03-22-2012, 05:37 PM

I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro 5,1 , which I've come to learn has suffered ongoing issues with the SATA controller. I converted my mac with an OWC Data Doubler and 500GB Seagate Momentus XT in the optibay, 115GB Mercury Extreme III next to the battery in the HDD bay. The setup was incredibly fast, however it was also prone no hard freezes, sometimes 10+ per day. When I finally couldn't take it, I decided to start by replacing the SSD drive. I opted for the Intel 520 120GB because I had heard they cooked their own firmware which was supposed to resolve some of the SanForce issues of the past.

So, I installed last night which went really smoothly. After install, I reset the PRAM and SMC to make sure the new drive would integrate into the system. I tucked my OWC drive into an external enclosure and named it roach - since it's small, black, fast, and a pain in the a**. Last night after a couple hours of use, I started getting random beach balls and eventually a few hard freezes. Is there anything else I can do, or drives that would be more stable? I'm starting to think the 5,1 just isn't going to be fully compatible with modern 3G/6G SSD drives.

03-22-2012, 11:01 PM

Your computer is SATA 3G. It should work fine with any 3G or 6G SATA drives. Hmm, I'd trust the OWC drive more than the Intel or Seagate drive.

How long have you been having these issues, and what OS are you running?

03-23-2012, 02:44 AM

I am running Lion, and this is a fresh install to this drive, which is 48 hours
Old. I have been experiencing issues since I have owned
the laptop (July 2010). A friend of mine did the upgrade and I purchased from him.

Would moving the hdd back to the hdd bay and
Move the ssd to the optibay make any difference?

03-23-2012, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by a_rev

I am running Lion, and this is a fresh install to this drive, which is 48 hours
Old. I have been experiencing issues since I have owned
the laptop (July 2010). A friend of mine did the upgrade and I purchased from him.

Would moving the hdd back to the hdd bay and
Move the ssd to the optibay make any difference?

since you have 2 ssd drives assuming the intel and owc are, the seagate is the regular HD.
can you for the time being use owc as the main drive only and transfer limited data to it, use bare minimum to run the macbook, try out a few days see how it works. Just use this as sole drive, then you isolate the problems, I have full trust on the OWC drive. See how it works, then think about the optibay later.

03-23-2012, 11:04 AM

When you did the fresh install, I'm guessing fresh on the SSD, and nothing changed on the Seagate HDD? Is that one of the hybrid drives or is it plain HDD only?

03-23-2012, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by Stretch

When you did the fresh install, I'm guessing fresh on the SSD, and nothing changed on the Seagate HDD? Is that one of the hybrid drives or is it plain HDD only?

That's correct. I took the OWC SSD out and put it in an enclosure. I installed the intel 520 SSD into the HDD bay, booted from the external, formatted the new drive, and installed OSX Lion from there without a hitch. The remaining drive is a plain 5400 RPM, 500GB HDD.

Also, as widely reported, the drive is only running at 1.5GB Negotiated speed through the SATA Controller. Here's a screenshot:



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