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Released October 2008 / 2.4, 2.53, 2.66, 2.8 or 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor

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Why does new hybrid hard drive cause MBP to pause during operations?

I have a 15" 2.53 GHz Mid 2009 MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM. I bought a new 1 TB hybrid hard drive to replace my original 320 GB hard drive as it is almost full. I formatted the hard drive and installed Yosemite on it. I was using OS X 10.6.3 prior to the upgrade. After the upgrades my MacBook Pro pauses during operations. I get the pause with spinning ball while surfing, playing songs in iTunes, writing documents, opening emails, streaming audio or video. It also is not easily recognized during start ups. I get the grey screen with the "Don Not Enter" symbol, the folder with the question mark, and the Apple logo alternating and usually have to abort and re-start due to this freeze a couple of times during each start/re-start. At times the new hard drive does not show up in the start up disk choices in System Preferences.

I have switched the hard drives with the old as internal and the new as external, used "Disc Utility" and "Disc Tools Pro" to check and defrag the disc. There is never a report of any detected problem.

The MBP works fine on the old hard drive, so I know I didn't mess up the hard drive cable when I changed them.

Is my new hard drive the culprit?

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When was the last time you ran a virus scan?

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I use Little Snitch and Avast and have not found any viruses.

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Don't think you have a bum drive here, most likely your systems firmware and/or your SATA cable is not up to spec. Start by upgrading your firmware Then replace the HD SATA cable. The Apple drive you have was SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) where your new drive is SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) so the SATA cable may need replacing. The Seagate drive can support either SATA speed but in your case the system can run at SATA III.

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The Problem I have now is that I tried to update the EFI Boot ROM and the SMC, when I checked at the Apple support site, my particular model identifier is not present.

I have the MacBookPro5,4 & the updates for EFI Boot ROM and SMC are not listed for this model. The listed models go from 5,3 to 5,5. Suggestions?

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Thats OK, if the not there your OK with what you have (your system is then only a SATA II unit). You'll need to replace the SATA cable here. Make sure you're using the newer version.

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I've installed dozens of the Seagate 1 TB SSHD with no failures. How did you format the drive, internally or externally and what was the boot disk?

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I formatted it via USB in an external enclosure. I then "cloned" my start up disc and then upgraded the system to Yosemite. After a few restarts, I installed it in my Mac. It worked fine for the first few restarts. It then started pausing as noted in my question. Yosemite only calls for 2GB of RAM and I have 4.

It stalled on the start-up screen as noted in my question.

I re-started using my old hard drive via usb and it started right up, but the new, internal hard drive did not show up on the start up disk selection window in System Preferences.

I changed the hard drives again, used "Disk Utility" and "Disc Tools Pro" looking for problems, reformatted, cloned and defragged the hard drive. The new hard drive showed up in the System Prefs start up disk selector, and ran it for a while as the Start Up Disk as an external drive. I updated my "Boot ROM Version to:MBP53.00AC.B03" and my "SMC Version (system)is 1.49f2"

The pauses are still happening, although the Hard drive is showing up as the Start Up Disk.

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The drive is just not running correctly. Try erasing the drive using the "write zeros" option. This will map out any bad blocks from the directory and may solve the problem.

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Should I do that after removing the problem hard drive and using my old one as the boot drive and starting from parade rest again?

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