MacBooks face lost data risk

[IChing]

A U.K.-based data-recovery organization has warned Apple Macbook users that they risk potential data loss due to a design flaw on certain hard drives.

Retrodata has come across "many dozens" of failures affecting Seagate Technology LLC 2.5-in. Serial Advanced Technology Attachment drives, commonly found in laptops such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro. Apple Inc. desktops that use laptop-oriented components, such as the Mac Mini, are also at risk.

"The read/write heads are detaching from the arm and plowing deep gouges into the magnetic platter," explained Retrodata Managing Director Duncan Clarke. "The damage is mostly on the inner tracks, but some scratches are on the outer track -- Track 0 -- and once that happens, the drive is normally beyond repair."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9045520

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by IChing

A U.K.-based data-recovery organization has warned Apple Macbook users that they risk potential data loss due to a design flaw on certain hard drives.

1. So far this is one guy making this claim. Obviously it is all over the internet by now, with people quoting people who quoted people who quoted him.

2. Does anyone think that Apple would be the only manufacturer using these drives? Like, should Dell customers, HP customers, Gateway customers, Acer customers etc. etc. watch out as well?

[kkat69]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

2. Does anyone think that Apple would be the only manufacturer using these drives? Like, should Dell customers, HP customers, Gateway customers, Acer customers etc. etc. watch out as well?

Well since Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, et al don't make the iPhone, and don't have iMacs that have constant lock up issues, and don't have people pulling out of iTunes I don't think they are affected.

People love to find and/or create news items directed towards/against Apple even if it can involve other computer companies, yet they leave those other companies as well. But because it's Apple or Apple has those components or potentially can be involved, news writers LOVE to single out Apple.

In regards to recent news of course they are gonna single out Apple.

[MacBytes]

Category: Apple Hardware
Link: MacBooks face lost data risk
Description:: none

Posted on MacBytes.com
Approved by Mudbug

[danny_w]

ANY hard disk can crash and lose data; that is why we have backups. I would never operate any computer, especially a laptop, without a good backup. Perhaps these drives are worse than average and should be fixed, but there is no reason for losing months or years of data due to this.

[dr_lha]

Hmm... very interesting. My mother-in-law's MacBook HD recently died, and she lost a bunch of stuff. I fixed it for her and set her up with a system to back her data up in future, but I'm wondering now if she was a victim of this "flaw".

[chrissurra]

This happened to my hard disk I wonder if it was due to this malfunction.

[eenu]

I have seen enough to know there is a problem with them, any Apple Mac that uses a 2.5 inch drive is at risk.

Not quite true! My MBP has a Fujitsu so mine is not at risk from this guys claimed mass fault!

[JoeCo0611]

My blackbook's HD failed at the beginning of August, so I can see this as a legit topic.

When I took it in to get replaced the apple genius' (genii? lol) at the Chicago store actually high fived me for telling them "do what you need with it, I have a everything backed up at home." I guess they don't get that kind of responsibility all the time.

Lesson: All drives face the risk of failure, so go spend the (now) sub 100 dollars to get an external drives to save your stuff. DUH. Apple makes it easy for you now with Time Machine if you didn't know how to drag and drop your folders before.

[royaletea]

I hope Apple gets on this quickly; I'm thinking of getting a new laptop sometime soon, and I'd hate to have it crash on me. Thankfully I already have an external HD so it wouldn't be hard to backup what I needed.

I agree with the other posters though, an external HD is just a good investment, especially with the prices dropping to pretty affordable rates.

[John Morris]

While I do agree that ultimately it is the user who is responsible for their own data security, if this is a hardware issue it needs to be addressed by Apple immediately.

Luckily, my White MacBook has a Toshiba drive and my MacBook Pro has a Fujitsu drive, so I should be ok.

[Foxglove9]

Wow, that's not a good thing but it's not Apple's fault. Luckily my MacBook came with a Fujitsu Hard Drive, but what scares me in the 3 months I've had it I already had to "repair disk" in disk utility because an error came up when I verified.

[mogema]

This is somewhat good news to hear. I work at a large university where our recommended mac setup is a Macbook with external monitor. We have had so many macbook drives fail it isn't funny - we were certain that there was some kind of design flaw or that apple chose the cheapest drive they could find. It's comforting to hear that we aren't alone and weren't going crazy.

I also personally own a Macbook, and about a year after I bought it, I was working in a document and every application one by one froze: a tell-tale sign of hard drive issues. I took it into our hardware shop and the drive was toast. Fortunately I had applecare. However, over the next few weeks we were seeing the hard drives failing in the exact same way in other Macbooks. Many, many others. To date we've had 10 of ~40 drives crash in core duo macbooks (not core 2 duo - they appear to mostly be using toshiba drives).

Of those that were sent to apple for repair, they were returned with the same model of seagate drive. Those that we repaired in house were replaced with hitachi. It'll be interesting to see what happens when this new batch of seagate drives reach a year old.

[CPPhoto]

i just checked my system profile and i have one of these drives, with 7.01 firmware...of course im backed up...but still...


its a macbook pro as well, which, i think is crap that they would use bad drives in it, because for a 2700.00 machine, it should have quality components. You would figure apple would be a little bit smarter. I have noticed the noise from the hard drive has become noticable over the past few months, so i have some reason to worry..

[macFanDave]

when it is a Seagate problem?

Is Apple the only one using this drive? If not, the appropriate headline would have been something like, "Seagate flaw affects MacBooks, others." I'm sick of Apple getting singled out for bad press when a problem is industry-wide. I'm disgusted when I see "iPod causes hearing loss" stories because ALL MP3 players (all personal stereos, for that matter) have the same potential to cause hearing loss. If the iPod had exceptionally loud volume, that story would be legit, but using the iPod's popularity to cause the greatest alarm is yellow journalism.

And that woman who lost two months of "critical data" when her HD failed: F*** her! If you have critical data, and you don't back up, you are just waiting for a disaster like this to happen. Had her house been burglarized or caught fire, her data loss wouldn't have made the news, even though it exposes the same level of negligience on her part.

[iJawn108]

so.... i have one of these... what the hell should i do with it? i havent been having issues.
doesnt seagate give 5 year warranties? is it still the same on apple hardware

[mulze22]

This exac thing happened to me. I lost so much data. I was stupid for not backing it up but then again being a college student doesn't really allow me to go out and buy an external. However x-mas is coming up so I think I might have to ask for a harddrive.

[eenu]

Originally Posted by iJawn108

so.... i have one of these... what the hell should i do with it? i havent been having issues.
doesnt seagate give 5 year warranties? is it still the same on apple hardware

NOTHING, just make sure you back up your data

[J@ffa]

Originally Posted by iJawn108

so.... i have one of these... what the hell should i do with it? i havent been having issues.
doesnt seagate give 5 year warranties? is it still the same on apple hardware

No. Five years applies only to retail Seagate drives, not an OEM (original equipment manufacturer), which is what these drives are. They're guaranteed only for the life of the manufacturer's warranty, which is obviously either one or three years depending on whether you bought AppleCare.

On a side note, I work for a Mac repair company and this is definitely not an isolated issue. We've seen way too many to count, far more than any other make. Sure, if it's Seagate's problem, they should foot the bill, but Apple has a responsibility to warn their users that their equipment might be defective. Also, in the cases where we haven't been able to retrieve data, neither have several data recovery labs. Practically all the others (Hitachi, Fujitsu, whatever) have failed but not as totally as these, and either we or a lab with a clean room has been able to recover at least some data.

[longofest]

There is news today on potential data loss vulnerabilites in Mac OS and in Apple's notebook drives manufactured by Seagate.

The vulnerability revolving the Mac OS was first documented by Tom Karpik.

Leopard’s Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action. I first came across it when Samba crashed while I was moving a directory from my desktop over to a Samba mount on my FreeBSD server.

I’ve now run tests on a Windows XP SP2 SMB mount, as well as a local HFS+ formatted USB drive, and the bug surfaces every time the destination disappears while the Finder is moving something to the destination.

The bug is claimed to have existed as far back as Mac OS 10.3 Panther, though the site focuses mainly on Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard."

The other data loss vulnerability surrounds Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro computers that utilize certain Seagate drives. UK data recovery firm Retrodata discovered a flaw where the read/write head fails and causes gouges in the hard drive platter.

The faulty drives are all Seagate 2.5" drives that are manufactured in China, with a Firmware revision of 7.01. They are also all SATA interface. No other drives seem (at this stage) to be affected.

Retrodata discovered the flaw due to the sheer volume of recovery requests of the particular drive, and strongly suggests that Apple take appropriate action, possibly including a product recall.

[the Helix]

Holy sheet Batman! That is one scary possibility!

[X5-452]

i was poking and prodding around my system profiler, but i can't seem to figure out how to tell if i have a seagate drive. under the serial-ata tab it tells me the vendor is intel, but that can't be right?

[technocoy]

Originally Posted by CPPhoto

i just checked my system profile and i have one of these drives, with 7.01 firmware...of course im backed up...but still...


its a macbook pro as well, which, i think is crap that they would use bad drives in it, because for a 2700.00 machine, it should have quality components. You would figure apple would be a little bit smarter. I have noticed the noise from the hard drive has become noticable over the past few months, so i have some reason to worry..

This is a little sensationalist. Apple wouldn't have known that the drives were going to do this at the time of the deal with Seagate. It's a manufacturing flaw that is discovered to late.

The key thing here is that they fix the issue by offering a recall if indeed it becomes evident that this is in fact a mass defect.

I've have used Seagate for years and always had quality performance from them. The only brand I have had perform the same or better were my hitachi drives.

I would hope that when brought to their attention and after their independent analysis they take steps to make it right, but there is no reason to assume that Apple duped us all by putting ACME brand drives in our macbook pros. hahaha.

[PygmySurfer]

Originally Posted by CPPhoto

i just checked my system profile and i have one of these drives, with 7.01 firmware...of course im backed up...but still...


its a macbook pro as well, which, i think is crap that they would use bad drives in it, because for a 2700.00 machine, it should have quality components. You would figure apple would be a little bit smarter. I have noticed the noise from the hard drive has become noticable over the past few months, so i have some reason to worry..

Apple didn't deliberately chose cheap components, apparently there's just a bad batch of these Seagate drives out there. It's not as though Apple new the drives sucked and used them anyway.

[crackermac]

Reminds of me a quote from American Dad.
"...something might go down somewhere in some way at some point in time."

Moral: Hard drives can go bad. Back your stuff up.