MacBook – Trouble with SSD/HDD in Macbook Pro Mid 2009

hard drivemacbook prossd

When my original HDD crashed I wanted to change it and choose a Samsung HDD (I don't not the exact model anymore). The problem with this one was that the system often hanged for several seconds until it worked again for a short time. Often the colored spinning wheel appeared and I had to wait. The MacBook Pro was unusable with this.

Then I bought a Hitachi HDD from my colleague that was built in another MacBook an it worked perfectly. There were no problems.

A week ago I decided to put in the Crucial M4 SSD with 128 GB. The same problem as with the Samsung HDD. I've cloned my old HDD, reinstalled the system, but nothing helped. Even the re-installation took me several hours, not as usual. I've also upgraded the Crucial HDD to the newest firmware without any success.

  • Why does this happens or does somebody have any idea to get the SSD working?
  • Was it just coincidence that the Hitachi HDD worked and the other two didn't?

Best Answer

Is your MacBook Pro the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009) model? That model of MBP had a known issue where it would constantly beach-ball with non Apple drives. There was a firmware update available but that hasn't fixed all units.

From personal (and professional) experience I've found upgrading to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 fixed about 50% of the time, all other units had to have an official Apple drive fitted to fix the issue.

Basically your only options are to upgrade to Snow Leopard (I'm unsure of whether Lion includes the relevant firmware updates) or complain to Apple so much that they give you a replacement unit. Ugh.