Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to document the experience of running SSD (Crucial M4 128GB) on Macbook Pro 13-inch Mid-2009 model. I hope that sharing my findings will help others to decide, whether putting SSD in this particular mac is worth it.

Since English is not my native language I apologize for any mistakes I make, but I feel my knowledge of language is adequate for basic communication and you shouldn’t have problems understanding what I’m trying to say.

In what follows I will provide you with initial information about the problem you might face when upgrading your Macbook Pro (Mid-2009 model) with SSD. At this point I still haven’t received my SSD, so I can only give you a brief summary of what I’ve learned reading about the issue in various forums.

Preliminary Information

What you need to know about me: I’m neither an expert in computers nor a complete beginner. I’ve been using computers for well over a decade and I’ve owned several macs since 2006. I have a degree in e-commerce and rudimentary understanding of PC hardware.

My current mac: I’m still using the Macbook Pro I bought back in August, 2009. The specs are: Macbook Pro, 13-inch, Mid-2009 (MB990RS/A), Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.26GHz, 4GB of RAM, 160GB HDD (Hitachi 5K500.B-160, HTS545016B9SA02), GeForce 9400M.

Why SSD: Up till recently I’ve been using my mac for browsing the internet, creating documents and spreadsheets, but a few weeks ago I started experimenting with Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 and found that performance is not acceptable for such tasks. So I decided to buy an SSD along with upgrading RAM to 8GB and breathe some life into this old machine.

The Problem

When apple released Macbook Pro in June, 2009, it had a SATA2 controller which operated in SATA1 mode. Following complaints about this, Apple released a firmware update that allowed for controller to work in SATA2 mode and to achieve transfer rates “greater than 1.5Gbits”, which would mean that SATA2 HDDs and SSDs could theoretically achieve their full speed potential. However in description of EFI 1.7 update there is a warning that “Apple has not qualified or offered these [SATA2] drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported” effectively denying any responsibility for issues users might have when using such drives. (Full description of EFI 1.7 update can be found here: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBook_Pro_EFI_Firmware_Update_1_7_)

Of course this wasn’t just an innocent disclaimer. Soon users started to report issues of system instability – “beachballing”,  kernel panics, inability to boot into system or install OS because of an error or drive not being recognized at all when using SATA2 SSDs. It seems that people who upgraded their HDD to bigger and faster SATA2 models were also affected.

The Cause of the Problem

There is a lot of speculation about what might be the cause of system instability when using SATA2 or SATA3 drives with this particular Macbook Pro model. You can read about it in various forums, for example here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2054387?threadID=2054387&start=0&tstart=0

and here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2267098?threadID=2267098

However if you don’t want to read all posts, I can summarize the  most prominent theories about the cause of the problem:

1. Faulty SATA controller: Some users reported that there are at least two revisions of motherboard for this particular Macbook Pro – rev. A and rev. B. Some say that the SATA controller found on rev. B is fixed. This of course implies that everyone with a rev. A motherboard has a faulty controller. However there are at least some users with rev. A motherboard reporting no problems when using SATA2 HDDs and SSDs.

2. Bad HDD to motherboard cable. Significant amount users report that swapping the HDD to motherboard cable solved the problem. Others say that swapping cable didn’t improve the situation. Those who had success either used a cable found on newer (sometimes older) Macbook Pros, speculating that cable for Mid 2009 Macbook Pros might not be broken but just insufficiently shielded for SATA2. Some users reported that manually shielding existing cables with aluminium foil resulted in stable system.

3. Bad SSD firmware. Some say that various firmware updates to SSDs can either make a drive compatible or incompatible with the Macbook Pro (sometimes users report that newer firmware brakes compatibility as in case of Crucial M4 000F firmware revision).

4. BAD EFI firmware. A lot of users tend to think that there is something wrong with the EFI 1.7 firmware update itself and claim that rolling back to firmware 1.6 fixes the problem.

Possible Solutions

It seems that Apple won’t acknowledge the problem, so we are on our own to find the solution. Sometimes there is evidence of complete or partial success overcoming the problem. The possible options are:

1. Swapping the motherboard with newer revision.

2. Swapping the HDD to motherboard cable.

3. Insulating and grounding the HDD to motherboard cable.

4. Upgrading or downgrading SSD firmware.

5. Downgrading to EFI 1.6.

None of the solutions are 100% effective except maybe the first one, but there is just not enough evidence to support this, since swapping motherboard is expensive hence not a lot of users have tried it.

IF I experience the problem when upgrading my MacBook Pro with SSD, solution No. 1 is out of question for me – it’s too expensive. I contacted local Apple service to inquire about the costs of solution No. 2. The HDD to motherboard cable can be obtained for about $40. I might consider it as an option. I also might try solution number 4 (although for Crucial M4 there is only choice between two firmware revisions 000F and older 0309). Solution No. 5 is effective for a lot of users, but it limits the controller to SATA1 speeds (1.5Gbits). If possible I would like to avoid that and although people say there is no danger in downgrading EFI, I’m not comfortable with it. Solution No. 3 requires some knowledge (and some tools I presume) – at this point I’m not sure I can do it, but if nothing else helps I might try it.

So this is the situation in brief. I’m getting my SSD next Tuesday. I still hope that it will work with my Macbook Pro, after all some users report no problems at all. Till then I have decided in preparation to try swapping my current HDD (SATA1) with a bigger SATA2 HDD I have and document the results.

Stay tuned!