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seagate momentus xt firmware SD-28 is out

J

jcampbell1070

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 12, 2010
74
2
NC
for anyone having problems with the seagate momentus xt give it a shot. i was on SD-25 and had the chirping problem, i have just updated to SD-28 so i will give it a few hours to see if it has stopped the chirping. if anyone else has updated please post if it stopped for you. the firmware is on the seagate website
 
I haven't had any issues with SD25, I'll wait to see some more responses before updating. Thanks for letting us know, I just checked 2 dys ago out of the blue and it was still 25 on the site :D
 
downloaded via bootcamp on windows 7. its says unsafe but all you need to do is save the file. i don't have any problems with SD26 before and now I'm on SD28. so far so good.
 
Any way to install without using CDs or Windows? Restoring to USB drive keeps failing :p
 
Going by these benchmarks 4K random read and write performance has gone 50% up!

seagateSD28update.jpg
 
So, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on upgrading. I have a Momentus XT 500GB installed as my main drive in a MBP 15" (Santa Rosa). It was running SD25 without an issue before upgrading to SD28.

So far (~6 hours of use), not a single issue with the upgrade. I didn't perform benchmarks before/after the upgrade - but things definitely feel subjectively faster.

I hope this update cures some of the issues people were having with this drive.
 
zwodubber said:
I haven't had any issues with SD25, I'll wait to see some more responses before updating. Thanks for letting us know, I just checked 2 dys ago out of the blue and it was still 25 on the site :D
Click to expand...

I often wonder why people fear upgrading firmware. It's not like the people who wrote the old firmware suddenly became incompetent at their craft.
 
Adamantoise said:
I often wonder why people fear upgrading firmware. It's not like the people who wrote the old firmware suddenly became incompetent at their craft.
Click to expand...

To quote Judd Nelson in the Breakfast Club: "It's an imperfect world, screws fall out!"

The same people that wrote the original don't always write the updates, that is why things can happen and fail while upgrading. The chance always exists that something will break, be lost, or features removed. That said, there is also the chance that things can be fixed and added. It is always a gamble. I used to reprogram flash memory for a living and there was always the chance that the chip would be fried and not take the update.
 
squeakr said:
To quote Judd Nelson in the Breakfast Club: "It's an imperfect world, screws fall out!"

The same people that wrote the original don't always write the updates, that is why things can happen and fail while upgrading. The chance always exists that something will break, be lost, or features removed. That said, there is also the chance that things can be fixed and added. It is always a gamble. I used to reprogram flash memory for a living and there was always the chance that the chip would be fried and not take the update.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know mistakes happen, but these companies review each revision of software with a group of engineers before announcing it is ready for release.

It's astounding that consumer's trust can waver so quickly. I worked in a Software environment for a while, and usually no one breaks stuff that already works, they just attempt to fix the known bugs, and then test that build again in its entirety.

But yeah, I guess there's no harm in being cautious.
 
Is there a way to install this firmware through Mac OS X? I have MBP 2011 13" with one SSD and one HDD Momentus XT and external dvd and I wouldn't like to take HDD out for this firmware upgrade.
 
When I last upgraded from SD24-SD25, the drive it worked perfectly. I have since fully encrypted the drive - this shouldn't have any effect should it? I'm pretty sure it won't, but wanted to put it to the community.
 
I upgraded from SD25 to SD28, and the drive does seem a bit faster, but now my MacBook Pro won't sleep. If I close the lid or choose sleep from the Apple menu, the LED on the front never starts pulsing.
 
PLin said:
I upgraded from SD25 to SD28, and the drive does seem a bit faster, but now my MacBook Pro won't sleep. If I close the lid or choose sleep from the Apple menu, the LED on the front never starts pulsing.
Click to expand...

Maybe resetting PRAM and EFI helps...
 
Momentus XT testing

Here's my unscientific testing results.

I two Macbook Pros. The first one is an older model, Early 2008. 2.5ghz Core 2 Duo. I put a 250gb Momentus XT in it months ago with SD26. The chirping drove me nuts. I stopped using that machine much anyway because I got a new one.

I applied the SD28 update to that machine, and the chirping appears to have stopped. This is a good thing.

My other machine is an Early 2011 15" Macbook Pro. 2.2ghz, Core i7. 4gb of memory with a 750gb HD that's a nice, slow, 5400 rpm. I wanted to replace the drive anyway with a 7200rpm drive made by anybody, so I took another shot at a Momentus XT. This machine runs Lion out of the box.

I put a 500gb Momentus XT in this machine, and it too, had SD26 (yes, I am willing to sacrifice space for speed). The drive is significantly faster, but it would be with ANY 7200rpm drive, so I'm not making any speed comparisons. But with SD26, there is NO chirping on this machine. I am hesitant to upgrade the firmware on this one, because I am not having any issues with it, and I read somewhere, that a couple of people are having trouble with this drive on SD28 and Lion 10.7.1 . Don't remember where I saw that, but the person said he was going to wait for 10.7.2 .

So for me, the bottom line is, SD28 solved the chirping problem on the 2008 Macbook Pro. SD26 doesn't have the chirping problem in the 2011 Macbook Pro.

As an aside, I am running Office for Mac 2011. When I put the new hard drive in and restored it from a Time Machine backup, Office stopped working and wanted the key code again. I put it in and it wouldn't activate. It thinks its on a new machine. Previous versions of Office for Mac didn't do this check. I had to call Microsoft on the phone and explain that all I did was replace the hard drive, and they gave me a new code to enter which activated it no problem. You would think that more than JUST the hard drive would have to change before Office would stop you. I have several Windows machines, and this doesn't happen if you change a hard drive. It does if you change several components, but just the HD? I thought that was ridiculous.

Anyway, I won't run the SD28 update on the 2011 Macbook until 10.7.2 comes out just to be on the safe side. I don't want to have problems I don't have now, and we all know that if you try to go BACK to a previous version of firmware on just about anything, you run the risk of bricking the device. So I'll wait :)

Glen

----------

Oh one more thing. I suppose I should mention that the 2008 Macbook Pro is running Snow Leopard with the SD28 firmware on the drive. As I said before, the 2011 came with Lion and its on SD26.

I can put both of them to sleep, no problem.
 
It turns out that my sleep issue had nothing to do with the firmware update to SD28. It must have been a result of some software I installed around the same time. I was playing with both Parallels 7 and VMware Fusion 4. I bet one or the combination of both of them caused sleep to stop working.

I backed up everything and did a clean install of Lion, and sleeping works again.
 
Upgraded to SD28 without issue, using the ISO boot CD. The drive's been running fine since last November, first with SD23, then SD24. It's always been faster than the WD SB 320GB, and quieter (no head click noise). I haven't noticed any problems, but since so many revs took place (internally and publicly), I thought it time to upgrade.

I have noticed a performance improvement - I measured an average speed of 92MB/s read transferring a 2.48GB file (to FW800 Seagate Desktop Mac). I seem to remember seeing speeds in the 80s with SD24, though I didn't do the exact same test (and, never noted the exact numbers). Anyway, I believe there is at least a several MB/s improvement, which agrees with the Windows benchmark. The drive seems to run cooler on average, too.

MBP is Early 2009 UB 17", 8GB RAM, 10.7.1
 
I had chirping with sd26 in a 2010 15" mbp, updated to 28 and it solved the chirp and gave me about 30 mins more battery as well.
 
Tonsko said:
When I last upgraded from SD24-SD25, the drive it worked perfectly. I have since fully encrypted the drive - this shouldn't have any effect should it? I'm pretty sure it won't, but wanted to put it to the community.
Click to expand...

WDE has no effect. Worked perfectly.
 
What about sleep issues?

Hi folks,
I am very keen to know if anyone reading this thread previously had sleep / energy save issues with the Momentus on earlier firmware?

Mine chirps but that has been the least of my concerns since installing this drive. The major issue is that it prevented my computer from putting itself to sleep, primarily because the computer always detects drive activity and this prevents it from determining when the drive is not in use, powering it down (to save energy), and eventually putting the computer to sleep if still not in use. I've still been able to manually put the computer to sleep.

Reading Seagate issue tracking on this drive, many other folks had this issue on their Mac.

I have SD24. I didn't bother updating to SD25 or SD26 because people with this spin-down / sleep issue reported the updates made no difference.

I am now considering updating to SD28.

I see no one has mentioned the sleep / drive spin-down issue here, so thought I'd ask.

Cheers,

Jonathan

P.S. Judging by the fact numerous people are saying that this update has given them better battery milage, it may be safe to assume the drive was also preventing their computer from spinning down the drive (power saving). The primary issue with the mac not being able to spin down the drive is that it resulted in it using far more battery power than would otherwise be necessary. Just a thought...
 
Last edited:
Performance increase after firmware upgrade (SD24 to SD28)

I've just done a firmware update on a ST95005620AS in a mid 2010 MBP17 (MacBookPro6,1), running 10.7.2 using the boot CD method, updating from SD24 to SD28. It worked perfectly.

Before and after the update I ran XBench (just the disk test). I took the best result of 5 runs each time. Here are the results -

Code: 
Firmware SD24

Results	45.81	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.7.2 (11C74)
		Physical RAM		8192 MB
		Model		MacBookPro6,1
		Drive Type		ST95005620AS
	Disk Test	45.81	
		Sequential	112.84	
			Uncached Write	99.80	61.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	122.79	69.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	94.37	27.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	149.56	75.17 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	28.74	
			Uncached Write	8.52	0.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	233.78	74.84 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	89.96	0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	156.82	29.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Firmware SD28

Results	57.94	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.7.2 (11C74)
		Physical RAM		8192 MB
		Model		MacBookPro6,1
		Drive Type		ST95005620AS
	Disk Test	57.94	
		Sequential	141.20	
			Uncached Write	179.65	110.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	154.03	87.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	96.17	28.14 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	170.30	85.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	36.45	
			Uncached Write	10.99	1.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	255.63	81.84 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	109.87	0.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	175.01	32.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]

A reasonable improvement I reckon. It certainly 'feels' faster, boots quicker and even sounds quieter. Glad I stumbled upon this thread!
 
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