Mid 2009 MacBook Pro 13 Hard Drive Upgrade Questions

I bought an upgraded hard drive for my mid-2009 MBP 13. I've done some reading and it appears that my model of MBP shouldn't have drive issues, but I still have a few questions that I'm hoping someone will answer. Perhaps this will all boil down to a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That is, I may be worried without good reason. If so, I apologize ahead of time.
MacBook Pro 5,5
2.26 GHz
4GB RAM
10.6.3
Firmware version is: EFI64
The stock drive is a TOSHIBA MK1655GSXF (160 GB):
The new hard drive is the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB 5400 RPM drive.
I noticed that the temperature seemed to spike after installing the new drive. I didn't get the temperature of the hard drive before I took it out, but the CPU was consistently around 170 degrees Fahrenheit and the fan was in the 2,800-2,900 RPM range.
After putting the stock drive back in the MBP, the temps are consistently 142-145 degrees F for the CPU and 95-97 degrees F for the hard drive. The fan is right around 2,000 RPM.
I've read a bit about outrageous load cycles and just wanted to check the numbers.
The WD Scorpio Blue around 4,055 after 27 power on hours.
The stock drive was at last count, at 206701 after 2215 power on hours.
The machine is doing comparable things, downloading podcasts, Time Machine backups, browsing, etc.
The general questions, I have are:
Is the temperature supposed to spike like that when handling a larger drive?
If so, what is a reasonable range? I know I don't have the temperature of the new drive, but if I knew what to expect, I guess I would be more confident putting the new drive back in and not returning it.
What's a normal/healthy/reasonable (don't really know the term I'm grasping for) load cycle to see? I divided the load cycles by the number of power on hours and get around 150 for the WD and 93 for the Toshiba. Are either of those outrageously good or bad? I haven't been able to tell in my reading.
The bottom-line questions are:
Am I just overreacting based on what I've read? Or, is something not kosher and should I return the new drive and get something else? Should I try hdapm or something? If I should return the drive, any recommendations?
I've talked your collective ear off, I'm sure.
Thank you in advance for your responses.
Cheers,
Rob

For what it's worth I've put aftermarket 7200 rpm hard drives in 2006 and 2008 15" MBP's and also a WD Scorpio Black 320GB in a 2009 13" MBP 2.53GHz and have had no changes in cpu temp or fan speed. Your fan speeds and cpu temp with the new drive sound too high. Something else is going on here. The temp is not supposed to spike when handling a larger drive. Maybe it's something like
Spotlight indexing the new drive? Have a look at your Activity Monitor for an active process drawing resources with the new drive.

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I don't know that this is the solution to your problem, but it's the first thing I would attempt. 2009 models are notorious for having bad SATA cables - try PowerbookMedic and order a new one. If it doesn't fix the problem, call back.
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Clinton

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Hi People
Basically looking for advise, as i know the basics, but heard there could be issues with the drive i want and macbook Pro's, so looking for advice whether the drive will work or not.
Now i know that i need the hard drives without the shock protection built in, for example i need the seagate AS range and not the ASG Range.
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Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.27f2
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specs of drive are - http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=683
Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 640,135 MB
Capacity 640 GB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 1,250,263,728
Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.374 Inches
Length 3.94 Inches
Width 2.75 Inches
Weight 0.26 Pounds
Metric
Height 9.5 mm
Length 100.2 mm
Width 69.85 mm
Weight 0.117 kg
Environmental Specifications
Acoustics
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 26 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
Operating 32° F to 140° F
Non-operating -40° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating -0° C to 60° C
Non-operating -40° C to 65° C
Humidity
Operating 8% to 95% Non-condensing
Non-operating 5-95% RH non-condensing
Altitude (English)
Operating -1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
Non-operating -1,000 feet to 40,000 feet
Altitude (Metric)
Operating -305M to 3,050M
Non-operating -305M to 12,200M
Vibration
Operating 0.00459 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Non-operating 0.05102 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 50 mA
Sleep 20 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts

People have been having some trouble with this drive. You might want to look at this discussion on the 640 WD:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2250690&start=0&tstart=0
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UPDATE: Problem solved with the old hard drive in it, Now the less pressing issue:
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My mid-2009 MacBook Pro's hard drive is near death. I want to install a new SSD and work from scratch. Please help.

Recently, my mid-2009 MacBook Pro has been crashing when I close the screen ("it's having a problem recognizing when the screen is closed/open and deciding what to do, error overload etc."). It wasn't an SMC issue so I took it to an Apple Store, ran some tests, and decided my hard-drive is failing.
Not wanting to spend an insane amount of money on some "official apple hard-drive," I want to install a new 256GB SSD instead. Hoping to squeeze as much life out of this computer as possible (in January I upgraded from 4 GB RAM to 8 GB), I would like to try and start from scratch, i.e. back-up important folders, music, photos etc. and only take that to the new hard-drive. If someone could explain all the steps I need to take to safely complete this task (or point me in the direction of a guide) I'd appreciate it.
Potentially Important info:
     Model:                mid-2009 13'' MacBook Pro
     Processor:          2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
     Memory:             4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
     Software:            OS X 10.8.4
Some additional questions I have...
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     How much more life should I try and push out of this computer? I'm an engineering student and really only use it for web-surfing, music, and
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cwgonzalez1192
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     How much more life should I try and push out of this computer? I'm an engineering student and really only use it for web-surfing, music, and
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Well there is no "official Apple HD / SSD" in any regard, no worries there.
If as you say youre only using same for surfing and word processing, why the need for a SSD? You would not notice any speed diff. in use on either of those,....in boot times yes, but in word or surfing, not.
You can push it likely a few more years, for mere surfing and word processing,...many many years.   Up TO the point that any major fixes become unrealistic relative to getting a new(ER) machine.
Concerned with a boot clone? yes and no. Its an ideal immediate recovery, since you cannot boot from Time Machine, ....in case of HD crash, recovery takes seconds from boot, or 20 mins or so from removing old and installing a clone. All the prosumers and pros have at least one updated clone of their prime machines.
You can do a "fresh install" if you choose, however if your current drive is FINE, why not merely clone it and save yourself some headache?...., but that is your prerogative of course.    Ideally 2 drives, one to backup your data (you need that regardless of installing a new drive for sake of a backup/archive,...ideally 2 actually, not merely one).
You could clone internal to NEW SSD/HD , ...then offload unnecessary files to an external to free up space and clutter and run off the clone, and this would only take a couple hours......the clone itself takes approx. 40+ mins.
CLONE Apps :
Superduper does not clone the recovery partition, but that is NOT necessary if you keep the original HD as a “backup clone”. Most don’t bother with the recovery partition in a clone, however that is your prerogative.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
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CCC App
http://www.bombich.com/

Samsung hard drive problems with mid 2009 Macbook Pro

Arghh, this is driving me mad.
I'd like to know if anyone has installed a Samsung HM641JI SATA II hard drive into a mid 2009 Macbook Pro (mine is a 2.8Ghz) and, if so, how they managed it. The drive is 640GB. These are the steps I've taken:
1. Swap out the stock drive for the Samsung
2. Boot from a USB drive which contains a mirror of my system
3. When the system identified the new disk, I formatted it with 2 partitions (GUID table, HFS journaled)
4. Reboot
5. System is very slow. Boots from USB but can't use keyboard to login
6. Switch off and try again
7. Remove Samsung drive
8. Reboot from USB (works perfectly)
9. Downgrade firmware to 1.6
10. Replace samsung drive and try again
11. System boots from USB
12. Verify that drive is running at 1.5Ghz
13. Disk utility and system profiler both crash
14. Disk unmounts by itself and other random weirdness
15. Remove Samsung drive
I've read endless reports about the firmware in this model of Macbook Pro and its issues with SATA II but struggling to find anything current and specific. Two questions:
a. Is there anythign I can do to get this drive to play nicely?
b. What drive should I get if the answer to a is no?
As a bit of background.. my system began playing up last week with lots of spinning beach balls resulting in forced switch offs. Booting from a mirror on a USB drive works perfectly so I concluded that the drive was on its way out. A drive test utility confirmed this. I'm now wondering if it really was the drive or the cable or the logic board.
Any advice appreciated.
Cheers
//A

I'm coming around to the idea that this might be a problem with the SATA cable rather than the drive.
I currently have the stock drive (Hitachi) back in the macbook. It mounted for a while and was then ejected when I tried writing data to it. System profiler reports that "There was an error while scanning for Serial-ATA devices."
I was able to mount the same drive in a USB enclosure this afternoon without any problems. Right now, I seem to be having issues with both the Samsung drive and the Hitachi drive - I wasn't suspicious of thr latter because I thought it was failing.
I found one or two accounts of other people having similar problems that were resolved with a new sata cable.
How does a cable fail? Could this be my problem?
Cheers
//A

Only Apple Branded Hard Drives Work in My Mid-2009 MacBook Pro

My Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (actually, my wife's) experienced a hard-drive failure about a year ago. This was a 500GB 7200RPM drive that came BTO from Apple.
It's easy enough to replace HD's, so, I did it myself with a Seagate 7200RPM 500GB drive, the same model as the one from Apple, but I got this one from Seagate, not from Apple, so it didn't have the Apple logo (and firmware?) on it. The drive did not work. I was able to format the drive using Disk Utility, but when I tried to install Snow Leopard on it, it would fail. I placed the new drive in my other MBP (early 2008), and installed SL, no problems. Booted to it just fine.
I put it back in the 2009 MBP, and it would not boot - it would show the flashing folder with a question mark. I put the drive in a usb enclosure and the MBP booted from it just fine (well, a little slower because the usb speed, I presume).
I bought another Seagate and experienced the same problem. I bought a Hitachi and experienced the same problem. I took it to an authorized Apple repair facility who told me that the HD was bad (which was obviously false, since all 3 HD's I tried worked just fine in my other computer).
So, I took it into Apple and gave them the whole story and they ran overnight hardware diagnostics and were unable to find (or fix) a problem.
So, I played stupid and brought it back again, saying "uh, my hard drive broke, can you fix it?" hoping that they would try to replace the HD and fix the problem or at least diagnose it.
Well, they put an Apple branded HD back in, and it works just fine.
Seemingly, that would be problem solved, and life has been fine for the last year. But, now we bought an OptiBay to ditch the DVD drive and place a 750GB (non-apple) drive in the optical bay. To my surprise, the non-apple drive works, but, it is pretty slow (we put our iPhoto library on there, and it chokes very badly when you ask it to do anything, such as zoom on a picture, play a video, go to full screen, etc. It takes about 30 to 45 seconds of SBOD to perform those tasks.
I am wondering if there was any way we could have damaged the SATA connector or driver? Why would only Apple branded drives work in the main HD bay? I don't know if an Apple branded drive would preform better in the optical bay or not.

I recently saw a similar situation described in another forum and someone directed the OP to look for a jumper on the drive. I raised my eyebrows--that sounded like old PATA technology--but, sure enough, the OP found a jumper, changed it and everything worked. This apparently changed the timing on the drive to match Apple products. I'm leaving town and won't have much time to search myself, but try a forum search for "SATA jumper" and see if something rings a bell.

Mid-2009 MacBook Pro sees internal SATA hard drive, but will not boot from or format

I inherited a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz model) with a very strange issue.
It first presented itself as not being able to boot from the internal SATA hard drive that came with the computer. Nothing I tried could get it to boot, so I assumed the file system was corrupted beyond repair and booted from a CD to try to format the drive. Disk Utility on the CD would not format the drive, giving me strange error messages like "Unable to write to the last block of the device".
At this point I figured the drive itself must be toast, so I pulled it out and put another known-good SATA hard drive in, booted from CD, and attempted to format. Again, same error messages and an unsuccesful format.
So I had the bright idea of formatting one of the drives in an external enclosure and then putting it in the MBP to see if OS X would even install. No dice. Get a cryptic error message before installation even begins.
So I installed OS X on the drive in the external enclosure and put it in the MBP, and it attempts to boot, but never goes anywhere.
So to sum up, the symptoms I'm seeing:
MacBook Pro CAN see internal SATA hard drives.
MacBook Pro WILL NOT boot from any internal SATA hard drive and cannot format or install OS X to any internal SATA hard drive.
MacBook Pro WILL boot from any CD or external device and seems to work properly otherwise.
At this point I'm thinking it's one of two things: the hard drive ribbon cable or the SATA controller on the logic board.
Since the MacBook Pro seems to work completely fine other than this one issue, and will boot properly from both external devices and the CD (also a SATA device), I'm thinking and hoping that it's just the hard drive ribbon cable. From my searches online, I've heard that this batch of MacBook Pros is known to have issues with the hard drive ribbon cable, but it seems in most cases this manifests itself by the Mac not being able to see a drive at all.
I've done quite a bit of troubleshooting to get to this point, but right now I'm just looking for any feedback at all. Specifically I'd love to know a way I can easily test to see whether it's the logic board or the cable.

UPDATE: An interesting development!
I just tried a third known-good SATA hard drive, one which I believe supports SATA I only (but I'm not sure), and unlike the other drives that the Mac sees but cannot properly interact with, the Mac can't even see this one when I put it inside.
Frustrating as this may be, I believe I'm actually getting closer to a solution since my symptoms now appear to be closely aligned with people having SATA ribbon cable issues.
Onward!

HT1661 My mid-2009 MacBook Pro has just died via a painful (for me) hard drive failure. I backed up a good percentage of files recently but not enough to keep me happy. I need to access the dead drive on the MBP via a 2008 iMac. Best options?

My mid-2009 MacBook Pro has just died via a painful (for me) hard drive failure. I backed up a good percentage of files recently but not enough to keep me happy. I need to access the dead drive on the MBP via a 2008 iMac. Best options?
I have ordered a 800 firewire to 800 firewire cable and am hoping to use the target mode option to copy files from the MBP.
Is this possible?
Hope so!
Any advice and or help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Neil

Thanks Ogelthorpe.
Just bought an enclosure to try that also.
Hoping the MBP isn't really dead but just feigning death
Fingers crossed.

Can I upgrade the HD on my mid 2009 macbook pro 13" to a SSD higher than 256gb?

I have a mid 2009 MacBook Pro 13". I use it every day for school since september of 2009. I have a HUGE iTunes library (around 150gb) and I use DAW software to create music. I'm looking to upgrade from my current 250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive to a larger SSD. I want to do this for the speed of an SSD and I need more hard drive space. Is there anyway to upgrade my macbook to a SSD in the ballpark of 500GB-1TB?? On Apple's technical spesifications it says I cannot upgrade to an SDD with more than 256GB. Is this really true or is there any way around this?
Thanks in advance!

The tech specs list the upgrades that were available from Apple when that model was being sold new. They don't necessarily reflect the aftermarket-upgradabaility. I don't believe there'd be any reason you couldn't put a hard drive/SSD of whatever capacity you want in that MBP (of course it needs to be the right physical size).
That being said, it's good practice to make sure you have a window to return it just in case.
Yeah what Bob said.
Message was edited by: Andy-J-D

Upgrading RAM in Mid 2009 MacBook Pro.

I currently have the standard 4gig of RAM in my Mid 2009 MacBook Pro and would like to up upgrade to 8 or 12gig. Apple states max is 8gig but I have a friend who quadroupled the RAM (way beyond what apple state is the max) in his machine and hasn't had any problems. I remember some time ago with Windows Vista (or was it XP?)
2 questions...
1) RAM from Apple is very expensive, are cheaper alternatives just as good or worth the risk? If so, could someone point me in the direction of a cheaper alternative?
2) What is the max amount of RAM I can put in to my machine? I remember some time ago with Windows Vista (or was it XP?) that the OS could only actually utilise a certain amount of RAM so installing any more than this was a false economy. Could this also be the case with Mac OS X?

Go here, all your questions will be answerd. Good, reliable source. Complete instructions:
http://www.macsales.com/

Windows 8.1 64-bit driver for Coprocessor on Mid 2009 Macbook Pro 5,4

I have successfully installed Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit onto my Mid 2009 Macbook Pro 5,4. The installer from BootCamp 5.0.533.5033 would not run, but I installed one-by-one the files under Apple and then ran the 64-bit nVidia installlers. I have everything present and accounted for except for the 'Coprocessor.'
I have looked through the forums and everything seems to indicated that if you install the nVidia drivers it will install the driver for this but it doesn't. Any thoughts/suggestions/solutions?

For anyone who will find this post in the future, the Device Manager indicates that the 'Device Instance Path' is
pci co-processor pci\ven_10de&dev_0aa3&subsys_cb7910de&rev_b1\3&21436425&0&1d
Searching for that online, it appears that this is the nVidia MCP79 Co processor System.
This driver did not install with version 306.37 that came with the BootCamp drivers. I downloaded the current version from nVidia of 334.89 and that didn't work either. I searched online and found a driver for an Alienware 17x that uses the same co processor and ran the installer which extracted the files for the nVidia chipset v. 15.57 for 64-bit Windows 7 and Vista to c:\dell\drivers\R273039 and pointed the Device Manager to this folder and it was able to successfully install the driver software for the Management Controller (drivers are listed under the SMU folder for the "PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0AA3" device).
NVIDIA nForce System Management Controller
I then proceeded to use Double Driver to backup the drivers in use by the system so that if I install Windows 8 on future systems I can use this rather than the round-about way of getting the driver installed on the system.

Mid 2009 MacBook Pro 13 Hard Drive Upgrade Questions

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