Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I have just installed the OWC 240GB (360) drive in Macbook pro 2010 (6,2) and i have had the sleep problem.

I now have Please sleep and Smart sleep installed and they both work well together, you can make a small edit to the application so they dont even show up on the dock, its not the best fix but if its a decision on having a few apps running or no SSD i would run 10 extra apps to keep this speed.

What exactly are you experiencing? (Maybe I can help. See my experience, and jijitrash's, earlier in the thread.) I have the same model MBP as you and no issues with a OWC 480 (360).
 
Yesterday I received a new OWC 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD, with the NEW 360 firmware. After installing it in my 2010 Macbook Pro. It's only been a day so far, but I'm relieved to report that I've tested and had no difficulties so far with:

--Going to sleep via closing the lid
--Going to sleep via the auto-timer
--Auto-hibernating when the battery is nearly drained
--Waking from any of the above situations.

[...]

Quick update to provide some follow-up: it's now day 5 on my MBP 6,2 OWC 480GB/firmware360, entirely default Snow Leopard settings, no special sleep apps. Things seem to be still going fine. No issues with autosleep (falling, or waking). No issues with auto-hibernation (tested now 3-4X).

Lest anyone wonder, I have no connection to OWC other than being a customer. (Amusingly, for raising questions earlier in the thread, I was accused of being a rep from a competitor, out to smear OWC's name.)
 
What exactly are you experiencing? (Maybe I can help. See my experience, and jijitrash's, earlier in the thread.) I have the same model MBP as you and no issues with a OWC 480 (360).

I have had it for a few days now so im starting to get a good idea whats working and not.

Closing the lid is fine.
I let it run out of power last night and when i powered it up this morning it booted rather than waking up.
If i leave it with the lid open it will not go to sleep, screen will turn off but looking at the sleep light its still wide awake.
 
I have had it for a few days now so im starting to get a good idea whats working and not.

Closing the lid is fine.
I let it run out of power last night and when i powered it up this morning it booted rather than waking up.
If i leave it with the lid open it will not go to sleep, screen will turn off but looking at the sleep light its still wide awake.

Aha. That sounds very familiar. I had what sounds like exactly the same symptoms, BEFORE INSTALLING A SSD. The short version of the story is that it required a logic board replacement to make it go away.

Below is the long version:
1. A few months ago, I had this exact same symptoms that you described. I experienced failure to go to sleep, unless I closed the lid. I also experienced failure to hibernate (ie, after letting it run out of power, it would boot, instead of waking from hibernation).
2. I THINK the problem seemed to be somewhat intermittent... or at least, I noticed it intermittently. But after several months I had detected the pattern and began to troubleshoot.
3. I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM, no help.
4. I took it to the Genius Bar. They checked my battery, it was fine. They kept it for testing using one of their system startup disks. They could not replicate the problem when booting from their disks. They concluded it was a software problem.
5. I did some troubleshooting of my own. Logging under the guest account, the "going to sleep" problem went away. Under my own account, I discovered that I could fix the "going to sleep" problem by upgrading Dropbox from v0.9 to v1.020+.
6. However, the hibernation problem remained. But it was still intermittent, maybe half the time. Until one day, as my power ran out, the machine turned off completely, as it had done on prior occasions. But when I tried to plug it back in and wake it, I was unable to. The sleep light began to blink erratically. I was also unable to restart it using a hard reset. I was unable to get it to respond at all.
7. Strangely, it also failed to charge for at least an hour.
8. An hour later, the battery began to take a charge, and inexplicably, I was able to reboot it.
9. I took it back to the Genius Bar, showed them a video of the odd sleep light blinking, and they told me they had never seen it. It was not one of the standard blinking patterns (eg, there is one that indicates a RAM problem, etc.). They agreed that this was sufficient indication that there was a hardware problem.
10. They replaced the logic board, and finally, all of the problems went away.

All of this was in a Macbook Pro 2010 (Model 6,2), essentially a stock configuration, Snow Leopard 10.6.7, stock hard drive, except upgraded with 8GB of OWC RAM. This is the same machine that I have now installed the SSD in.

So, I would be suspicious that perhaps the problem might not reside with the SSD, and possibly the logic board.
 
Last edited:
Having Problems Contact OWC

I have a 240gb Mercurry Pro SSD i had the 340 firmware and had both hibernation and sleep issues. I called OWC and sent the drive back in they updated the firmware to 360 to fix hibernation and did whatever they had to do to fix the sleep when lid up issue. I have had the repaired drive in now for several days and no sleep issues with the lid up.

If you are having problems contact the manufacturer send the drive in and you should be good.

I own a mid 2010 macbook pro. It sucks being down for a week with no laptop but if you want it fixed make a phone call and start the process...
 
I have a 240gb Mercurry Pro SSD i had the 340 firmware and had both hibernation and sleep issues. I called OWC and sent the drive back in they updated the firmware to 360 to fix hibernation and did whatever they had to do to fix the sleep when lid up issue. I have had the repaired drive in now for several days and no sleep issues with the lid up.

If you are having problems contact the manufacturer send the drive in and you should be good.

I own a mid 2010 macbook pro. It sucks being down for a week with no laptop but if you want it fixed make a phone call and start the process...

that's what i love about owc - always happy to help
no attitude
no-nonsense
no blaming the consumer
 
So with this updated firmware, are there any other reasons NOT to install an OWC SSD right now? Until the firmware release, I was holding off installing it until Lion comes out because of its TRIM support.
I'm just worried about loading Snow Leopard and XP (in bootcamp) right now if this may be potentially destructive to the drive for the lack of TRIM support under either OS. Any opinions? Thanks!
 
So with this updated firmware, are there any other reasons NOT to install an OWC SSD right now? Until the firmware release, I was holding off installing it until Lion comes out because of its TRIM support.
I'm just worried about loading Snow Leopard and XP (in bootcamp) right now if this may be potentially destructive to the drive for the lack of TRIM support under either OS. Any opinions? Thanks!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1125400/

:D
 
that's what i love about owc - always happy to help
no attitude
no-nonsense
no blaming the consumer
I gotta say I am also impressed with OWC's service on this issue. I posted on their blog saying that even with firmware 360 I'm having sleep issues (but not with FW 310) and they contacted me to troubleshoot and to arrange an RMA. That's what I'm talkin' about.
 
Mac FW Updater?

Any news on the Mac-compatible updater that's been promised for months by this awesome Mac-friendly company?
 
I just wanted to follow up to explain how my SSD's issues were resolved. With my original drive (shipped back in October), my 2011 MacBook Pro had sleep issues with FW versions 343 and 360 but worked fine with 310. OWC just shipped me a new drive with FW 360 pre-installed and this one sleeps without issue. So the sleep problem is a combination of the firmware version and some other drive settings that aren't user-accessible.

If you're still having sleep issues with your drive and FW 360, have OWC ship you a replacement.
 
its up to sandorce to produce a mac friendly f/w updater, they have been promising one since the v2 came out

ive given up

I think I read a OWC blog post they gave up waiting for SF to do it and OWC was going to make the FW updater themselves. That too has not materialized.
 
Okay, so I tested it...
It's the FREAKING DISKSLEEP & SMS

I changed mine to 0 (which disables spindown... as there is no spindown on a SSD) and the SMS to 0 which disables the gforce sensor
A quick search reveals that Apple's architectural design is to associate disk behavior not to any specific disk or disks, but to the system:
DISKSLEEP
the time until the hard drive spins down can be controlled by editing the file /Library -> Preferences -> SystemConfiguration -> com.apple.PowerManagement.plist.
Does the system spindown? My superficial understanding was that spinning down is something that a physical hard drive does.

Thus, a computer setting for disk spindown seems to be a poor architectural design and poor logical association, as spindown is a disk-specific behavior.

Having spindown as a disk-specific setting seems like an obviously more coherent logical solution. I wonder why Apple developers did not choose this option.
 
I think I read a OWC blog post they gave up waiting for SF to do it and OWC was going to make the FW updater themselves. That too has not materialized.
yep, i read that blog too, they been saying this since decemeber!

frankly, i have given up on the idea that a mac f/w updater will ever materialise!


i just hope OWC are little more forceful with sandforce on their next endeavor with the sf2000 controllers - asking for an osx friendly f/w updater


finger crossed that the next gen drives should be drooping in the next couple of weeks
 
The problem happened again

Hi all,

After 1 month of "spinning-beach-ball" free Macbook Pro, with my 256GB SSD Drive, it started happening again. It happened at least 3 times again, when letting the macbook pro alone for a few minutes.

Please remember that in order to fix it, I needed to install 360 and to apply a PRAM reset (Commnad + Option + P + R) when rebooting the mac, and keeping it pressed until it blacks the screen, and shows the sound again.

I just tried again the PRAM reset, to check if it fixes it again. If it does, I'll let you all know...

So, it even seems the spinning ball problem when coming out of sleeping, is something NON-RELATED to the firmware... as OWC said to me 1 month ago... It seems it's actually linked to the way the SSD drive is recongnized by OS X... because doing a PRAM reset and fixing it, means it just need to re-organize the OS X in order for it to keep looking at the SSD drive correctly, right?

What do you guys think?
 
Hi all,

After 1 month of "spinning-beach-ball" free Macbook Pro, with my 256GB SSD Drive, it started happening again. It happened at least 3 times again, when letting the macbook pro alone for a few minutes.

Please remember that in order to fix it, I needed to install 360 and to apply a PRAM reset (Commnad + Option + P + R) when rebooting the mac, and keeping it pressed until it blacks the screen, and shows the sound again.

I just tried again the PRAM reset, to check if it fixes it again. If it does, I'll let you all know...

So, it even seems the spinning ball problem when coming out of sleeping, is something NON-RELATED to the firmware... as OWC said to me 1 month ago... It seems it's actually linked to the way the SSD drive is recongnized by OS X... because doing a PRAM reset and fixing it, means it just need to re-organize the OS X in order for it to keep looking at the SSD drive correctly, right?

What do you guys think?

Hi all again,
I can now confirm, that after the PRAM Reset, the problem disappeared again.

SO PLEASE, if you're having these issues after the sleep, GIVE THIS PROCESS A TRY...


Just do a PRAM reset, and see what happens...

Hope this helps

Luciano
 
Hi all,

After 1 month of "spinning-beach-ball" free Macbook Pro, with my 256GB SSD Drive, it started happening again. It happened at least 3 times again, when letting the macbook pro alone for a few minutes.

Please remember that in order to fix it, I needed to install 360 and to apply a PRAM reset (Commnad + Option + P + R) when rebooting the mac, and keeping it pressed until it blacks the screen, and shows the sound again.

I just tried again the PRAM reset, to check if it fixes it again. If it does, I'll let you all know...

So, it even seems the spinning ball problem when coming out of sleeping, is something NON-RELATED to the firmware... as OWC said to me 1 month ago... It seems it's actually linked to the way the SSD drive is recongnized by OS X... because doing a PRAM reset and fixing it, means it just need to re-organize the OS X in order for it to keep looking at the SSD drive correctly, right?

What do you guys think?
Have OWC swap the drive for you. I had the exact same problems as you describe with my '11 MacBook Pro on FW 360 and evidently there's a non-user accessible power setting on the SSD that OWC needs to switch that'll remedy the problem. In my case, OWC did an advance-exchange for me and the new drive I received works flawlessly.
 
Have OWC swap the drive for you. I had the exact same problems as you describe with my '11 MacBook Pro on FW 360 and evidently there's a non-user accessible power setting on the SSD that OWC needs to switch that'll remedy the problem. In my case, OWC did an advance-exchange for me and the new drive I received works flawlessly.

Thanks kfscoll for the message...
An advance exchange is that they first send you a new drive, and then you send it back the original one?

Because I cannot stop using my laptop, I hadn't considering the exchange before..

Please let me know how you did to get it exchanged.

Thanks
Luciano
 
Thanks kfscoll for the message...
An advance exchange is that they first send you a new drive, and then you send it back the original one?

Because I cannot stop using my laptop, I hadn't considering the exchange before..

Please let me know how you did to get it exchanged.

Thanks
Luciano

Yes, you give them your credit card number as collateral, and they ship the new drive to you. Once you receive the new drive, you ship the old one back to them, and that's it.
 
Last edited:
Yes, you give them your credit card number as collateral, and they ship the new drive to you. Once you receive the new drive, you ship the old one back to them, and that's it.


Thanks for the tip. I'll do it asap.

Regards
Luciano

PS: Today, the "back_from_sleep" issue happened again..... :-(
 
For Sale

I think Sandforce/OWC is not ever going to get this fixed. This thread is six months old and users are still having the same problems. I would get rid of the drive and buy something that works. JMO.

My OWC 120GB with FW310 is still for sale.

Tom
Phoenix
 
that's what i love about owc - always happy to help
no attitude
no-nonsense
no blaming the consumer

I gotta say I am also impressed with OWC's service on this issue. I posted on their blog saying that even with firmware 360 I'm having sleep issues (but not with FW 310) and they contacted me to troubleshoot and to arrange an RMA. That's what I'm talkin' about.

What kind of delusion do you guys share? This problem has been around since OWC started selling these drives. Sure, it's probably the controller (and I had the same issue on an OCZ Vertex ssd with an Indilinx controller) so it's probably not even isolated to a single controller -- but come on, if they haven't refunded your money by now they're taking you for a ride.

Go with Intel. Seems like they actually test their controllers on Macs because in 1.5 years I haven't had a single issue with my G2 drive. Just flawless. Go on the Intel SSD boards and search for sleep and Mac together. you won't find anything relevant.
 
What kind of delusion do you guys share? This problem has been around since OWC started selling these drives. Sure, it's probably the controller (and I had the same issue on an OCZ Vertex ssd with an Indilinx controller) so it's probably not even isolated to a single controller -- but come on, if they haven't refunded your money by now they're taking you for a ride.

Go with Intel. Seems like they actually test their controllers on Macs because in 1.5 years I haven't had a single issue with my G2 drive. Just flawless. Go on the Intel SSD boards and search for sleep and Mac together. you won't find anything relevant.
No delusions at all. After OWC contacted me and troubleshot the problem, they advanced-shipped me a replacement SSD with the latest firmware that works perfectly -- no sleep issues, no hibernation issues. The problem with my first drive had to do with both the firmware and power settings that aren't user-accessible -- hence the need to swap the drive.

Enjoy your Intel drive; I'll enjoy my 100% perfect (and faster) OWC drive. :p
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.