MacBook Pro EFI Update Reportedly Resolves SATA 3 Issues
by Andrew Cunningham on September 15, 2011 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
Apple released an EFI update for the 2011 MacBook Pros yesterday that reportedly resolves performance and compatibility issues with SATA 3.0 SSDs, some of which Anand noted in our original review. Other World Computing singles out its own Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G drive in its testing, and records much-improved consistency and performance compared to the previous EFI version.
Courtesy Other World Computing
The update can be downloaded via Software Update or Apple's support page. It requires OS X Lion to be installed, and in addition to the SATA fixes it improves compatibility with Apple's Thunderbolt Display, improves Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance, and enables Lion Internet Recovery, an install disc-less OS restore feature introduced in Lion which was previously available only on the Sandy Bridge Mac Minis and MacBook Airs.
Source: OWC
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AmdInside - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - link
Is TRIM supported on 3rd party SSD drives on Macbook Pro's?tipoo - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - link
Pretty sure its just for Apple-standard drives right now. You can do some fiddling to enable it on anything though, google it.Filiprino - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
Apple plainly sucks.fr33h33l - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - link
How convenient that this free firmware upgrade requires a non-free OS upgrade. Could someone please explain the technical reason behind this and remove this veil of cynicism from my eyes?ltcommanderdata - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - link
Probably has to do with Lion Internet Recovery. Given that most 2011 MacBook Pros shipped with Snow Leopard, Lion Internet Recovery can't just assume you have Lion and allow you to download it at will. It may need to associate itself with the existing copy of Lion when you install the firmware to allow you to restore at will going forward. With Lion Internet Recovery requiring basic OS functionality to connect to the internet, download an OS installer on a potentially blank HDD which may require formatting, and running that installer, no doubt significant changes were made to many areas of the EFI firmware. Creating an option to disable Lion Internet Recovery to support Snow Leopard users would probably require quite a bit of testing to make sure things work probably enabled or disabled, something Apple probably couldn't be bothered with.Casper42 - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
There is no such thing as SATA 3.0Are you referring to 3 Gbps or 6 Gbps SATA?
silverblue - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
Yes there is.http://www.sata-io.org/technology/6Gbdetails.asp
macvern - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
Have a 2011 MBP 17 and have tried flashing the OCZ Vertex 3. Hopefully this update works.PS> The firmware update works with 10.6.8
vectorm12 - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
Downloaded it to my 2011 macbook pro 13". Lion is only required for internet recovery to function not the update itself. I've got a Vertex 3 240GB drive but I haven't tested the new firmware to see what it actually does.Trim is still not supported for 3:rd party SSDs and if I know Apple they never will be.
Toolius - Friday, September 16, 2011 - link
Hey guys .. there is a nifty little utility called Trim Enabler for OSX..Search for it on google or click on the link below..
http://www.groths.org/?p=308
or
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37852/trim-enable...
Ultra simple and does exactly what it says it will do.. i currently have 4 SSD's in my Mac Pro mid 2010 model with the Xeon @ 2.8ghz and this saved my SSD's :)
You can check in system information under the SATA tab and you will see TRIM = ENABLED !! :)
Cheers and kind regards.
P.S. Screw you apple for blocking it out for every ssd but yours and yours suck !!!