Apple Acknowledges Reports Of MacBook Hard Drive Failures

[obibobi]

Seems like most people bought the failing MacBooks sometiime in the year 2006.
Anyone who have recently (last month) bought a MacBook and have checked what brand of HD they have ?
If I get a new MacBook now in the Apple Online Store, am I in danger ?

 

[xUKHCx]

Seems like most people bought the failing MacBooks sometiime in the year 2006.
Anyone who have recently (last month) bought a MacBook and have checked what brand of HD they have ?
If I get a new MacBook now in the Apple Online Store, am I in danger ?

My MB has a Seagate® Momentus® 5400.3 drive, it was bought about a month ago.

 

[Bern]

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.

Wow you have anger management issues

I think this person is referring to similar issues with Seagate drives in the University. You don't have to be in charge of the University's IT infrastructure and policies to be aware of what other people have been talking about. Universities are like small communities.

 

[nakile]

This is why I tell people "Never trust Seagate." Never really seen people say good things about them, to tell you the truth. Hopefully Apple learns the same lesson, especially if this problem is as big as it seems. A lot of people are switching to Mac right now, and this crap might hurt Apple.

 

[bokdol]

My MB has a Seagate® Momentus® 5400.3 drive, it was bought about a month ago.

get it replaced

we have 4 seagate momentus drives 60 GB(FW: 7.01) here that are completely dead. you cant reformat them. the wont show up as a target. so far it is only the seagate's are are dying on us. if we can find more of the seagate drives we want to remove them asap. we have about 30 macbooks and 4 dead seagate drives from them. thats a really high percentage. plus not all the macbooks have seagate drives.

 

[dcorban]

I have never liked Seagate drives. Back in the "good old days" I always used Quantum. Now I always use Western Digital. I was saddened to see that my brand new MacBook is using a Seagate drive.

 

[jonswan]

How about admitting airport extreme failures in Leopard...?

 

[marco114]

My wife's died

We have a MacBook w/ a seagate drive and it died. We lost tons of photos, just not a current backup. Almost 2 years worth. I know a guy well that owns a national data recovery center and they weren't able to recover it.

Get a backup, even if you don't have that drive. Get a firewire and back it up. Cheap insurance.

 

[barnettgs]

Is it to do with Seagate taking over Maxtor? Almost everytime I see a failed drive, it happened to be Maxtor!

 

[sushi]

To check your drive, click on the Apple logo in the upper left corner, then "About This Mac." Click "More Info..." to open System Profiler. Under the "Serial-ATA" section, find your hard drive. If it's a Seagate and has "7.01" listed as the Revision, then yours is affected.

And anyone who has a HD that meets this criteria, I would suggest backing up
immediately.

A failure where there is physical damage is nonrecoverable. Been there done that. Do not wait until tomorrow. Back up right now because if it goes, it is too late to backup or recover your files.

 

[Marx55]

Last I heard, you were a university student

Nope! You got it all wrong. My student years are too far, far away...

And not, it is not FUD. Besides, Seagate drives are usually much noisier and get hotter. Sorry, that is the truth (even if you work for them).

 

[sushi]

Back in the "good old days" I always used Quantum.

They were good drives for sure.

We have a MacBook w/ a seagate drive and it died. We lost tons of photos, just not a current backup. Almost 2 years worth. I know a guy well that owns a national data recovery center and they weren't able to recover it.

That sucks. Sorry to hear.

Get a backup, even if you don't have that drive. Get a firewire and back it up. Cheap insurance.

Sage advice.

Is it to do with Seagate taking over Maxtor? Almost everytime I see a failed drive, it happened to be Maxtor!

Maxtor used to be great. I have a bunch of older drives that just work. The new ones are crap and have been failing on me. No more Maxtor for me.

 

[Penguinwrangler]

Karma...I guess...

And here I've been putting off buying a large external drive till after the holidays...

...guess I'm going out to get one tonight!

Can anyone shed some light on how a bad drive like this gets spread out in shipments of MBs and MBPs over such a large span of time? I bought mine in April of 2006, and yet recent purchasers seem to have the same drive and revision?

 

[futbol1484]

On my third HD in 9 months....

I bought my black MB in Jan 2007 (made in dec. 2006) and have had issues with it from the beginning. In march my computer went crazy and suddenly started erasing all my preferences (widgets, bookmarks, etc) Thought i had a virus, which i know is crazy talk since its a mac, but thats what it felt like. After talking with applecare they told me to back up my hd asap and re-install the os.

Once i reinstalled the OS my computer ran great from march until august '07. In august my computer froze and after doing a hard restart it would only reboot to a white screen and nothing else. After sending it into applecare they replaced my hd for the first time.

Computer ran very well since then until the end of october when basically the same thing happened again. Not doing anything computer heavy when all of a sudden computer froze. Would only boot to white screen again. Sent it in and they replaced the hard drive.

Of note is that when i talked to the support people they believe it might be something else in my computer that is causing the drive failures as it is odd for a brand-new drive to die within 2 months. I am not super techy or anything so i have no idea if this could be possible. I want to believe they are right because when my computer is running "well" i never feel like it is running the way a 2.0duo 2gigram should. It is not as fast as i would expect and i feel like i see the spiny ball way too much. I do not do heavy computer work like games/editing, just regular internet, wordprocessing, email, multitasking. The only noticeable thing odd about my computer when it is running "well" is that the widgets flicker and pixilize/shred when dashboard is open and running. This occurs randomly but atleast every few seconds.

I owned a great 12" PB before this for 4 years which ran flawlessly, which is what i am comparing this whole experience it. Needless to say, i am very disappointed this time around. It has been a huge hassle and apple refuses to replace my computer until i have to send it in again, which i am now almost hoping for.

I dont know what kind of drive my first one was. I am pretty sure the second was fujitsu and the one i have now (#3) is hitachi.

What do you guys think about this? Most of you are much smarter than I when it comes to this stuff.

 

[bokdol]

here are some images of some of our dead drives

 

[Flyinace2000]

I had two drives die. The first one died and apple sent me a new hard drive. Then that one failed 30 days later! The 3rd drive they gave me was a different brand and that one has been working fine for the past month or so. Fingers crossed. But I had TWO seagates just die with no chance of data recovery.

This was on a MacBook (original i think, core duo)

 

[andrewface]

ive been wating for an update on this issue...my gen 1 black macbook 80gb hardisk failed and i was told by apple there was nothing they could do...hopefully i get compensated in someway cause i already bought a new harddisk

 

[uaaerospace]

I just want to make sure all the photos on my mom's MB aren't in jeopardy..

The photos are in jeopardy regardless of which computer she has if there is no backup.

 

[The Toddfather]

**** happens.

Great marketing slogan, I'm surprised no company has picked it up.

 

[Darkroom]

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?

perhaps giving your computer a good whack isn't the best solution! haha

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

this issue is awful... a friend of mine had her MacBook's HD die and it had to be replaced... what's funny (in a not so 'ha ha' way) is that the "genius" at the SOHO Store in NYC replaced the HD in the back without telling her... he was just all "oh, we had to erase your drive and reinstall the OS"... so, i'm wondering if they have been hiding the issue (until now)... on top of that their new OS install didn't even have Photo Booth!

my old G3 iMac's Quantum Fireball HD lasted 8 years!!! and i ran that b*tch 24/7 without ever a problem (until it hard crashed, of course)... but my new iMac has a Seagate drive (albeit not the 7.01) that is causing some concern...

overall, it just seems that Apple products/componants are just not as reliable and strong as they use to be

 

[reubs]

I'm affected with "Revision 7.01". Looks like I need to upgrade the HDD a lot sooner than I had hoped.

Thanks for this news.

 

[mr_matalino]

I better do a time machine backup tonight. Damn Apple for not including wireless backups (yet)!!

 

[SthrnCmfrtr]

I better do a time machine backup tonight. Damn Apple for not including wireless backups (yet)!!

Hook it up to another Mac, share the drive via AFP, and go from there. Has worked perfectly for me since Day One.

My wife bought her (affected) machine from Amazon in January of this year.

 

[lasuther]

I bought a Rev A MacBook last year in the summer. During my install of Leopard, I didn't have enough hard drive space so I force quit and deleted a lot of stuff. After that, the hard drive failed. I was going on vacation, so I checked out the local Apple store. They quoted a replacement, but didn't have time. I ended up getting it done at the Orlando store, who did it for free.

I had intially thought I caused the hard drive failure, but it is possible I had one of these defective hard drives. Either way, the Orlando Apple store took care of it so I'm happy.

 

[Flynnstone]

I just replaced the hard drive in my daughter's Macbook. It was the 80G Hitachi drive. When I pulled it out, it rattled. I figure it was dead anyways, so I took the top off. The heads were at about mid platter and the arm resisted movement. With a little brute force and ignorance, I move the arm back to about the park position. The park latch mechanism seems broken though. I would like to power it up and see if I can get some data off. I should look into a SATA <-> Firewire enclosure.