If you’ve been reading the OWC Blog for the past few months, you’re probably well aware of the problems that 2011 MacBook Pros were having with 6.0Gb/s SATA performance. If you’re not familiar with it, the short form is that in many 17″ 2011 MacBook Pros (and some 15″ and 13″ as well) had problems with SATA 3.0 Revision SSDs such as the Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G—through no fault of the SSD— resulting in spotty performance, beach ball timeout delays, and even complete failure to recognize SATA 3.0 6Gb/s SSDs at all.
Well, if you ran Software Update this morning, MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.2 appears to be the answer. Nearly seven months after these machines first became available, all indications are that we can now reliably count on taking full advantage of the 6Gb/s capability provided.
Apple has somewhat dodged giving any direct response on the issue itself, but this long awaited solution just happens to be there in this update with the official description on Apple’s support site only mentioning the update as addressing Lion Internet Recovery and Thunderbolt. We are very thankful and excited to see the ‘quiet’ fix for 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 main bay drive reliability as a further benefit of this update.
Very important points though concerning the optical bay. #1 – if your MacBook Pro 2011 model currently has SATA 2.0 3Gb/s reported for your optical bay max link speed, this EFI update does not change that to SATA 3.0 6Gb/s. It really makes no difference for the optical drive, but if you wish to add an additional 9.5mm hard drive or SSD with a product such as our Data Doubler, you can continue to do so with pretty much any 3G or 6G drive of your choosing.
#2 – For those with a MacBook Pro 15″ or 17″ model that has SATA 3.0 6Gb/s link capability reported, it is very important to note that this EFI update does not appear to have resolved reliability of using a 6Gb/s drive in the optical bay. If you have a 6Gb/s optical drive bay connnection and are using a product like our Data Doubler, we still recommend only using a SATA 2.0 3Gb/s drive in that bay. MacBook Pro 13″ owners who find 6Gb/s links in their optical bay are not experiencing issues with 6Gb/s drives and this update doesn’t affect that usage.
Our testing has included multiple models of the 2011 MacBook Pro models and using the highest performing OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G and Mercury Electra 6G SSDs. From this testing, we are confident today that Apple has now, by and large, resolved the issues with 6Gb/s drives where issues were being experienced with said drives in the Main Bay/standard drive location. We will continue to review possible solutions for the optical bay, as 15″ and 17″ owners may be rightly jealous of the near 1GB (1000MB/s) data rates currently achievable in MacBook Pro 13″ models with two OWC 6G SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration.
Here are a pair of “before & after” benchmark tests with an OWC SSD in the main drive bay, which show the elimination of the performance inconsistencies after applying the update.
Further testing is being done to confirm this resolution on other 2011 MacBook Pros and we’ll post the result of those findings in an update as well as possible further benefits relating to this under OS 10.7 vs. 10.6.8.
In the meantime, if you’ve been frustrated with how your 2011 MacBook Pro has behaved with a 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 drive to this point, it looks like your system is a “lemon no more”. Now you can enjoy unleashed performance by installing an OWC 6G SSD into the main drive bay of a 2011 MacBook Pro. The SATA 3.0 6Gb/s potential that has been tantalizingly close for so long is denied no longer!
Hi,
I have purchased a 1tb seagate sshd from you and was unaware of this issue.
I have a data doubler, and wish to use it as a secondary disk, but the SSHD is rated at 6gb/s.
Is there a way to force the disk to negotiate and operate at 3gb/s link speed? I’m cool with having the SSHD operating at this speed.
A tweak to Mac OS X, or the Eli, or a jumper, or SMART command?
If there was a way to force the bay to negotiate only up to 3Gb/s – would have been a great option. Unfortunately, Apple does not allow this kind of control / locks such access out vs. the open bios/efi equiv on the PC side of the fence.
We are actually able to offer special 3Gb/s SATA 2.0 firmware models of some HGST Drive models such as these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&Ne=5000&N=6403&Ntt=*3s2*
but no such option currently for controlling the same on Seagate drives.
At this time we do not have any field deployable solution in general to overcome the signal limitations (of Apple’s optical bay SATA implementation) that prevent reliable 6Gb/s drive use in that bay or to force the bay itself to be limited to 3Gb/s link (Apple restricted within EFI).
Apple never intended, advertised, or suggested that this bay would support 6Gb/s SATA operation – but would have been nice if they’d simply limited it to the 3Gb/s link capability its design implementation is reliable to. Nothing we can do there though and have noted such from the beginning including in data doubler information.
if the drive in your main bay is 3Gb/s – the best option is to put that drive into the optical bay location and use 6Gb/s only in the main bay. if both drives are 6Gb/s, only solution is to go to a different 3Gb/s drive for the optical bay to support additional storage sought.
Hey Guys, I have a 2011 MBP 17′, 3Gbps in the optibay. Can any shielding solve this? I’ve seen a post here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1570602
What do you think about it? Can OWC come up with a solution? It has been 2 years now since this issue is going on.
While we still have a possibility being explored, at present there is not a field deployable solution for 6Gb/s reliability in the noted 2011 17″ and 15″ MacBook Pro models.
Hi
I have a MacBook Pro 17 early 2011. Yesterday i bought a OWC doubler here, and i just wondering, ite any issue if a get me orginal mac HDD in the OWC doubler into the Opticalbay then have a SSD disk in the Mainbay for the OSx and apps.
The SSD i have bought is a Samsung 6 GB/s speed. My Macbook pro model is 8,3 with 2.2 GHz processor.
Intel 6 Series Chipset:
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit.
So please tell me after i read this post am very doubfull about its woking?
Installing the SSD in the main hard drive bay will work as long as you’ve performed the firmware update. Then, as long as the original HDD is reporting as a SATA Revision 2.0 (3.0Gb/s) drive, all should be good for your planned setup.
The firmware updates we release go through a testing process before we release them to ensure that no new issues are created. We recommend to install the latest firmware when available. While we recommend updating, that does not mean it is required. If any issues ever develop on a SSD, checking to make sure the firmware is up to date is always a great first step in troubleshooting. In most troubleshooting instances updating the firmware is required.
This blog applies only to 2011 MacBook Pros SATA speed issues. The Intel Motherboard you linked should not have any SATA 6.0Gb/s issues.
We recommend that you update the firmware on your OWC SSD. Our Windows firmware updater can be found here – http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/OWC/SSD/PC
Thank you Ben for the explanation.
Much appreciated
If no release notes are to be displayed as per SandForce. Then, how do I know if I need this update or not for my Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB running under windows. Should I download it or not? All the comments states that it enables the 6G speeds in Mac environment. What about Windows??
In a perfect world it’s always better to download the new firmware for SSDs. In my experience I found some new firmwares to be problematic “happened many times on NON OWC drives”.
I got this drive in the summer & it rocks. It outperformed my OCZ & Samsung drives; it’s stable & the most important thing is that this drive maintains it’s Out Of Box performance. OWC drives simply are the best.
So should I go for this firmware under the following environment:
MB: Intel DX79SI
CPU: I7 3820
RAMS: Corasair Platinum 16GB
Drives: OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB “main boot drive”
Running Windows 7 SP1 64bit