Solid State Drives (SSD)

[xvisage]

 After 3 long days of deep frustration since I did upgrade my Macbook Pro (13' - 2.53 GHz - Mid 2009) with "Crucial 256GB M4 SSD" and "Crucial 8GB DDR3 PC3-8500"

Finally it seems that I have OS X Lion successful fresh installation and working right now without any freezing issues !

It's the first night for testing, hopefully this performance lasts, I'll post a confirmation here after a few days of stability ..

Quick History:

1. First time upgrade went very smooth, OS X Lion fresh installation completed in 10 minutes, boot-up time less than 10 seconds.
2. Few more hours I made a terrible mistake with closing the led ! next wake-up from sleep caused a freeze state with Apple gray screen, logo and spinning gear running like forever, I gave it about 20 minutes before deciding to hard reboot (press-hold the power button), well .. the next incidents drove me crazy !
3. I've got almost every halt indicators from Apple at boot time:
• A progress bar running for a few seconds and suddenly the system powers off.
• Apple logo rotates insanely fast with a folder icon contains question mark or with a stop sign icon.
• Blank gray screen, not even showing Apple logo.
• Beach ball spinning forever before getting to the login screen.
4. Now installing back my original HDD and start googling this issue, seems like many people suffering the same symptoms and many solutions were proposed, none of them have actually solved mine.

Best Practice:

You'll need the following before installing OS X:

• An external enclosure for 2.5" SATA drives.
• Bootable OS X installation DVD or USB.
• Original HDD needs to have OS X installed preferably Lion (you should be having this by default unless you messed-up your HDD, in that case you should re-install OS X on your HDD before attempting to use your new SSD).

Step-by-Step:

1. If you're having Crucial DDR3 memory installed, keep them.
2. If you messed-up your SSD before (like having TRIM support enabled or you already having freeze/crash issues):
• Plug SSD into the external enclosure and mount the disk while you're running on your old OS X with your original HDD.
• Start DiskUtility and select the mounted SSD from the left.
• Perform a zero-out erase using "erase > security options" with selected format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" (this may take up to 2 hours, make sure that you plugged in your charger).
• After erase complete, unmount SSD and shutdown OS X.
• Un-plug your SSD from the external enclosure.
3. Open the back of your Macbook Pro and replace your internal HDD with M4 SSD.
4. Update M4 SSD Firmware to version 0002.
5. Boot from OS X installation disk (hold option key after power-on).
6. If you did zero-out your SSD (step 2) then skip to (step 8), otherwise use DiskUtility from the installation menu and select your SSD from the left.
7. Create one partition formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and from the option menu choose "GUID Partition Table" then apply settings and close DiskUtility.
8. Start OS X installation with SSD selected drive.
9. Setup will download some files then it will restart automatically.
10. At this point you may get an error message tells you that OS X failed because it couldn't create a Recovery HD disk on your SSD, no need to panic, click restart and power-off your Macbook Pro immediately.
11. Re-open the back of your Macbook Pro and replace your internal SSD with your old HDD again, and plug your SSD into the external enclosure.
12. Power-on your Macbook Pro with your external enclosure attached (USB/Firewire).
13. OS X setup will attempt to continue installation again by default, but this time your SSD is not your internal drive, setup will complete successfully without any errors !
14. After installation complete, restart your Macbook Pro leaving your external enclosure attached, it will boot-up from your SSD.
15. If your OS X booted in recovery mode again after complete installation, just quit that and it will prompt you for selecting a start-up disk, then you need to choose your internal SSD.
16. Make sure your new OS X is working correctly, play around with it for a few minutes, now you are free to shutdown and switch back your SSD as your internal drive.

Notes:

• If you're going to use iStat Pro widget, disable the polling of S.M.A.R.T status, it may cause SSD freeze according to other users experiences.
• No need to enable TRIM support using any third party tool, my recommendation not to.

Conclusion:

1. TRIM support is NOT the issue, do not enable TRIM support on your M4 SSD, if you did, no worries, it's just a software command, a new OS X installation will get that back to default state.
2. Zero-out erase will NOT do any harm to your SSD, it's not necessary due to the new write behavior, but it can save your day if things went messy.
3. Crucial DDR3 memory is NOT the issue, they are working just fine with original HDD.
4. Resetting PRAM will not help, may be once, but not always !
5. Firmware update (0002) is in fact the ONLY solution for M4 freezing issues.

References:

• Crucial Firmware Updates
• Bootable OX X Lion
• Resetting PRAM
• About OS X Lion Recovery

[targetbsp]

A good detailed post!

Though I should note for anyone else that you shouldn't really 0 erase your SSD.  You say it does not harm.  Which is true in so much as it's not going to cause it to self destruct or anything*.  But it will 'dirty' the entire drive and slow it down until Garbage Collection gets a chance to recover it.  If you want to erase it, use a program that initiates the ATA secure erase feature of the drive.

*though it will use up a write cycle for the drive, but that's not a major issue on these more modern SSD's

[xvisage]

@targetbsp

Thanks for this, I suppose that your note is correct, I tried to get some reference for zero-out an SSD supported by Crucial but I got nothing ..

ATA Secure Erase did not work for my M4 SSD, during my trials and before comping-up with this practice, I've tried hdparm using Ubuntu 10.04 LiveCD, it returned and Input/Output error even when SSD enabled, not locked and not frozen ..

Other tools like HDDErase requires windows I think which I do not have not here not on any other machine !

So .. zero-out was the only way that actually worked for me to reset my drive in order to install OS X after updating firmware ..

I think it would be perfect if someone from Crucial confirms ATA Secure Erase on M4 SSD drives, or even releases an Official Tool that works in Mac machines as well ..

Don't you agree?

[xvisage]

Well .. OS X crashed again .. and I'm facing constant freeze state each time I try to boot-up my Macbook Pro !

I did not even have a full 24 hours of stability !

One additional note here, as @targetbsp mentioned, I finally found a tool that  works with my Macbook Pro for Secure Erase instead of Zero-Out Erase, the tool is  Parted Magic Boot CD, you can google that for reference ..

Still same freezing/crashing issues !

I even tried OS X Snow Leopard instead of Lion ..

I've noticed that Lion has many bugs and people are complaining much about it ..

Now I'm starting to doubt that this SSD is not compatible with my Macbook Pro as Crucial Advisor stated !

Because both systems (Snow Leopard and Lion) are working just fine on my original HDD (the one shipped with my Mackbook Pro) !

I think I am going to request RMA !

What a mess I went into because of Crucial !!

[xvisage · Accepted solution]

Problem Solved !

I did downgrade EFI firmware to 1.6 and my SSD now working for the second day without any freezing/crashing issues !It's all about drivers !

Sounds like I did iniquity Crucial by blaming them alone, it's about Apple as well !

Notes:

1. Read/Write speeds went down  to 110/130 MB/s.
2. Boot time is 10 sec (5 sec in blank gray screen + 5 sec for OS X to start).

EFI Downgrade to 1.6:

1. Make sure that you have a higher EFI firmware version 1.7, you can find out from System Information, where "Boot ROM Version: MBP55.00AC.B03".
2. Download this DMG.
3. Open DiskUtility and drag the above image to the left.
4. Plug-in any USB flash drive (no need for large capacity).
5. Click the USB from the left and erase with "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
6. Click the image and choose restore.In the destination drag the USB drive.
7. Click restore.
8. Reboot while holding the option key to select the USB drive from boot menu.
9. Apple logo will come up and a dark gray bar will start to move right under it.
10. Sit relax and wait for the process to be done.
11. Macbook Pro will reboot automatically.
12. Now open System Information and make sure that Boot ROM Version is MBP55.00AC.B00.

Final Conclusion:

• Apple is pushing hard to prevent third-party hardware upgrades, in other words, they probably won't release any future EFI firmware updates to resolve any of these issues !
• Crucial seems to care more about us, hopefully the next M4 SSD firmware update resolves my issues without the need to downgrade Apple's EFI firmware !
• M4 SSD on MBP 13' (mid 2009) needs only 2 steps to resolve freezing/crashing issues:
  - EFI firmware downgrade to 1.6.
  - Crucial M4 firmware update to 0002.

[xvisage]

More about Apple EFI firmware 1.6:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2267098?start=75&tstart=0

Synopsis:

• EFI 1.6 limits data transferes to 1.5 GB/s.
• According to the above link, an OptiBay can increase data transfer to 3 Gb/s with EFI 1.7.
• If Apple repleases EFI 1.8 for MBP 5,5 I will make that update and perform all necessary testing to post back here, meanwhile I think it's better to live with 1.5 GB/s (EFI 1.6).
• EFi 1.7 is a disaster for MBP with third-party SSD !

[Clawson]

Hello!  I also have a MBP 13" mid-2009 and have been going through the hassles of trying to get it to run properly without the pinwheels of death for hours.  I have upgraded the firmware to 002 on the ssd drive, and reset the pram on the MBP.  I also built a firmware 1.6 downgrade usb drive.  This is where i am having problems.  I built the disk as per the instructions, and booted to it using the option key.  Then i select the usb drive to boot from it.  I get the apple logo, and then for about 2 seconds i see a bar at the bottom of the screen.  After that it boots again normally into to windows and the firmware has not been upgraded.  Any ideas?  I'm really lost on trying to get the downgrade to work.

Crucial will you release a firmware update so us apple users can use the drive you have quoted me to buy with the upto date firmware from apple ?  EFI 1.7?  This way we can go full speed with it?

Thanks!

Matt

[ntacus]

I just installed a new M4 256GB SSD into my mid 2009 MBP 5,4 (15" 2.53Ghz). After initial installation I did get some beachballs so I downgraded my firmware to 1.6. Are you confident your firmware was not downgraded? My downgrade went just like you described...apple logo with a bar at the bottom of the screen followed by a reboot.

When I go into system profiler it shows: Boot ROM Version:MBP53.00AC.B02

Prior to the firmware downgrade it showed: Boot ROM Version:MBP53.00AC.B03

The beachballs went away and the sata link is at 1.5Gbps. Boot time didn't really change much between 3Gbps and 1.5Gbps SATA but I haven't done any large file transfers where you'd really see a difference. Overall even at 1.5Gbps it's far faster than the 5400 RPM Hitachi that I had which was starting to fail. My understanding of this problem is it is more of a SATA connector/cable/controller problem with the mid 2009 macbook pro itself and not something Crucial will be able to address.

[giants]

First, thank you for your detailed and organized procedure Xvisage. Admittedly, I am a lightweight techie consumerist, trying to upgrade on my own. Hoping ya'll can figure this out (the Genius Bar had no clue and referred me back to Crucial).

I am attempting the same upgrade with the M4 and the MBP 5,5 running OS Leopard, but I've been running into trouble. My original HDD died, so I tried installing the SSD without one. This seems impossible. Will I have to buy an HDD in order to format the SSD? I also bought a Seagate HDD SATA 3, but Disk Utility on my OS X Install DVD isn't recognizing this drive either. Could this be a software issue, I'm running Leopard. Will I need to upgrade to 10.6 or 10.7, and if so, is this possible without finding a SATA 1.5 HDD?

[bengliang]

xvisage, you are the man! I have the exact same 13" 2.53 GHz mid 2009 model and the same crucial m4 256gb drive and went through days of frustration like you. downgraded firmware to 1.6 and now the ssd works beautifully, albeit not at maximum potential. I've ordered a new harddrive cable and will try again with the new cable to see if that helps. many thanks!!