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danbrew · Nov 29, 2009, 06:13 PM

I just purchased a 15" MBP and used the Migration Assistant to migrate over my apps, data, settings, etc. from a 13" Black Macbook. Worked like a charm.

I then thought about putting in a larger hard drive, so used Super Duper to clone the stock drive in the 15" (that now contained all of my data) to the a new WD 750g HD. The cloning process went well and I then swapped out the stock drive for the 750g drive.

The system boots just fine and I've got all of my data on the new drive and things are well... so I thought.

Major beachball activity. Simple tasks in Firefox take more than a minute. A cursory review on the web shows lots of people complaining about large hard drives in the current generation MBPs... yet I haven't found any posts doing a good job of summarizing the problem, whether it is a drive firmware issue, or a MBP issue.

Thought I would ask here - have you encountered this issue? And were able to solve it?

thanks,

danbrew

mduell · Nov 29, 2009, 07:16 PM

Did you test it much before cloning? Sounds like the joys of Migration Assistant.

Why bother with third party software for cloning? Disk Utility can do it.

danbrew · Nov 29, 2009, 09:37 PM

No, didn't do any type of testing - other than to create a bootable drive with my prior image. I wasn't aware that DU could clone a drive - although I'm not certain that this is the issue at hand as most of the reports I've read on the "constant beachball" issue have more to do with the fact that the drive wants to park heads every second or so... ?

Simon · Nov 30, 2009, 04:15 AM

Super Duper is known to have caused weird issues for many people in the past. Just like its nasty cousin CCC by the way.

I cannot repeat it enough: any real cloning should be done with the built-in OS X tools. They're maintained by Apple, they get installed with every copy of OS X, they're fast, they're rock-solid and they're free.

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility > Restore. Check 'erase destination'.

Simon · Nov 30, 2009, 04:18 AM

I suggest you put back the original drive. Verify that all works well again.

Then, try cloning to the 750 GB drive with Disk Utility. Swap the drives. If you get the same issues it could indeed be drive related. In that case, you'd probably be best off sticking with the stock drive. If not, you'll just be another person to happily leave SD/CCC behind for a tool that actually works.

danbrew · Nov 30, 2009, 05:36 AM

Yep, the original drive is back in the MBP and all works fine.

Will the Disk Utility application make the 750g drive bootable when I copy the stock drive?

Simon · Nov 30, 2009, 08:41 AM

Make sure to check the 'erase destination' box and you'll get a perfect (and of course bootable) clone.

danbrew · Dec 2, 2009, 04:55 PM

Did everything above. Same problems. The most simple of tasks (opening a webpage) spins the beachball for 10 minutes. The combo of the WD 750g drive and this Macbook Pro (with EFI 1.7) is unusable. I had to put the stock drive back in the machine.

Other thoughts?

polendo · Dec 2, 2009, 07:03 PM

there was some issues with some drives that had protections against any accidents (like falling down) and Apple´s had their own technology for those accidents. Having said that, the drives own technology plus Apple´s made the hard disks performance erratic since apparently only one should be working to be functioning fine. Maybe that is the case. Check if that hard disk has any built in features against accidents (they stop spinning the disk at any change in acceleration).

seanc · Dec 2, 2009, 07:23 PM

If you can, I'd advise you to try and run SMART Utility on that drive, only issue is you'll have to be booted from it - the drive could be "DOA" and the SMART values may tell you that.

Simon · Dec 3, 2009, 03:45 AM

There is indeed a conflict between the built-in SMS and the shock protection in some drives. However, that WD is probably a Blue series without shock protection. Also, if you test these things on a solid table or desk the conflict should not appear simply because there's no acceleration of the notebook and/or disk.

I'd say either the disk is bad (->SMART, disk tools), there's a problem with the bus on the MBP (-> AHT), or more likely there's some kind of incompatibility between that specific type of WD drive and the MBP. The latter would be strange, but at this point definitely can't be ruled out.

danbrew · Dec 3, 2009, 05:28 PM

I left the drive hooked up to the machines via a USB/SATA connection today and, while true I hadn't booted off of the large drive, I came upstairs every hour or so and copied large files back and forth between the WD 750g (indeed a Blue) and had no problems. The drive in the machine is a stock drive and is working just fine.