New Fix for Hybrid HDD!

On February 17 I wrote about "A Hybrid HDD for my MacBook Pro", I was happy because now I have a 500 GB drive instead of only 160 GB of the OEM!

Now I am able to dedicate a 30 GB Scratch Partition just for Photoshop!

It was not all wine & roses though, after using my trusted MBP with the new innards for two days, I notice something "strange"; during a task, say; when I am running a Photoshop "action", without warning or reason, the action will just freeze for a second or so and then continue!

I also notice it is impossible to put the MBP to sleep when I wanted to!

It can't be my imagination, especially when a friend from Singapore post this link in Face Book!

It was a story from Engadget titled:

Momentus XT hybrid drive causing headaches, Seagate working to fix

Luckily in late February Seagate released a firmware upgrade for the Momentus XT, version SD24 , to address its problem; I did the upgrade and it seems to fix my problem. I wrote about it here.

After a month of usage, I realise there are still some problem like for no reason; my loading web page will just freeze. Mind you, it is not that often; after a while I live with it ;)

Then by chance I found out Seagate came out with ANOTHER firmware update last week! The new SD25 suppose to be a cure all ;)

Before you jump with excitement and proceed to upgrade, please make sure you know what to do.

With Mac Book Pro, you will need to burn a boot CD and verify the XT HDD is the correct model. You can read about the procedure in my earlier post.

After the update, make sure you go to "About This Mac, More Info" to confirm the new SD25 firmware is installed.

Has the update improve the stability of the HDD? I had no trouble since I update a day ago, we will wait and see ;)