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2 Hard Drive Failures in 3 days

O

otko

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 17, 2009
13
0
I have a first gen MacBook and a few days ago it became slow and unresponsive. Turned it off and on reboot it just flashed the folder screen and wouldn't do anything. Had it looked at and it was hard drive failure. It was so badly damaged that nothing could be recovered. So got a new one, installed snow leopard, and everything was ok for a day. Now the same thing has happened all over again. Any suggestions? My thoughts are something is causing the hard drives to fail, but what?


Thanks
 
If it's the logic board, then you're in bad situation. My guess is you'll have to buy a new Mac OR. Try repairing you HDD.
 
pilotrtc said:
Maybe power surges are frying the insides?
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking. The light on the magsafe cable doesn't always show orange or green, and it sometimes does show green when the battery is not full. The HD failed (it was only a year old), then we got a new one and installed Snow Leopard fresh on the brand new HD, and then a day later the same thing happens. White screen on startup forever. I don't think it's the logic board per se, but it might be. Personally, I think the charger is somehow the culprit, maybe throughputting too much juice or surging. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated, I work on computers for a living, but the one thing I don't do is MacBook logic board repair (way too messy).


Thanks guys
 
flopticalcube said:
Could be
a) coincidence
b) problem with your logic board.

Try running Disk Utility from your Install DVD and repair the HD from there.
Click to expand...

Disk Utility returns fine, SMART status is verified, no error, no wrong permissions, nothing. DiskWarrior is the same, as is Drive Genius. I'm thinking it's power surge related. What would or <i>could</i> make a hard drive fail so soon aside from a bad logic board or power supply?
 
That happened to me about a year ago. Turned out to be a faulty I/O controller and I had to get the logic board replaced, but I had AppleCare so it wasn't a big deal.
 
RaceTripper said:
That happened to me about a year ago. Turned out to be a faulty I/O controller and I had to get the logic board replaced, but I had AppleCare so it wasn't a big deal.
Click to expand...

So it was the magsafe part on the macbook that was causing your trouble? And it did what I'm describing exactly?
 
otko said:
So it was the magsafe part on the macbook that was causing your trouble? And it did what I'm describing exactly?
Click to expand...
No, magsafe had nothing to do with it. My response was in reference to having hard drive failures. If you are having multiple HD failures chances are good it's a logic board problem such as mine was (with a bad I/O controller).

I guess a possible way to test if it's a magsafe problem (if that is what you suspect) is to charge your MacBook only after shutting down, and running it only on battery power.
 
RaceTripper said:
No, magsafe had nothing to do with it. My response was in reference to having hard drive failures. If you are having multiple HD failures chances are good it's a logic board problem such as mine was (with a bad I/O controller).

I guess a possible way to test if it's a magsafe problem (if that is what you suspect) is to charge your MacBook only after shutting down, and running it only on battery power.
Click to expand...



Well I used someone elses charger on the macbook and it acted normal and booted up fine. Is it possible the ac charger is making trouble for the hard drive?
 
otko said:
Well I used someone elses charger on the macbook and it acted normal and booted up fine. Is it possible the ac charger is making trouble for the hard drive?
Click to expand...
Yes, if it's defective and not supplying the proper voltage for the system to operate normally. The hard drive is one of the largest draws on power, so it could be the first to exhibit problems.

The cheap Chinese knockoffs of Apple power supplies found on ebay have a reputation for causing problems.
 
RaceTripper said:
Yes, if it's defective and not supplying the proper voltage for the system to operate normally. The hard drive is one of the largest draws on power, so it could be the first to exhibit problems.

The cheap Chinese knockoffs of Apple power supplies found on ebay have a reputation for causing problems.
Click to expand...

So, it's been working fine without the charger. Bringing the charger into the Apple Store this afternoon to see if they'll replace it for free. Then to test if the actual magsafe part on the macbook needs to be replaced. I'm looking at this from the position of car tires. If you can afford it, and one or two go bad/bald/etc-best to get new for all. The part is easily replaceable and only $50. Maybe find a new battery as well.

Thanks for the pointers, any and all other suggestions are very much appreciated as I still haven't technically figured out the issue yet.
 
RaceTripper said:
The hard drive is one of the largest draws on power, so it could be the first to exhibit problems.
Click to expand...

Um, no. You are wrong. The CPU, GPU, Display, and System RAM all draw more power than the hard drive. A modern laptop HDD only draws ~2 watts and is one of the smallest draws on power of any component in the machine.

Bzzzt. Try again.
 
milton.sheaf said:
Um, no. You are wrong. The CPU, GPU, Display, and System RAM all draw more power than the hard drive. A modern laptop HDD only draws ~2 watts and is one of the smallest draws on power of any component in the machine.
Click to expand...
That depends on what you are doing. The HD can draw a lot more power on average if you do I/O intensive tasks.

milton.sheaf said:
Bzzzt. Try again.
Click to expand...
Yes, I hope you feel superior now. Go ahead and give yourself a big slap on the back.
 
RaceTripper said:
That depends on what you are doing. The HD can draw a lot more power on average if you do I/O intensive tasks.

Yes, I hope you feel superior now. Go ahead and give yourself a big slap on the back.
Click to expand...

Sorry pal, you fail again. Bzzzzzzt!!!! See here for Maximum power consumption:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2.5-hard-drive-charts/Maximum-Power-Consumption,684.html

That is not average, that is maximum. I.e. when doing I/O intensive tasks. Note that they are all in the very low single digits.

It is very small compared to the 25+ watts that the CPU and GPU take, or the 10+ watts that the memory and display take.

I think I will give myself that pat on the back. You know why? Because I use facts and numbers to make my arguments while you apparently use ignorance and foolishness.

Bzzzzzzzt!!!1
 
RaceTripper said:
That depends on what you are doing. The HD can draw a lot more power on average if you do I/O intensive tasks.

Yes, I hope you feel superior now. Go ahead and give yourself a big slap on the back.
Click to expand...

Please ignore the troll behind the curtain.



Ok, here's where I'm at. It has bootcamp (Vista) on a 12GB partition. Now it won't boot OS X period. First it worked for a bit, now it's back to being screwed. Except when it starts, it starts Windows automatically. Holding any combo of keys does nothing, and I'm afraid if I change the boot order in Windows to OS X, it will go back to not working period (now having Vista work is better than nothing). What the hell is the problem here? It's driving me insane. The charger was replaced and I'm looking at buying the magsafe part for the logicboard, but it's looking more and more like that's not the issue. The OS X partition isn't working, but the Windows one is. WTF
 
otko said:
Ok, here's where I'm at. It has bootcamp (Vista) on a 12GB partition. Now it won't boot OS X period. First it worked for a bit, now it's back to being screwed. Except when it starts, it starts Windows automatically. Holding any combo of keys does nothing, and I'm afraid if I change the boot order in Windows to OS X, it will go back to not working period (now having Vista work is better than nothing). What the hell is the problem here? It's driving me insane. The charger was replaced and I'm looking at buying the magsafe part for the logicboard, but it's looking more and more like that's not the issue. The OS X partition isn't working, but the Windows one is. WTF
Click to expand...
Do you have the original system CD. Boot from that and run DIsk Utility. Run the hardware diagnostic. I still think you could have a bad I/O controller if you replaced he drive and still have I/O errors. If you can get it booted again, run Console and do a search for "I/O error" If there are entries that match that is not good.
 
RaceTripper said:
Do you have the original system CD. Boot from that and run DIsk Utility. Run the hardware diagnostic. I still think you could have a bad I/O controller if you replaced he drive and still have I/O errors. If you can get it booted again, run Console and do a search for "I/O error" If there are entries that match that is not good.
Click to expand...

It was the logic board. Apple acknowledged that the power supply probably fried both the 2 hard drives and the logic board and offered to fix everything for $300, which is far less than it would normally cost. They knew the charger was bad and they replaced it for free as well. Good to know they don't always charge an arm and a leg when it's not the end users fault.


Thanks for everything guys. It was much appreciated
 
I've had four hard drive failures in two months on two new MacBook Pros. My Apple Store gave me a new machine after the third failure on my old machine, purchase in June 2009. My new machine failed after two weeks. I used the old power supply for the new one and if I'm following this some are saying that the power cord can destroy my hard drive. Correct? The Geniuses tell me that power will not kill the hard drive but other than files it's the only common denominator. Thoughts? Thanks.
 
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