Comments on: OWC SSDs Even Amaze The Geniuses

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:30:36 +0000

Hi Peter….at this point we’ve forwarded your situation to be addressed by one of our lead technical support representatives. You should be expecting direct contact via email within 24 business hours.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:01:38 +0000

Like some of the others here I get hangs on waking from sleep, not hibernation. Although I have a MBP, it’s setting for “Put Hard Disks to Sleep When Possible” has been unchecked for weeks.
I’m getting the hang on wake every day now. This started after installing the Mercury Extreme Pro with a data doubler. Never happened before. Console doesn’t seem to identify that anything has happened. No entries related to hang or even that it went to sleep (sleep:success).

The machine is very, very fast, but the hang forces a reboot – which is inconvenient and causes data loss. I went to show a client a file yesterday and the MBP was hung. Very embarrassing. Her windows machine never does that…

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:28:15 +0000

Hey Jason…thanks for your patience while we work this out with your mini.

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:53:44 +0000

Grant — The hang one wake in a Mac Pro 5,1 is the exact problem I am having. I cannot update the firmware, because there is no Mac based firmware updater. (Yes, I have contacted customer service.)

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:43:42 +0000

Final update . . . the updater that downloaded from the link has a package called MP4-360, NOT MP3-343 Field, as is instructed on the web page. That explains why my firmware says 360. In either case, the computer still freezes if I let Energy Saver put it to sleep. ANY suggestions would be appreciated.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:20:57 +0000

Okay, quick update and apology. I finally figured out by reading the pdf in the package (had to go and install Reader) that I wasn’t trying to run the updater as administrator. THAT would be a good thing to post on the download page! After that, the installer found the drive and installed. I’m back running on the Mac side, but want to know what my System Profiler should be telling me about the drive . . . my revision says 360A13F0, but I don’t recall if that’s what it said before or not. By the way, when I downloaded the package today, the firmware did not say 343 like the site says, it said 360.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:28:42 +0000

Hi Matt…that is disappointing to hear we didn’t listen better to the particular machine you own. Are you able to try the new firmware and then advise our CS/TS depts if that was successful?

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:36:02 +0000

Jim has it right, except that for me the wait has been since early december of last year. I just want a solution to the sleep issue of my Mercury Extreme SSD in my Mac Pro 5,1 (tower.) I have several different emails from support indicating that there is a hibernate issue with the drive even after repeated attempts by me to inform them that I am talking about a Mac Pro tower and not a laptop. I bought the drive from OWC for the support and Mac compatibility. Next time I guess I can buy a drive from somebody else.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:33:21 +0000

Thanks, Jim.

I do have the second internal drive still in this mini but I’ve already created multiple partitions on it so even though I have a clone, bootcamp won’t install on a pre-partitioned drive. However, there is still some room left on my SSD which is a single partition so if I can put bootcamp on IT, then download and run the updater, then destroy the bootcamp partition . . . that’s an acceptable task. Having to move all of my other data just to make a single partition again on the second drive is too much work.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:26:51 +0000

Jason…all should be good now and yes…you can run the update either way…in bootcamp or on a separate drive in same computer.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:14:52 +0000

Jim…let’s try the new firmware and if that doesn’t resolve matters for you, lets discuss options at that point.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 18:19:41 +0000

Grant – My frustration results from the fact that I bought a product from OWC, OWC promised me a Mac based firmware updater in 3-4 weeks to resolve a hibernate issue. On this, and OWC’s reputation, I decided to keep the drive outside of the MBG window.

Now that we are ouside of the MBG window, (and 6 weeks later), the Mac updater is now 3-4 *months* out, and I’m left with a bunch of largely unacceptable resolutions to this problem.

I understand your frustration with your vendor. However, I didn’t buy a product from your vendor, I bought a product from you. At no time did Sandeforce promise me anything. However, you did, and you came up substantially short

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:35:23 +0000

Hi Roger:

Check back Monday afternoon and you’ll see the 480GB listed again for well under $1K.

And to anyone reading this….if you ordered a 400GB….you’ll get the 480!

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:29:30 +0000

We hear your frustration Mike…that’s why we’re working on our own to develop a Mac and/or even OS independent updater. I should note that no other SandForce based SSD manufacturer offers a Mac based firmware updater…

However, you can send us your drive and we’ll do the firmware update for you. Just hit our contact us page:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Service/contact/

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:33:11 +0000

Another question . . . can this update be run in bootcamp ON the affected drive, or does it have to be run from bootcamp on a separate drive in the same computer?

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:20:51 +0000

That page says the firmware update is current as of 03/18. Previously it was from November. Is this the fix? I don’t want to spend the untold hours required to get bootcamp running just to do this update if it’s not the final version.

I can’t believe the ignorance of these companies who think everyone is still only running windows!!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 04:31:21 +0000

This is both good news and bad news at the same time. Good news that the firmware update is shipping; bad news that I cannot use it, because I don’t own, nor with to buy, Windows, to update the firmware. (I bought the Mercury Extreme Pro from you because of your reputation as a Mac first company with top notch tech support.)

FWIW, I have the drive in a Mac Pro, hibernate is disabled, and the machine still hangs when waking from sleep. (Only if the machine sleeps itself after idle, and is left to sit that way overnight.) This continues to be a frustrating, $500+ purchase.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 02:49:43 +0000

Hi Mike:

We have been testing the next firmware revision and should have news about that next week that will make you quite happy. Again for the record, the moment we realized (back in January I believe) that a very small number of Mac owners (about 10% of all of our SSDs sold) could experience a hibernation issue, we put the following on every SSD model specification page directly below the specs table:

IMPORTANT LAPTOP USER NOTE: There have been reports of system hangs in relation to hibernation mode. We recommend not using ANY program that puts your laptop into hibernation mode when using an SSD.

Normal, automatic sleep mode functions perfectly with no issues.

We also highly recommend you avoid draining your battery completely (5% or less remaining charge) to avoid being automatically switched into hibernation mode by your machine’s power saving settings. If your notebook does go into hibernation mode, the machine can hang once it is plugged into an outlet or when using a charged battery as the machine comes out of hibernation mode. If you should experience this, you will need to restart your machine and any unsaved work from that session will be lost. SandForce is working on this issue and it will be addressed in a future firmware update. We will post the update on our firmware update page as soon as it becomes available.

——-
Actually Mike, before we do formal announcement, can tell you to check this page:
http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/sf_firmware.html