MacBook Doesn't See SSD

[xs_roller75]

Please find below email from the support !!!! LOL

Greetings,

The Drive itself needs to be formatted and partitioned before it will be
recognized as a functional drive. I would suggest since you can access
the drive while used as an external drive, through USB, to do so before
plugging it in as a primary drive.


Thank you for contacting Patriot Memory Support.

I've answered him that he should find something else. i'll keep you in touch.

[drkrab@mac.com]

I did this and it still does not recognize the drive.

[FanCarolina]

I'm experiencing these same problems with a Patriot Warp v.3 128gb and my 2008 Mac Mini. I cannot see the drive in the Disk Utility in order to partition and/or format it. I do see the drive under the System Profiler; however it lists the Allocation Table as Unknown.
I've already tried using Mac Drive 8 under Windows and formatting the drive with a HFS+ partition however this seems to have made no difference.

Note to Patriot: Don't list your drives as Mac OS X compatible if they don't work.

[FanCarolina]

As a follow up I would like to post that I've gotten the Warp v.3 to show up on the Mac Mini. In order to get it to recognize you must initialize the disk as a GPT Disk first. You can do this using the Disk Management utility under Administrative Tools located under Windows Vista or Windows 7. You can right click on the drive when it has no partitions and convert it to a GPT Disk. Then simply connect to you OS X machine and it will recognize and allow you to partition and install OS X.

[macgizmoguy]

I'm experiencing these same problems with a Patriot Warp v.3 128gb and my 2008 Mac Mini. I cannot see the drive in the Disk Utility in order to partition and/or format it. I do see the drive under the System Profiler; however it lists the Allocation Table as Unknown.
I've already tried using Mac Drive 8 under Windows and formatting the drive with a HFS+ partition however this seems to have made no difference.

That's kind of suprising, the SSD should be rather platform agnostic and Apple's Disk Utility should have let you partition it as you want. So you're saying you HAD to format it on a Windows machine to get it to the point the Mac could even recognize it?

---
Just an FYI for Mac readers out there: It's critical for INTEL based Macs to be formatted with a GUID Partition Table for a drive to be bootable in OSX. Those with G4 or G5 processors should NOT use GUID and just format a solid state drive as the default standard OSX Extended (Journaled).

Lastly, I've NEVER been a fan of setting up multiple partitions on a single drive. On those that were, I've seen some real data corruption nightmares that were irretreivable. For your own - and your data's sake: 1 drive - 1 partition. Keep it backed up religiously and run Disk First Aid regularly. Trust DISK WARRIOR when you encounter directory corruption that Disk First Aid can't fix; it's a great utility.

[JohannesLauesen]

Hi all.

I have been fighting like all of you to get my Patriot 256GB v3 working on my MBP 15,4 inch unibody 2.8Ghz

I have totally given up using the traditional way.
I have found a method that works every time:

Take out the internal disk.
Plug in a SATA USB adapter and plug the Patriot disk on that adapter.
Then boot up the install cd/dvd.
You usually need to partition it as GUID partition table every time....* using the disk utility.
Then continue the installation as normal.
When done take the Patriot and put it inside the mac and close it up.

It should now boot up nicely... it is a bit slow at detecting the drive, but it works for me.

It performs quite well for me...
Read 220MB/s
Write 150MB/s

* BUT!!!!!! every now and then the machine hangs... and a few of the times it hangs the data on the disk is CORRUPTED... i have tried to be patient, but after 4 times with crashes leading to the machine not being able to boot i decided that the disk was not mac compatible :-(
Untill now i have been able to get the data out when it failed... only system files "died".

I love SSD and i love the performance i had with my patriot disk... but i simply cant live with data corruption and never knowing when it is the last time i can boot my machine...

Hope someone apple or patriot can do something about this, the disk was almost $ 1K so i think it is a bit frustrating that it is claimed to work on apple and then it is not really working.

[wdbutrym]

Has there been any progress on solving the problem that Johannes has been seeing. This has happened to me several times as well. I have actually needed to swap the drive for a new one 2 times. I really don't want to fail another drive. I have a new 13" MBP and a 128gb Torqx drive.

Hopefully new firmware comes soon for this drive to help the issue.

[wdbutrym]

I am cautiously optimistic that the issue has been resolved with firmware 1819. For the first time I was able to install Snow Leopard on my 13" MBP without a hang during the installation process. So far it has been solid under use as well, I have been trying to stress the system to invoke the system hangs that I was getting in the past but so far so go.

I am running EFI firmware 1.7 to get the full 3 Gb/s on the SATA bus without issue as well. Time will tell if this issue is truly solved.

[wdbutrym]

Another update

I have been able to install win7 via boot camp for the first time, the first 2 drive under firmware 1517 would fail durring the install.

My system appears to be fully functional now hopefully it will last.

[freemymind]

I have a mid 2009 MBP 15" and the Patriot Torqx PFZ256GS25SSDRC 2.5" 256GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail from Newegg.

I can get the drive to install and boot from USB adapter from the mac but once I install it to the mac it will not boot. If I boot to the Snow (10.6) install DVD I can see the drive and select it for the startup device. I have tried both versions of the firmware (is there a way to verify the firmware?) This is frustrating as I went through the same issue with the Corsair CMFSSD-256GBG2D 2.5" 256GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk and tech support with them. After refunding that drive I emailed jsmith@patriotmem.com and asked what drive I should get with my setup and he recommended:
"You’ll want a regular Torqx not an M28"

Here is a link to some screen shots in hopes it will help resolve the issue or help others with deciding what drive to go with.
Screen-shots

Apple support simply tells me that not all drives are supported and the only way to be sure it to order one from them.