Chosen Solution
Decided to upgrade my internal Hd from 160GB to new Hitachi travelstar 7k500…i have read tons of people complaining on several forums that they have experienced strange beeps from newly upgraded hd as well as intermitting freezes and beachballs…somebody suggested this might have something to do with sata II capability and the 1.7 efi firmware update…does anybody know if there’s a definitive answer to this…
I’ve been upgrading hard drives since I put one in a Mac+ in 1986 and never heard of any of the problems you describe. I really wouldn’t worry about rumours. We have professionals here to help you with your installation. Here’s how to do it: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2009 Hard Drive Replacement After it’s in, start up from your system disk, go to Utilities and format and partition the drive. Then install the system and restart. The only time I’ve ever had problems with new hard drives was when the had been formatted on a PC first.
The only time I got beeps out of a hard drive is when I was using some software to clean up a computer systems software and when the computer booted from the disk I would get a beeping from the hard drive and it was not able to be accessed. I tried a different version of the software and all was well. Each of us who work on computers on a regular basis tend to like one brand over another. I like Seagate drives better than Hitachi. The following link is for one that they sell here at iFixit. In my own computer I use One HP and Two Seagate drives. Good product and good warranty. But most any SATA drive will work fine in your computer. [linked product missing or disabled: IF107-071-1] Long story short. Mayer has been doing this for a long time. I have been doing this for a long time. Both of us do it for a living. We contribute here to help those how ask. iFixit provides this forum for you and others to ask and receive answers. You need to decide who to listen to. No things do not always go as planned. But those are not the norm. In 16 years I have only had One computer with the Beeping hard drive and it was one put in by Apple when the computer was new. It is owned by an Ad Agency and works fine except with that one piece of software. Good luck and do not be worried. I give you high marks for getting out there and doing your own stuff. If more folks would do that the cost of taking it in to fix may drop.
Sorry but the problem DOES exist. Indeed if you check on Apple System Profiler you’ll see that the factory installed HDD as well as the ODD are both running at SATA 1.5 Gbps even being able to run at 3 Gbps. I put a new hard disk and after transfering a couple of gigabytes it stuck. I booted on Linux and tried the same, after 5 seconds of transfer the bus reset and the Linux kernel instructed the controller to link at 1.5Gbps, then it transfered 320 Gb of data without a single fail. I downloaded the drive’s tool from manufacturer (Samsung), run it on a PC and forced the disk to link always at 1.5 Gbps and now it works flawlessly on the MacBook Pro. This is a known problem, that’s why Apple drives come forced to 1.5 Gbps. Regards, Natalia Portillo Apple Certified Macintosh Technician
Andrea, you’re not alone in that problem. I have read hundreds of posts. about this issue on other threads. It’s affecting most new models of Pros. If I were you, I would try the EFI rollback or replacing the data cable which has solved the problem for many people.
Sorry but Apple’s policy has been for a while to allow end-users to upgrade their HDD and RAM without breaking any warranty. This is prescribed by Apple, and guides are provided in their support page. Even Genius Bar employes guide customers through the procedure (depending on the Store). Unfortunately this is not a simple incompatibility problem, but a severe bug in the chipset design by NVIDIA, indeed a bug I’ve seen in all NVIDIA SATA controllers from the nForce 4. All manufacturers do have bugs, it’s usual, normal, expected, Apple is not free from errors, they are humans. But here the problem is indeed NVIDIA, that has Macintosh users quite used to bugs. The ONLY way to upgrade the hard disk, unluckily, is to force it to the slower 1.5 Gbps link. Even using an Apple certified drive will fail if the disk is not forced (like for example, requesting a newer drive shared by another MBP model). Saying this is a rumor it’s more politics than technical truth. Regards, Natalia Portillo Apple Certified Macintosh Technician
thanks guys i really appreciate the fastness of your answers…I myself am a long time mac user and have several times upgraded internal hd on PowerBooks and iBooks without problems…but recently i have stumbled upon a couple of discussions on the Apple web site: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa… this one is 130 pages long!!!!! And:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa… which would instill doubts to the most competent of Apple hardware expert…
You can see yourself on www.nvidia.com that the NVidia specifications CLEARLY say SATA 3 Gbps. When you have do to a workaround, quirk, whatever you name it, to prevent a hardware failure, it’s a hardware bug. NVIDIA does not make the chipsets up to Apple’s specifications. Apple buys the same chipsets you yourself can buy (or Acer, MSI, Gigabyte, say one). Even on PowerPC Macs, the chipsets are off-the-shelf Motorola or IBM chipsets anyone can buy (given enough money and quantities). If you’re competent with replacing computers components, you’ll check the specifications of the chipset and see clearly that SATA 3 Gbps is supported, and you’ll see that the drives mounted by Apple are SATA 3 Gbps compliant, and question yourself why are they limited to SATA 1.5 Gbps. Then you’ll go to buy, and see yourself that no more SATA 1.5 Gbps equipment is being sold, that all drives you can buy new are SATA II and 3 Gbps. You’ll put one, because specifications say it MUST work, all the components are (in theory) compatible, and in practice you’ll see the chipset fail. Again, talking of specifications, if you take a SATA 1.5 Gbps controller it will NEVER link to 3 Gbps (like the MBP’s one is doing), because it was made before that protocol was created. And NVIDIA is not the only one, there are a good chunk of SATA 3 Gbps controllers with some kind of bugs (data corruption at 3 Gbps, data corruption when transferring more than 16 Kb at once, data corruption with NCQ enabled, so on), and none of them tell any of that in their specifications, because that will hurt sales. Apple designed the MBP with a NVIDIA chipset, and when they discovered the bug it was too late to redesign it with other chipset, and the easiest solution, forcing the link on the drives, was chosen. However Apple committed three fails: 1.- To not inform end users on the “how to upgrade hdd” tutorials 2.- To not inform certified technicians of the quirk 3.- To not make the firmware automatically slow down the link If you want to continue talking about specifications, go to www.nvidia.com, download the chip datasheet and show us where they say their SATA 3 Gbps controller cannot work at 3 Gbps. Your positive trolling over Apple is lovely, but it’s not the real world. They have failures, errors and bad decisions, like all of we do. Regards, Natalia Portillo Apple Certified Macintosh Technician
A1278 13.3" MBP Guys, there ISN’T a door on the back giving access to the battery (don’t remove) and the HD for the 13.3" model. You make no mention of this issue nor any acknowledgement that the 13" is different. You have to remove 4 screws from the upper part of the bottom, 2 more from the middle sides and three long and one short screw from the very back near the vents, At that point you can lift the bottom case completely off giving you access the the hard drive. You take off the upper bracing and its two build in screws (torx #6, but don’t separate the screws from the bracket, then two screws from the bottom retainer, pull up on the clear tag, and the HD is loose, then carefully pull away the ribbon connector. You then remove the (think of Frankensteins bolts coming out of his neck) bolts Torx #6, from the corners. Place the bolts into the corners of the new drive, switch the ribbon cable you took off the old drive, fit the bottom bolts into their holes, add the two screws on the bottom. The “botls” set first into the bottom square holes with copper connectors, then on the upper part they sit in a “half moon” shape cup where the retainer was, when you add the retainer with its opposite half moon copper hole you complete the “frame” holding the HD. Replace the entire bottom case and your ready to format and transfer info from the old drive to the new.
