MacBook Pro EFI Firmware 1.7 causes performance drop with 3rd-party HDDs

Originator:lukhnos
Number:rdar://7186333 Date Originated:September 1, 2009
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:Hardware Product Version:EFI 1.7
Classification:Performance Reproducible:Always
 
Summary:

Western Digital WD5000BEVT and Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (ST9500325) almost unusable with my MacBook Pro with the current EFI firmware (1.7)

Step to Reproduce:

1. Replace the stock HDD with a WD5000BEVT or ST9500325
2. It's usable, but there is serious performance hit—e.g. the system often halts for no reason, disk reading can be extremely slow sometimes
3. Seagate Momentus actually has a jumper setting to make the HDD operate in 1.5 Gbps mode. Add the jumper and the situation worsens—beachball can be seen every 1-3 mintues, each time the wait can be up to 10-20 secs. This makes daily work impossible (mine involves Mail, Xcode, VMware Fusion, the latter two admittedly among some heavy HDD crunchers)

Expected Results:
No noticeable performance drop with 3rd-party HDDs.

Actual Results:
Serious performance drop that renders the system very unusable. I had to revert back to the stock HDD.

Notes:
Please take some time to go through this discussion thread:

  http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&start=0&tstart=15

Apparently it's a large-scale problem involving so many MacBook Pros.

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