This is more of a (hopefully) helpful anecdote than a question or a problem: I recently installed a 1TB SSD as my main hard drive in my 2011 MacBook Pro (8,2) and a 1TB 7200 rpm HGST Travelstar HDD in my optical drive bay. The secondary drive was intended to be used as a document/project drive, and as my System Report indicated that my optical drive SATA connection had a 6 Gigabit chipset/connection, so I saw no problem in buying a SATA III drive for my secondary drive. At first, everything seemed to be working fine ... until I attempted to shuttle a large amount of data from the HDD to my main SSD.
I got an Error -36 message and the transfer immediately stopped. Tech Tools Pro 9.0.2 Protection started giving me I/O error messages. It passed S.M.A.R.T. verification and had no bad blocks that showed up in a complete surface scan. I tried everything. Defragged the drive, rebuilt the directory, reset the permissions, even experimented with "dot.clean" ... nothing worked. I yanked out the drive and its optical drive caddy and plugged a SATA-to-USB cable into it, and the drive worked fine. I deduced that it might be the optical drive SATA cable, and I tried replacing that. Same problem.
I found a few things online that suggested, because I had a 6 Gigabit chipset and a 6 Gigabit drive, that the problem might be automagical, that my hard drive caddy and my SATA connection may both be trying to resolve a 6 Gigabit connection, so I replaced the caddy. The problem remained.
As it turns out, the late 2011 15" MacBook Pros (8,1/8,2/8,3) have a unique problem with 6 Gigabit SATA III connections. Earlier models would simply run a 6 Gb SATA III drive at SATA II 3 Gigabits. Later models can run SATA III drives at full speed. My computer, on the other hand, isn't capable of running a 6 Gb SATA III optical drive connection at all. Or rather, it can, but with read/write errors. The only way to resolve this is to use a SATA II drive in the optical bay. That hits on an entirely new conundrum: new SATA II 1 TB 7200 rpm laptop drives are virtually non-existent these days. Fortunately, I found a decent workaround: Other World Computing sells an HGST Travelstar exactly like the one I originally installed, except with proprietary EFI firmware that allows it to run at SATA II speeds.
I'm posting this because it appears to be a problem a lot of people are experiencing with these machines, and because I spent a lot of time and money trying to fix it and thinking the motherboard might need to be replaced or that it was a problem I wouldn't be able to fix.
MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
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MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
Mid- 2012 MacBook Pro Quad-core i7 2.7 GHz/16 GB RAM/2 TB SSD (primary)/1 TB 7200 rpm HDD (secondary) • OS X 10.14.6 • DP 11.1 • Pro Tools 12.8.1 • Acoustica Pro 7.4.0 • Avid MBox Pro 3G • Korg K61 • IMDb Page
- mikehalloran
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Re: MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
Yikes!
My daughter refuses to part with hers because of the optical drive—her Apple engineer husband would like her to do so. I have been sticking 2T SSDs in these including hers. No one's been asking me to replace the optical drive and now I'm glad.
I hate to see anyone going through that but am glad that you reported on it.
My daughter refuses to part with hers because of the optical drive—her Apple engineer husband would like her to do so. I have been sticking 2T SSDs in these including hers. No one's been asking me to replace the optical drive and now I'm glad.
I hate to see anyone going through that but am glad that you reported on it.
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2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4.1, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
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Re: MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
Thanks! I actually bought an older model MacBook Pro because of the optical drive, then eventually realized that I almost never used it and figured I'd stick a second hard drive in there (I can still use the optical drive with an SATA-to-USB cable or a USB enclosure). Again, it's just those three model numbers -- any other MBP will work fine with whatever you put in there.mikehalloran wrote:Yikes!
My daughter refuses to part with hers because of the optical drive—her Apple engineer husband would like her to do so. I have been sticking 2T SSDs in these including hers. No one's been asking me to replace the optical drive and now I'm glad.
I hate to see anyone going through that but am glad that you reported on it.
Also, even though my dual drive is currently having problems communicating via the optical drive SATA connection, I seem to be able to write to and even read from individual files just fine. It's only when I try shuttling large files or a mass collection of files that I run into problems. It's not consistent, either.
Mid- 2012 MacBook Pro Quad-core i7 2.7 GHz/16 GB RAM/2 TB SSD (primary)/1 TB 7200 rpm HDD (secondary) • OS X 10.14.6 • DP 11.1 • Pro Tools 12.8.1 • Acoustica Pro 7.4.0 • Avid MBox Pro 3G • Korg K61 • IMDb Page
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Re: MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
The first two builds of the B&W G3 had that same problem—there were a few firmware updates but it was never fixed.Armageddon wrote: It's only when I try shuttling large files or a mass collection of files that I run into problems. It's not consistent, either.
Good to know.
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2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4.1, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
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Re: MacBook Pro 2011 and Read/Write Error -36
I think a replacement motherboard (in the case of the MBP 2011) might also fix the problem. I didn't know that about the B&W G3s!mikehalloran wrote:The first two builds of the B&W G3 had that same problem—there were a few firmware updates but it was never fixed.
Good to know.
I was hoping OWC had their specialized SATA II firmware available as a paid download, as the replacement drive I wound up having to buy is the exact same one I already own (and I get cold sweats every time I have to open my MBP), but it was explained to me that it's installed during the drive's manufacturing process, and not available on its own.
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