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Apple Acknowledges Reports Of MacBook Hard Drive Failures

VicMacs said:
...theyre all Seagate Momentus 5400.2 drives in either 60 or 80GB ALL from Core Duo MacBooks NONE from Core 2 Duo, white or black...
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It happened to my Black MacBook 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 160 GB HD. My first Mac, it's been disappointing.
 
The Toddfather said:
It happened to my Black MacBook 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 160 GB HD. My first Mac, it's been disappointing.
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well, i think you should blame Seagate.

i replaced my original MB drive with a Seagate of the very same revision and it died on me a month ago. since this is the second Seagate already skipping contract this year, other one was a desktop fluke, i won't be going near them for a while.. ;(
 
The Toddfather said:
It happened to my Black MacBook 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 160 GB HD. My first Mac, it's been disappointing.
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I know, it's tough but you have to know its not apple's fault, its seagates problem and THEY should deal with it giving apple customers a replacement hard drive... nothing compared to what they would have to fork out if people started suing them for lost data and all that jazz for covering something up for a while now (because its been happening continuosly for about 6 months) that affects customers and hurts apple's client base...

I think the WORST thing that can happen to a person (digitally speaking) is to lose all their data without them having done something wrong.. no accidental deletions, no accidental computer dropping, no accidental shut down or anything... when you know youve done nothing wrong and you lose stuff youve worked hard at.. thats when it hurts... its like one step down from getting stolen...

I always say to these customers, on behald of apple I'm sorry, its not normal whats happening...

Im sitting here and I have at least a dozen of those hard drives .... really sad to see peoples lives still in there and they cant get it out or dont have 300-400 dollars after a new hard drive replacement to recover all their data... Seagate people if youre reading.... you should offer a way to recover all the data from these hard drives to customers that suffered from this manufacturing error...

Seriously....
 
Always hate reading something like that, but people should always backup their important data. Of course if you have a new computer you don't expect it to go bad right away.
 
nikehair said:
Of course if you have a new computer you don't expect it to go bad right away.
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Actually, a surprising number of disk drives fail very soon after installation - a drive with a random manufacturing defect might last just a few days or weeks.

Look up "infant mortality" on the web, for example:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/03/02.10.shtml

A key finding had to do with the non-linearity of the expected failure: "One aspect of disk failures that single-value metrics such as MTTF and AFR cannot capture is that in real life failure rates are not constant ... Failure rates of hardware products typically follow a "bathtub curve" with high failure rates at the beginning (infant mortality) and the end (wear-out) of the lifecycle."

One important conclusion of the study was that "The common concern that MTTFs underrepresent infant mortality has led to the proposal of new standards that incorporate infant mortality .... Our findings suggest that the underrepresentation of the early onset of wear-out is a much more serious factor than underrepresentation of infant mortality and recommend to include this in new standards."
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It sounds like this batch of Seagate drives suffers from a combination of infant mortality and "early onset of wear-out".

Other papers have suggested the best predictor of probability of failure of a drive is not the length of time that it's been running, but whether other same model drives with similar serial numbers (or firmware revisions) have failed recently.


nikehair said:
...people should always backup their important data.
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...yes, always.
 
I have had my MBP for a year and a half now

Within 2 months, my first hard drive failed and Apple replaced it

Then, another 5 months passed and it failed AGAIN.

I called up and asked Apple...am I doing something wrong? I strictly use my MBP for Documents & iTunes....that is it.

On my 3rd Hard Drive and no problems since
 
Thanks to my hard drive failing, I ended up failing my english class. Lost two essays, one of which were a final paper, and only had enough time to rewrite one of them and got 2% away from a passing grade.

On the positive side, I got my computer back in three days. Negative side, I'm no longer going to that school. Thanks hard drive!
 
mkodama said:
Thanks to my hard drive failing, I ended up failing my english class. Lost two essays, one of which were a final paper, and only had enough time to rewrite one of them and got 2% away from a passing grade.

On the positive side, I got my computer back in three days. Negative side, I'm no longer going to that school. Thanks hard drive!
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It might seem harsh, but your hard drive did not cost you your passing grade. That was the fault of your backup regime, or rather, your lack of one.

My flat could burn to the ground with my desktop in it. My rucksack containing my laptop could be stolen. I'd still have an up-to-date version of all my current projects as well as an archive of everything to date. You need to develop a similar system.
 
Has Apple (or any other computer company) taken responsibility for their products and made a recall, like the car industry does ?
Pull back what they have in the stores and replace every Seagate HD from the faulty batch ?

If I buy a new MacBook now and immediately changes it for a new 250 GB Western Digital that I buy myself, will Apple contact me and offer to replace the Seagate drive ?
I think that if I pay for a 120 GB HD it should work. (even though I don't use it)

The problems that many of the latest models Apple released makes me sceptical to do the switch.
I want to buy a MacBook for my 4 weeks holiday in Thailand in january, but probably will use my Dell osx86 7-pound-crap machine.

new Apple commercial:
"you'll be up and running in only 5 minutes ... and have an involontary shutdown in 10"
 
My 7 month old MacBook/Black's HD randomly died about a month ago and I lost everything. I would suggest get it replaced before it creates problems.
 
mkodama said:
Thanks to my hard drive failing, I ended up failing my english class. Lost two essays, one of which were a final paper, and only had enough time to rewrite one of them and got 2% away from a passing grade.

On the positive side, I got my computer back in three days. Negative side, I'm no longer going to that school. Thanks hard drive!
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People have been saying it for years. Backup your data. There is no excuse.

You could have spent 30 seconds emailing your papers to yourself. That would have saved you from your failing grade.
 
Flynnstone said:
Hard drives are unreliable. These (MacBook) are even more unreliable.
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I wouldn't go that far. The vast majority of drives will never fail during their service life. In fact, I have a 20 year old Apple HD20 which still works! Not that it's still in service -- it just sits there for the most part. ;)

If indeed there is a manufacturing flaw in a run of these Seagate drives, that's unfortunate. Seagate seem to have a good reputation. My MBP has a Momentus 7200.1 and one of my external units has a Barracuda 7200.10. Both work flawlessly and I wouldn't think twice about buying another.
 
Mine broke after 5months

I have a new MBR, 17', 233 GHZ, and the HD broke after 5 months, which pissed me off. Yes, it was covered, of course, but still...
 
I too have hard drives that have been working for years. Even one with loud bearings. I've also have a MacBook that I purchased in August that the drive failed.
I can't predict when a drive will fail. I know that it will eventually. So I treat it as unreliable. So I never keep data on only one drive. (or try not to :eek: )
 
Is it just me or all of these bad HD related stories happen to be proned to just Seagate manufactured drives? Ever since the first time i used a Seagate drive, and had it fail, this was 4 or 5 years ago, i quit using them.

Seagate, for some reason has always had some bad luck. When i used to work at my local Uni, in the IT department, we had about 3 Seagte drives fail out of 30 Macs, and 0 Western Digital Drives fail which were in the Dell systems [30 of those too].

Maybe this is why i have noticed at Best Buy Seagate Drives now selling with a 5 year warrenty.
 
Sweetfeld28 said:
Is it just me...
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Yes, it's just you. ;)

Consider that:

A. Most drives are pretty good.

B. Every drive manufacturer has some "bad runs" of drives that fail early.

If you get a "bad run" and switch manufacturers, chances are that you'll get good drives from the second maker. (And incorrectly assume that manufacturer A is crap and manufacturer B is great.)

I've had a 250% failure rate with one line of Maxtor drives (the original design 80 GB drives). Other Maxtors have been fine (some failures, no epidemics).

I had to replace all my Western Digital 120 GB drives (first run) at least once. No other unusual WD problems.

Been buying IBM/Hitachi 40GB 2.5" drives by the 20-pack case for some racks of blade servers (with 480 drives, a 3 year MTBF means that "normal" is to expect two or three dead drives a week). Got one batch about 3 years ago that was crap.
 
I might just have bad luck.

Today i couldn't do anything at work. My Dual Core G5 at work ended up having a Bad Registry, which couldn't be fixed. Thus another HD failure. But i'll give Seagate credit, it wasn't them this time. :rolleyes:
 
$100 to people who bought an iPhone "early", but nothing so far for the people who have spent $1200-3000 on a computer with a faulty hard drive? :mad: The drives should be replaced, end of story.
 
Poll

It cut be nice to see a poll, wich show who has crashed with what..

maybe the macbook rev number..


Macbook HD crash..

Macbook W. seagate fw 7.01
Macbook W. fujitsu XXX
Macbook W. ETC..
MacbookPro W. ETC..
 
Hm, I've got a Toshiba 111.79 GB drive. The stats are:
Capacity: 111.79 GB
Model: TOSHIBA MK1234GSX
Revision: AH005B

That got me thinking: What is the (re-)branding situation wrt drives? Are any drives just badged, but in reality a Seagate (for example) underneath?

Enquiring minds and all that...
 
Is is easy to replace your MacBook's HD by yourself, or do you have to bring it to your local Apple reseller ?

I have a seagate 7.01 HD on my MacBook, so I might want to do something about it...
 
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