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Apple Acknowledges Reports Of MacBook Hard Drive Failures

Wow... looks like it's time to put up a new ad for Apple vs Pc...

"Hello, I'm a Mac.
And I'm a PC.
PC : whatcha doin' ?
Mac : I'm trying to save my date on my Macbook. (has an enormous external drive connected to his Macbook)
PC : Isn't there supposed to be an internal hard drive ?
Mac : Yeah, but you know, we all go external these days...
Pc : Oh yeah, I got it... Why don't you use Time Machine and go back before the Leopard launch and the new Macbook launch ? Isnt' this what your tool is for ?"
 
Interesting. I have a MacBook purchased in May 2006. I sent it in under AppleCare last month due to some thermal issues, and it came back with a new hard drive, among other replaced components, even though there was no sign of hard drive failure. I wonder if this explains that, and if they are replacing drives from this batch as they see them. (Of course, it's also possible that my drive failed their diagnostics.)
 
happydude said:
if apple does issue a recall or warranty notice of some sort, i hope they include a data recovery method for HD's that still work but are under recall. as is, i think they charge somewhere between $75-100 to have data backed up if they are working on your computer/replacing hardware.
Click to expand...

Apple will not offer data recovery. No computer maker offers that at the consumer level (at least without additional fees). You are suppose to have a backup of your important data anyway...

spikeymike83 said:
i am hoping that because my MBP is out of warranty i don't just get the cold shoulder from Apple.
Click to expand...

Out of warranty repairs for this issue is highly likely.
 
These "surprises" are typical of Seagate. Their disks make no warning, ad suddenly, one day, they crash their heads and all is lost. We have had far too many terrible experiences with thousands of them over the years. Amazingly they are more expensive than competitors that do not have such problems. Maybe that is to pay for the 5-year warranty, and thus give a false sense of security. What we want is not just a warranty, but mainly the absence of these unexpected and sudden failures. No more Seagate drives for us. Ever.
 
Marx55 said:
We have had far too many terrible experiences with thousands of them over the years.
Click to expand...

Thousands? Last I heard, you were a university student; not in charge of the university's IT infrastructure and policies. Seagate drives are consistently rated highly in terms of reliability. Stop spreading FUD.
 
I was on my 5th HD on my 6 month old MacBook before I upgraded to the 2.2GHz that just came out. It got to the point where I carried around a back up drive and a screw driver for when (not if) my HD would die and I had to replace it on the fly. It's a terrible way to live, and I hope that Apple does something about it either with replacements, or some sort of compensation.
 
This fault happened on my Macbook.

This fault happened on my Macbook. I was using it one moment, and then it locked up in the middle of me using it and I could hear a 'ticking' sound from within, as if the disc heads were repeatedly trying to engage, but unsuccessfully. There had been absolutely no prior warning. Nothing I tried could get it to respond so I eventually had to hard restart it, but then it wouldn't boot.

I tried a few utilities (some of the higher level ones), without success, because they couldn't even see the drive.

Apple Store London (Regent's Street) tested it by swapping it out with a working drive and they could immediately diagnose the hard disc as 'dead' and offered to swap it out.

However, I sent it off to two different data recovery specialist companies to attempt to get my data back, without success. They both diagnosed a head crash within the drive, that had scratched it up making it impossible to recover data (so they both said).

Eventually I had to accept my data was gone. Didn't back up (more fool me). Even so this was infuriating. Apple replaced the drive under warranty... with another Seagate one, same model. I have since sold the MacBook on eBay.

I believe this problem is not confined to 'a few' people, and I am one of a larger pool of people who have either experienced this problem, or will experience this in the future with their own Macbooks.
 
Segate is horrible

I have had four replacements for the same 3.5" hard drive. Seagate has long warranties on their hard drives, but they only replace hard drives under warranty with refurbished hard drives. One of my replacements only lasted days. When the one I currently have started acting erratically I decided that it's not worth sending back.
 
I had an Early Macbook (week 2, May 2006) and the hard drive died in October, just a few days before an important conference where I was giving a talk. It was the biggest scare of all, right in the middle of all the pre-conference stress.

They replaced it but I had to run on an external hd for days.. Thanksfully I was fully aware of the need to backup and used to keep daily superduper clones on my external hard drive. Now i'm a bit more paranoid, and keep idisk backups, as well as clones and time machine backups :D and every few months I do a hard backup of photos and music in double layer DVDs..
 
I have a ST89923AS with a 7.01 firmware... ouch.

I have the computer since August 2006 but it hasn't failed yet.
 
Aaaah... so I'm not alone

This is so weird... I have a MB 1.83 CD purchased when they were first released and just this Saturday my Seagate 60gb drive failed in the same way- it locked up whilst I was browsing, then it started clicking. On reboot, just a question mark file instead of the apple. My brother brought his Macbook round and we tried various things, but couldn't rescue it. I was/am in the middle of some PhD work, so I had to go out and get a new drive (Western Digital Scorpio 120gb), despite the fact that I have a Higher Education parts/labour warranty. I'm now hoping Apple will swap the Seagate so I can recoup some costs... what do you think my chances are?
 
spikeymike83 said:
i am hoping that because my MBP is out of warranty i don't just get the cold shoulder from Apple.
Click to expand...

If I had one of these Seagate drives, I would take it as an excuse to replace it with say a Western Digital 250GB drive. Your 80 GB Seagate drive only has a value of about £40. Replacing it with a drive three times the size seems a good idea. If it fails then even if Apple replaces it for free, the inconvenience to you is worth more than £40.
 
Another voice to the throng

Bunny22 said:
This is so weird... I have a MB 1.83 CD purchased when they were first released and just this Saturday my Seagate 60gb drive failed in the same way- it locked up whilst I was browsing, then it started clicking. On reboot, just a question mark file instead of the apple.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem too - I was having breakfast, went off to wash some dishes, and the laptop had died in the meantime. Lockup, clicking and failure to recognise the hard drive.

Luckily for me, this was the day that Leopard came out, so I ran off, picked up a new hard drive and Leopard, installed both, and set myself up on an even more stringent backup routine (Funnily enough, I'm also in the middle of my PhD work - I feel your pain). I think I missed about a weeks worth of data thanks to the failure, which isn't so awful.

Obviously, it was a Seagate drive that died. I hope they do offer out of warranty replacements for the hard drive - since I could do with another spare backup drive.
 
I lost my MacBook hard drive twice and both times it was overnight, the MacBook was just sitting there and when I woke up the drive was gone. But they were both Hitachi.
 
After getting a new MacBook I noticed at night when it is quiet, that my harddrive makes a whining and sort of grinding sound, and it often results in me whacking the thing to get it to shut up! BUT, I can't quite figure out if it starts doing that when I plug in my external harddrive to do Time Machine backups. That seems to be when I start noticing it, but it could be doing it the whole time i'm not sure.

I wonder if this is related to the situation mentioned?
Anyone else experiencing this?
 
When will Apple stop denying these problems until someone sues them ?
 
grrr..

We have 12 of these here & some 4 have had this issue.

So far it has cost us in the region of £5000 due to downtime & recovery, over the past year or so

I have just inherited this network in september & was truly shocked by the high percentage of failures.

I guess I better stop blaming the users & will soon hopefully be applying PHD's across all to at least alleviate the grief caused when this happens.

As soon as Apple say they will swap them out I'm sending all of mine off.
 
I had a 160GB Seagate fail on me in my MacBook... Mine was 1.5 years old and got replaced by Seagate... I wish I'd known which revision it was... Too bad, guess I'll never find out...

The replacement drive is Rev. 3.ALB

Let's see how this one turns out.

If you're out of warranty, sending your HDDs to Seagate might help... They've got a 5 year warranty on all their drives. At least that's what they've told me.
 
I have had TWO failed Seagate drives in the space of four months in my 1st gen Macbook. I had apple care but it still took me 4 weeks of threatening legal action before apple would offer me a replacement machine, (which still hasn't arrived). I also had the problem with discoloured casing and flickering screen. All in all my Macbook had 7 repairs in 18 months and they STILL tried to offer me another repair.

As far as i can tell Apple's repair policy is in breach of UK consumer law. Apple says it will only replace a machine after three "major" faults, of all my machines faults they only considored the HD to be "major". This contravines the 1979 Sales of Goods Act which requires a retailer to provide a product "free of minor defects"

I would recommend replacing any HD which is made by Seagate. The second one failed during a backup so i lost everything.
 
Did I write that already some time ago ? Wow, someone said i'm a troll or something ???

"Too bad too many people here still didn't get this simple fact : Apple is an AMERICAN DESIGNER. That means, Apple can use all the crappy hardware material in the world as long as it presents that crap under a beautiful hood.

If you go Apple, and especially Macbooks (i'm not talking Mac Pros here...), don't look for performance, look for glamour and stability."
 
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