Fixing the SATA 1 EFI firmware bottleneck — help is appreciated

Discussion in 'macOS' started by R_F, Jan 5, 2013.

  1. R_F

    R_F MDL Novice

    Jan 5, 2013
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    Hello,

    Apple has hobbled ICH8-M Macbooks and Macbook Pros so that instead of supporting SATA II, they only run at SATA I. This is a pain for those of us who upgraded to SATA II ssds.

    The bottleneck is a software/firmware one, not a hardware limitation. Some have argued that the reason Apple did this was because the optical drive on these machines is PATA not SATA. Others have argued that it was done to reduce heat production. The optical drives have failed in the 2008 Macbook Pros I have, so I don't have them installed and have no need for the PATA connection to work.

    If anyone knows how to modify the EFI BIOS to change the setting from SATA I to SATA II that would be great. It was done for Lenovo units:

    forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/459591-t61-x61-sata-ii-1-5-gb-s-cap-willing-pay-solution-8.html#post6501443
     
  2. LatinMcG

    LatinMcG Bios Borker

    Feb 27, 2011
    5,711
    1,606
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    unfortunattely the EFI is in SMC chip. not a standard bios chip.
    openfirmware tricks maybe.