Patriot Wildfire & Macbook = SLOW

[Patriot_Ben]

From one of the other vendors... "To everyone wondering what this fix is.. I really don't know what to tell you, it fixes the detection issue, what more can I say? Drive speed detection isn't in the actual firmware, but still stored in the same block of Nand as the firmware. For all intents an purposes, I guess you could say it was in the firmware, but in the interest of the "openess" that people want, it actually isn't."

Hey Sneakers,

I spoke with one of our SSD Engineers and he verified that we are working on this. We hope to have it ready for next firmware release.

The issue is some older chipsets have poor signal integrity which can cause failure to negotiate at sata III 6GB speeds.

[Palamino]

While you're working on a fix for the Mac sata 1 speed problem, please also work on a Mac OS X compatible firmware upgrade software tool. I have a Mac mini and it's a pain in the neck to pull the drive out of that thing to install in a PC just to upgrade the firmware.

[ddavis]

Hey Ben,

I ran it to this problem over the weekend after upgrading my MacBook. Do you have any sort of ETA for the new firmware?

Thanks

[cmiller05]

I'm another one with the same issue on my macbook.

Patriot_Ben - Do you have any idea when an update to address this may be available? Want to know how often I should be checking back.

TY!

[ddavis]

It's been over a month; I'm just wondering if we could get an ETA for this firmware fix?

Thanks

[cmiller05]

It's been over a month; I'm just wondering if we could get an ETA for this firmware fix?

Thanks

Ben, or anyone with Patriot. Has this been resolved with 5.0.2 or is there an ETA? I tried looking for detailed release notes but can't find anything other then a couple high level bullets. Thank you!

[Patriot_Ben]

cmiller05,

At the moment unfortunately no the issue has not yet been resolved. Our Engineers are working directly with the Engineers at Sandforce to address this. We apologize for the setback, and thank you for the patience in the matter.

[ddavis]

Thanks Ben. I'll keep watching this thread.

[canthearu]

From my understanding, the problem is that some 3gb SATA implementations do not handle 6gb SATA devices correctly. Instead of negotiating the highest speed between the two devices (3gb), they fall back to 1.5gb. I've seen this on my IBM BR10i (flashed to LSI 1068E). It also happens on many Nvidia SATA implementations, as well as many Macx.

This IS not a drive issue, but an issue with the implementation and firmware of the SATA controller you are plugging into.

There are 2 solutions to this:

a) A firmware update for the SATA controller's BIOS, so it doesn't get confused by the 6gb negotiation and correctly negotiates 3gb in that situation. This is what fixed my LSI 1068E in the end.

b) A firmware change to the drive, so the drive does not attempt to negotiate a 6gb link, but instead a 3gb link. Such a drive will be stuck at 3gb no matter what motherboard you subsequently plug it into, until you undo that firmware change. OCZ and some other manufacturers have gone in this direction.

I could be wrong, but this is what I have seen in my trawling of the subject.

It would probably be appreciated by mac users if patriot could release a firmware that forced 3gb mode on their drives.

[hippocampus]

Hi

any update here from Patriot? I have upgraded one Mac Mini and am encountering this problem, keen to know if there will be an easy resolution before rolling same solution out to other units.

That said, even at SATA1 the speed increase is great (sub 30 sec boot into Lion)