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mikehowett

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 15, 2006
92
0
UK
I got my iMac back from my local Apple store yesterday after the HDD died and needed to be replaced. As i was getting ready to leave the genius asked me if i had used Bootcamp on the machine. I told him yes and he said that the HDD failure was probably caused by using Bootcamp.

Now my question is; is what he said possible? Can software cause a HDD to fail and has anyone else experienced the same thing?
 

shadowmoses

macrumors 68000
Mar 6, 2005
1,821
0
A piece of software can't cause a Hard Drive to physically fail, it can corrupt the data on the hard drive though and make it unusable.....

The Hard Drive probably failed by chance and bad luck....

ShadoW
 

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
Under OpenFirware, you can trash/corrupt a HD in software so bad it looks dead and instantly crashes or Flashy ? with no way around.

But an external case or PowerMac can help out.

Don't know it EFI will do the same thing -- if it does formatting the drive solves all ills and trashes the data.

Since Apple doesn't need to take the time to recover data, a HD swap is an option.

----

But SW killing a HD, usually won't happen -- the drive would have died later in any case.

Don't feel bad, it was a bad part.

Better now than later when you got a years work on the drive and no backups.
 

mikehowett

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 15, 2006
92
0
UK
Thanks for your replies guys. I don't think it was because of Bootcamp, as the failure sounded mecanical to me, but i'm still a little reluctant to install it again.:eek:
 

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
lexus said:
Maybe a virus??
Yes, he did install a virus and a major bug -- but there was likely some decent coding riding along with the Windows.XP.virus file.

mikehowett said:
Thanks for your replies guys. I don't think it was because of Bootcamp, as the failure sounded mecanical to me, but i'm still a little reluctant to install it again.:eek:
Install it, it was likely a mechanical failure.
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Sun Baked said:
Yes, he did install a virus and a major bug -- but there was likely some decent coding riding along with the Windows.XP.virus file.

Install it, it was likely a mechanical failure.

If it's not anything major you need to do on your pc other than general apps, you could give parallels a try. If it fecks up, you can just delete the virtual image.
 

mikehowett

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 15, 2006
92
0
UK
MacRumorUser said:
If it's not anything major you need to do on your pc other than general apps, you could give parallels a try. If it fecks up, you can just delete the virtual image.

Yeh I only use it for a few small bits, might give that a try;)
 
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