold after 1/31/11. Check out post 56 on their blog entry http://blog.macsales.com/9474-owc-ssd-firmware-updated

I no longer have sleep issues using firmware 360 after the parameter change OWC preformed on the drive.

FYI, I have a Macbook Pro 4,1 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo.
 
systimax said:
Again I understand that. Why isn't anyone addressing the question that I proposed?

Has anyone tested the SSD in the optibay and still have the same problem with sleep when they have a known working hard drive or known working ssd (like my intel x25) in the primary/HD bay?

That is the question. Can anyone answer that? I don't need any other information on that question. Its a I have tested and Yes still problems or No the problem is only in the primary HDD bay.

If you would like to offer suggestions on the theory thats fine.
The theory is that since the optibay usually does not effect sleep I assume that using the OWC in the optibay would not exhibit the same results as when it is in the primary hdd bay. If you respond to the theory please first answer above question if you have tested.
Click to expand...

I just told you, it is the DRIVE. NOT WHERE THEY CONNECT, it doesnt matter if its in the optibay or the hdd bay. This is of course on models that dont have the 6gb bay which the 2011 models seem to have.

If you dont understand that...well then I cant make it any simpler.
 
oyarzun said:
I had sleep issues with a 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro bought at the end of
December with 343 firmware. I was unable to upgrade the firmware to 360.
It would update 64 sectors then fail. I had to send my drive in for a parameter change that was done on drives sold after 1/31/11. Check out post 56 on their blog entry http://blog.macsales.com/9474-owc-ssd-firmware-updated

I no longer have sleep issues using firmware 360 after the parameter change OWC preformed on the drive.

FYI, I have a Macbook Pro 4,1 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo.
Click to expand...

Is it possible for the user to update the Parameters then? Or do we have to send it back to OWC?
 
tjb1 said:
I just told you, it is the DRIVE. NOT WHERE THEY CONNECT, it doesnt matter if its in the optibay or the hdd bay. This is of course on models that dont have the 6gb bay which the 2011 models seem to have.

If you dont understand that...well then I cant make it any simpler.
Click to expand...

You know, you might back off a little; the OP asked a very reasonable question, which is whether anyone had specifically tested the configuration that he is planning to use. While you've been vehemently telling people that firmware 310 is the solution to these problems (and I do see that the idea of downgrading to 310 came up earlier in this thread -- see page 9 for example), two people subsequently responded to you to offer evidence to the contrary.

By the way -- for anyone out there experiencing problems with their macbook pro failing to go to sleep (as opposed to failing to wake after sleep, or failing to wake after hibernation), i just thought I'd mention that i discovered a pernicious bug with this that ended up being caused by dropbox, one of the pre-1.0 versions. Upgrading to the latest build fixed it. I also learned (and some of you may know already) that a lot of "not going to sleep" problems are software related. You can use the command line pmset to show you a sleep error log (type man pmset to see a list of the options) which will detail software-related sleep problems, if they exist. For instance, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/776356/ .
 
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timyu said:
You know, you might back off a little; the OP asked a very reasonable question, which is whether anyone had specifically tested the configuration that he is planning to use. While you've been vehemently telling people that firmware 310 is the solution to these problems (and I do see that the idea of downgrading to 310 came up earlier in this thread -- see page 9 for example), two people subsequently responded to you to offer evidence to the contrary.

By the way -- for anyone out there experiencing problems with their macbook pro failing to go to sleep (as opposed to failing to wake after sleep, or failing to wake after hibernation), i just thought I'd mention that i discovered a pernicious bug with this that ended up being caused by dropbox, one of the pre-1.0 versions. Upgrading to the latest build fixed it. I also learned (and some of you may know already) that a lot of "not going to sleep" problems are software related. You can use the command line pmset to show you a sleep error log (type man pmset to see a list of the options) which will detail software-related sleep problems, if they exist. For instance, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/776356/ .
Click to expand...

You know, I already said it is the drive firmware causing the problem, not where it is connected. Also, changing pmset options does not fix the problem. If you read my other posts, I also stated that.

Wanna know how? When I first got my 120gb OWC Mercury Extreme Pro ssd on 12-25-2010 it had firmware 343. Being a christmas present I had already researched every option for the drive. I changed disk sleep, hibernationmode, sms, and the sleep settings in System Preferences even the location hddbay/optibay. Nothing fixed it. Called OWC, got an RMA for it and had a drive with 310 shipped. I have had the 310 drive in the optibay for the past 2 months now with no problems, before that it was in the normal spot but I moved it because my HDD was not sleeping correctly in the optibay and I also want to keep sms on the HDD.
 
tjb1 said:
You know, I already said it is the drive firmware causing the problem, not where it is connected. Also, changing pmset options does not fix the problem. If you read my other posts, I also stated that.
Click to expand...

1. Clearly, the firmware is one of the variables. But two people, just a few posts ago, reported sleep issues even though they have 310. Do you have any helpful suggestions for them?

2. Sounds like there are other variables out there. For instance OWC has also posted on their blog that some owners of specific Macbook Pro models (5,1-5,4) have a specific, NON-firmware issues with OWC drives that are not user-fixable (but require you to send your drive in to them for a different sort of fix).

3. If you re-read my post, you would see that I did not suggest changing any pmset options. I suggested checking your pmset log to identify potential software issues.

Wanna know how? When I first got my 120gb OWC Mercury Extreme Pro ssd on 12-25-2010 it had firmware 343. Being a christmas present I had already researched every option for the drive. I changed disk sleep, hibernationmode, sms, and the sleep settings in System Preferences even the location hddbay/optibay. Nothing fixed it. Called OWC, got an RMA for it and had a drive with 310 shipped. I have had the 310 drive in the optibay for the past 2 months now with no problems, before that it was in the normal spot but I moved it because my HDD was not sleeping correctly in the optibay and I also want to keep sms on the HDD.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Now we're getting somewhere. So: You had drive A with 343, they replaced it with drive B with 310, and your problem went away. Great. I suppose it would have been cleaner if you had done the firmware upgrade yourself but I'm not going to push it. What model MB / MBP do you have?

I apologize if I come across as patrolling this thread to nitpick. But I came to this discussion a week ago, contemplating a SSD purchase and found all sorts of conflicting information. What I couldn't find was any reassurance that my money and time would be well spent purchasing a SSD to install in my specific model of MBP. Frustrating. I decided to bite the bullet anyway and buy a drive which is due tomorrow. I hope to report on how it goes, to help the next poor sap out there who "just wants some data" to help them make their decision.

You know the saying, more light, less heat.
 
timyu said:
1. Clearly, the firmware is one of the variables. But two people, just a few posts ago, reported sleep issues even though they have 310. Do you have any helpful suggestions for them?

2. Sounds like there are other variables out there. For instance OWC has also posted on their blog that some owners of specific Macbook Pro models (5,1-5,4) have a specific, NON-firmware issues with OWC drives that are not user-fixable (but require you to send your drive in to them for a different sort of fix).

3. If you re-read my post, you would see that I did not suggest changing any pmset options. I suggested checking your pmset log to identify potential software issues.



Thank you. Now we're getting somewhere. So: You had drive A with 343, they replaced it with drive B with 310, and your problem went away. Great. I suppose it would have been cleaner if you had done the firmware upgrade yourself but I'm not going to push it. What model MB / MBP do you have?

I apologize if I come across as patrolling this thread to nitpick. But I came to this discussion a week ago, contemplating a SSD purchase and found all sorts of conflicting information. What I couldn't find was any reassurance that my money and time would be well spent purchasing a SSD to install in my specific model of MBP. Frustrating. I decided to bite the bullet anyway and buy a drive which is due tomorrow. I hope to report on how it goes, to help the next poor sap out there who "just wants some data" to help them make their decision.

You know the saying, more light, less heat.
Click to expand...

1. One of those was a 2008 MBP and the other was a 2011. I can not confirm issues on those as I have a 2010 MBP. Simply going by my experiences and that many others here that have 310 or downgraded to 310 have had no problems at all.

1b. I could not do the firmware downgrade myself at the time because 1. I was at home where I have no access to high speed internet. and 2. These download pages were not as widespread as they are now.

2b. My 2010 MBP is model 6,2

3b. Not sure how it is now due to the new technology but when I was researching for my drive it appeared at the time Intel was the most compatible but the slowest while Sandforce was the fastest but had more issues.

To the others, I have no enabled trim nor have I heard of the hack that allows you to. I have read that the drives manage themselves quite nicely and trim is not needed. Also, OS X may also be doing work itself to keep the drive clean. And to finish, Lion may be supporting trim if it is all that important and I do plan to upgrade to Lion as soon as it is available.

My SSD is running 310 firmware, I have had ZERO-0 problems with it located in both Optibay and HDDbay running both OS X and Windows 7. I have set the hibernationmode to 0 to save 8gb of space on the drive. I have also set disksleep to 1 to make my HDD sleep sooner. I use HDAPM on the HDD to reduce its power level. My SSD is in an optibay sold on ebay by smk312. My computer is a 2010 MBP 6,2 Model, 2.66 i7, 8gb Ram, Running 10.6.7, SSD in Optibay, Stock 7200rpm 500gb Seagate drive in HDDbay. Both connections run at 3gb.

Anything else you would like to know?
 
This from OWC -

"You may have read or seen references to MacBook Pro model identifiers 5,1 – 5,4. These are the models specifically affected by sleep related issues, NOT hibernation issues. If you purchased your SSD BEFORE 1/31/11 AND YOU OWN one of these Model ID machines, we need you to send your SSD in to us so we can apply the parameter update (for sleep issues) and at the same time we can update it to MP4 (to address any potential hibernation issue) if you have not already done so."


So, if you have a 5,1-5,4 model and bought an OWC SSD prior to 1/31/11, then you could potentally have a sleep issue that cannot be fixed by firmware. The SSD must be returned to OWC for a parameter change.

For all models, the 360 firmware fixes the hibernation bug on the OWC SSDs (actually all Sandforce SSDs).

Understand there are two distinct bugs. You may or may not be affected by both. Also understand, SOFTWARE can prevent your laptop from sleeping.
 
EFFECTIVE QUICK FIX FOR SSD SLEEP ISSUE

Hi guys,

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this yet, but the program PleaseSleep essentially corrects the beachball problem when the computer comes out of automated sleep.

It forces the computer to sleep when the alotted time for sleep (the time set in 'Energy Saver') has been reached. So its actually like telling the computer to sleep manually, only you don't have to be there to make it happen.

Hope this fixes the problem for you, it has for me.

Cheers.
 
tjb1 said:
Anything else you would like to know?
Click to expand...

Thanks, appreciate the details. I also have a MacBook Pro 6,2. Glad to hear 310 ought to work for me. Now I ought to be able to test if 360 works too. If not I can try to revert.
 
walshlink said:
This from OWC -

"You may have read or seen references to MacBook Pro model identifiers 5,1 – 5,4. These are the models specifically affected by sleep related issues, NOT hibernation issues. If you purchased your SSD BEFORE 1/31/11 AND YOU OWN one of these Model ID machines, we need you to send your SSD in to us so we can apply the parameter update (for sleep issues) and at the same time we can update it to MP4 (to address any potential hibernation issue) if you have not already done so."


So, if you have a 5,1-5,4 model and bought an OWC SSD prior to 1/31/11, then you could potentally have a sleep issue that cannot be fixed by firmware. The SSD must be returned to OWC for a parameter change.

For all models, the 360 firmware fixes the hibernation bug on the OWC SSDs (actually all Sandforce SSDs).

Understand there are two distinct bugs. You may or may not be affected by both. Also understand, SOFTWARE can prevent your laptop from sleeping.
Click to expand...

The heck? Less than two weeks ago OWC said that the 360 firmware fixed "all known sleep and hibernation issues". At least they are now acknowledging that (as we users have known for months) that there are two issues. They still have it partly wrong, however, in claiming that the sleep issue only affects MBP 5,1 - 5,4 models -- how did they come to that conclusion? I have the energy saver sleep issue on my 6,2 and can recreate it 100% of the time, and I informed OWC of that in January.

Apparently the energy saver sleep/beach balling upon wake issue can only be remedied by sending the SSD back to OWC. I'm not willing or able to go without my MBP for several days. I have installed Please Sleep as recommended in an above post and it works great -- no more weird sleep indicator light behavior with an energy saver sleep or beach balling/forced shut down after waking. Thanks Blue Sun for bringing that to our attention! Hopefully something like Please Sleep will be incorporated into OS X Lion.
 
KnurledKnob said:
h ave installed Please Sleep as recommended in an above post and it works great -- no more weird sleep indicator light behavior with an energy saver sleep or beach balling/forced shut down after waking. Thanks Blue Sun for bringing that to our attention! Hopefully something like Please Sleep will be incorporated into OS X Lion.
Click to expand...

how does please sleep differ from smart-sleep

i have the latter, it does the job well, albeit a lil basic and featureless
 
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