Do I need another HD Cable?
When I turn my MBP on from sleep, it takes ~10-15 minutes to fully wake up every time I open the lid. I knew about the HD cable problem and replaced it when I got the machine, but I am wondering if I need to try a cable from a different vendor or if the problem is related to something else.
When I replaced the drive cable, I secured the cable with Kapton tape and padded the parts where it is most prone to wear (optical drive, chassis) and added some additional protective tape to the cable itself to be sure it won’t fail as easily. While I think the cable is fine, I also know this is an infamous issue with these machines and am not overlooking it.
I am running mine with the original 4GB/500GB HDD setup on High Sierra (which I really should upgrade, but am holding off on until we have an October announcement from Apple), so it may be possible the limited RAM and stock SATA II HD are where my performance issues lie.
Update (9/10)
As proof I managed to avoid APFS on this High Sierra install, I have posted a photo. In addition, I have posted photos of the drive test and it came out fine. They may be out of order.
Drive test
Is this a good question?
4 Comments
Did you use the 2012 cable?
by mayer
@mayer According to the listing: Related Part #: 923-0104, 923-0741
Mine is the 821-2049-A/923-0741.
by Nick
@nick - I don't recommend going higher than Sierra on SATA based systems. APFS has issues running off of SATA drives, unlike PCIe drives which have deeper buffers. System hangs and freeze-ups are common on High Sierra & Mojave APFS SATA drives. APFS is still a work in progress per Apple!
I would strongly recommend jumping to a retina model if you need to run anything newer.
by Dan
@danj I only got the non-Retina because they can be bought so cheap. Yeah it's a compromise compared to a Retina but the price gap helped. Mine wasn't converted to APFS - I'm still on MacOS Extended (Journaled). I wanted a Retina, but didn't have the budget to get a Retina at the time.
If I could do it again, I would have waited and got a Retina. The 2011 aged worse then I expected it to in a way as well - it's gotten to a point I no longer recommend them unless you absolutely cannot afford better and even changed one of my answers where Metal 2 became an issue later on. It's not dead yet but we're at a point Metal 1 may become more of an issue. While I know I'll eventually need to upgrade, I'm going to wait until Apple announces new laptops and see if they release modular Pro systems.
I choose to run High Sierra since it's nearly identical and slightly more compatible in some ways - primarily the App Store downloads everyone gets. My plan is to go to a '14 15" rMBP if we don't get it anytime soon. Not to mention the future of Metal1 is making the idea of a Retina a bit more tolerable since I'm not gaining much going from 2011->2012 (not to mention a quality battery for the retina from that year is hard to find) but I do gain a lot from 2011->2014.
by Nick