OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Problem

[MBHockey]

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.

It's cute that you actually think the problem has been fixed. If it's the same controller (it is) you are going to have the same problem.

How have 6 months of posts on the same exact problem not convinced you they haven't solved the actual cause of the problem? It's a pretty impressive resistant to logic.

I'd understand more if you said "dealing with these minor inconveniences is a trade-off i'm willing to make for the increased speed over an Intel drive."

 

[kfscoll]

It's cute that you actually think the problem has been fixed. If it's the same controller (it is) you are going to have the same problem.

How have 6 months of posts on the same exact problem not convinced you they haven't solved the actual cause of the problem? It's a pretty impressive resistant to logic.

I'd understand more if you said "dealing with these minor inconveniences is a trade-off i'm willing to make for the increased speed over an Intel drive."

Please don't be a patronizing idiot. You'll also find if you bother to read all of the posts that folks who've ordered drives fairly recently haven't had any problems.

I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand. The older OWC drives were shipped with internal power management settings that, coupled with newer firmware versions, caused sleep and/or hibernation issues. Newer drives have different internal power settings that are fully compatible with the newer firmware and thus don't exhibit sleep issues.

Why in the world would the problem all-of-a-sudden return on my new drive if the drive is working fine right now? My old drive had the sleep issue consistently, every time, no matter what (except with firmware 310) because of its internal power settings. This new drive with FW version 360 works perfectly and has slept normally every time. I have no idea why you insist that old, incompatible internal power management settings would manifest themselves on a drive that never had them in the first place...this is only way that the sleep issue would crop up again.

If you want to pimp your Intel drive, that's fine. But why you insist on posting FUD in this thread is beyond me, particularly since you don't own an OWC drive -- why do you even care?

And yes, even if I still had the sleep issue, it wouldn't bother me. I'd take that minor inconvenience as a trade-off for better speed relative to an Intel drive.

 

[kobyh15]

Please don't be a patronizing idiot. You'll also find if you bother to read all of the posts that folks who've ordered drives fairly recently haven't had any problems.

I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand. The older OWC drives were shipped with internal power management settings that, coupled with newer firmware versions, caused sleep and/or hibernation issues. Newer drives have different internal power settings that are fully compatible with the newer firmware and thus don't exhibit sleep issues.

Why in the world would the problem all-of-a-sudden return on my new drive if the drive is working fine right now? My old drive had the sleep issue consistently, every time, no matter what (except with firmware 310) because of its internal power settings. This new drive with FW version 360 works perfectly and has slept normally every time. I have no idea why you insist that old, incompatible internal power management settings would manifest themselves on a drive that never had them in the first place...this is only way that the sleep issue would crop up again.

If you want to pimp your Intel drive, that's fine. But why you insist on posting FUD in this thread is beyond me, particularly since you don't own an OWC drive -- why do you even care?

And yes, even if I still had the sleep issue, it wouldn't bother me. I'd take that minor inconvenience as a trade-off for better speed relative to an Intel drive.

Boom roasted.

 

[jijitrash]

No problems with latest Mercury Pro in 2011 Macbook Pro

I just want to report and clarify another time:

I have the 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro with newest firmware 360 and presumably newest internal settings in my 2011 15" macbook pro instead of the standard drive.

I do not have any sleep/hibernation problems now.

Two weeks ago I reported that for one user on the system sleep would be delayed by many minutes, or sometimes prevented by some weird settings which were transferred and imported from my old machine when I got the new one. I found out that the old macbook has the same sleep issue with this particular user. I presume it was Safari or Firefox, but it doesn't happen anymore after the last software update.

Hibernation at low battery and sleep after 2minutes idle works now as it should and everything is fine. I can only recommend this drive. It easily gives 250MB/s read/write speeds.

best,
james

 

[AussieRoo]

Owc ssd

I think they may have more problems then just sleep/hibernation. I've had four of these and three went back because they were 'panic locked', though that isn't what OWC will say.

On, in a Dell, worked for 6 months, then the next morning nothing! I always have to send it in too...just rubs me! I have asked if I can do a reset or firmware and the answer for the last four months has been "it's coming soon".

I'd say I've bought my last OWC SSD...I will stick with the more reliable, but not as fast, intel.

Cheerio Chaps!

 

[Gallank]

New 480 SSD 6g OWC drive DEAD in 2 days

Well -- 3 days after getting a new 480 6g drive -- it's dead. The machine booted up with the folder with the ? on it. I had to reboot my brand new imac using the disk and reinstalling on the 2 tb drive. What a fail.

M

 

[arklab]

I'm not Mac "knowledgeable", but I have great news on OWC's Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD drives!

As of now the 120 and 240 (soon 480) drives use Toshiba Toggle Ram, which is 34nm and quite resistant to the "troubles".
It usually costs more, too - but not with QWC.

In addition, the 240 and 480 drives have a new controller - the Sandforce 2282.

This differs from the 2281 in having 16 byte lanes, as opposed to 8.

There is soon (this week?) to be a review at storagereview.com (and they just finished one on the 240 Electra 6G SSD).
Oops - also found one on the SSD Review - they loved it.

OK, I'll admit that while I'm more of a Windows guy, I'm really blown away by this OWC stuff - I just bought three of them.

I just want to spread the word about this major change in SSD drives.
Hope I didn't overstep.

 

[botsmack]

I seem to be experiencing sleep issues as well. I've been running the SATAII OWC 120GB SSD on an "Early 2008" MacBook Pro on Snow Leopard. It worked fine. I had the SSD in the main hard drive bay and the HDD in the optical bay. Sleep and wake worked fine.

Fast forward to last week. My job bought me a new MacBook Pro (see signature). I kept the 750GB HDD in the main hard drive bay and purchased a data doubler from OWC to install my SSD in the optical bay. I was running an old firmware on the SSD (350 I think), so I took this time to update it to 360.

I installed Lion fresh on the SSD and implemented all the usual SSD fine tuning:

1. Set hibernate mode to "0"
2. Deleted the sleep image
3. Turned off "put hard disk to sleep"

Ever since doing all of this, it seems to sleep fine, but it doesn't wake reliably. I try to wake it either in laptop mode or clamshell mode and it acts like it is dead. The sleep/wake light stops its heartbeat and goes dark. I press keys on the keyboard or press the power button and nothing happens. The laptop appears dead. I hold down the power button, but nothing happens. I then press the power button a few minutes later and the laptop boots up.

In clamshell mode I plug in my mouse and press a mouse button and it takes about 45-60 seconds (sometimes longer?) before it will wake.

I'm going to contact OWC, but is there anything else I can try?

 

[mobilehavoc]

FWIW, I still have my 240GB OWC SSD with FW 340 and have had ZERO issues with it whatsoever. I've recently upgraded to Lion and went very smoothly - no problems in SL too. Further, I originally had it in a 2008 Aluminum Macbook and then moved it to a 2011 i7 MBP and still had absolutely no problems.

I don't think I'm touching the firmware on this drive ever and/or getting a new one for a long time

 

[DanielKinney]

SSD from OWC

Wondering if anyone else here is experiencing this issue with the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD.

I have a 2010 2.4GHz 15inch i5 MBP. Everything is stock except for the hard drive. I removed the 320GB 5400rpm drive that the laptop came with and installed a 240GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD.

Whenever the laptop goes to sleep on its own and I wake it up, all I get is the spinning beach-ball and cant do anything with the machine, cant force quit or anything. I have to hold the power button in to cycle the machine. Then all is fine.

If the laptop goes to sleep by me closing the lid then it is fine. The issue only arises when the machine goes to sleep on its own (both on power and battery).

While this is not an end of the world issue, it is annoying as it is a $500 hard drive. The laptop and the drive are about 2 weeks or so old. This problem doesn't occur when using the stock drive.

Any help that can be given is appreciated.

Thanks,

DID you ever get this resolved? I talked to someone about this problem did you get the 6Gb or the 3Gb. The 6Gb is to strong for this mbp 2008 late 5,1 you can only use ONE of the OWC hard rives and it is the Mercury 3Gb
OWC 240GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial-ATA 7mm Solid State Drive