Apple is killing our harddrives prematurely

[dukebound85]

so you think having a hard drive not lasting to 220 days is acceptable? because that is the rate mine is going at if we take those failures for being the avg life expectancy....

instead of telling me how i should treat my laptop, how about you accept the fact i want my laptop to not go through these load cycles when it sits on a desk most times i use it.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Also, just to throw this in, Apple tells you that using your laptop properly means putting it on a desk and not moving it as long as it's on. At least that's what Applecare told me when I tried to explain to them that my CD drive didn't work if my computer wasn't 100% flat on a table (ie, on my lap).

 

[mrkgoo]

so you think having a hard drive not lasting to 220 days is acceptable? because that is the rate mine is going at if we take those failures for being the avg life expectancy....

instead of telling me how i should treat my laptop, how about you accept the fact i want my laptop to not go through these load cycles when it sits on a desk most times i use it.

can't you toggle the hard drive sleep in preferences? And is that 220 days of reasonable usebor 220 days of 24 hour use?

 

[dukebound85]

can't you toggle the hard drive sleep in preferences? And is that 220 days of reasonable usebor 220 days of 24 hour use?

that 220 days was from power on hrs

toggling that preference in energy saver didnt seem to change anything for me

 

[Demosthenes X]

so you think having a hard drive not lasting to 220 days is acceptable? because that is the rate mine is going at if we take those failures for being the avg life expectancy....

One more time, since it does not seem to be sinking in: the manufacturer's load cycle rating is not a set-in-stone indication of when your HDD is going to die. It will not get to 600 001 cycles and then explode. My MacBook is nearing three years old, and my HDD is going strong. So please stop citing this one statistic as if its the be-all and end-all of HDD life. It's not, and continuing to rely on it -removed-. GM warranties their cars for 100 000 miles - that doesn't mean their cars immediatly stop working at that point.

Can you actually cite one single example of a HDD failing that was strictly the fault of it passing 600 000 load cycles? There are plenty of factors that enter into the equation, not simply the number of load cycles.

instead of telling me how i should treat my laptop, how about you accept the fact i want my laptop to not go through these load cycles when it sits on a desk most times i use it.

A notebook is not a desktop. Just because you use it like a desktop does not mean that Apple should design it the same way they do a desktop. If you wanted a machine to work like a desktop, with the service life of a desktop, then you should have bought a desktop. Whether you move it or not is irrelevent: it's a notebook, it was designed to be a notebook, and so it's got a notebook's inherent tradeoffs. That means it will build up load cycles faster than a desktop.

 

[dukebound85]

One more time, since it does not seem to be sinking in: the manufacturer's load cycle rating is not a set-in-stone indication of when your HDD is going to die. It will not get to 600 001 cycles and then explode. My MacBook is nearing three years old, and my HDD is going strong. So please stop citing this one statistic as if its the be-all and end-all of HDD life. It's not, and continuing to rely on it -removed-. GM warranties their cars for 100 000 miles - that doesn't mean their cars immediatly stop working at that point.

can you not understand average life expectancy? yea average is the key word there....

its just like how aluminum bike frames have an average cycle load before they break...no its not set in stone but it is the average...

everything has a limit. why you fail to recognize that manufacturers state these "average expected limits"this is beyond me.

you really think things will go on forever without breaking? didnt think so. those numbers are the "once again" average numbers the hdd will see before it fails

try and understand that

Can you actually cite one single example of a HDD failing that was strictly the fault of it passing 600 000 load cycles? There are plenty of factors that enter into the equation, not simply the number of load cycles.



A notebook is not a desktop. Just because you use it like a desktop does not mean that Apple should design it the same way they do a desktop. If you wanted a machine to work like a desktop, with the service life of a desktop, then you should have bought a desktop. Whether you move it or not is irrelevent: it's a notebook, it was designed to be a notebook, and so it's got a notebook's inherent tradeoffs. That means it will build up load cycles faster than a desktop.

i had my hdd fail within a year. wouldnt be suprised if this was the issue. however, i cant check that now. is it crazy to want to extend my hdd life?

annnnnd once again i have a desktop

annnnnnnnd once again, i just want a solution to turn this feature off. i dont need you telling me how i should just accept it.

why you defend apple so rigorously is absurd

 

[Demosthenes X]

everything has a limit. why you fail to recognize that manufacturers state these "average expected limits"this is beyond me.


annnnnd once again i have a desktop

annnnnnnnd once again, i just want a solution to turn this feature off. i dont need you telling me how i should just accept it.

Nowhere did I say manufacturers don't give a number. What I said was that a) that number is by no means set in stone, and is only one factor that contributes to HDD life, and b) there's a reason notebook HDDs tend to have a shorter service life than desktops.

If you have a desktop, then use that and stop whining about how Apple is purposefully causing your notebook hard drive to fail. That's an absurd claim.

And yes, you should "accept it". If you buy a notebook expecting it to do everything exactly the same way a desktop does, then ... You're welcome to try and find a solution, but do so without making inflammatory threads about how Apple is screwing notebook users.

And don't come back and whine about how you did this, then bumped your notebook and your HDD died.

 

[Apple //e]

Seriously wtf apple

if you have a laptop, you will notice that the firmware causes the drive to click, aka the heads stop or park and then go again and continues this cycle for every like 10 sec. it sounds very faint but definitly audible

how does this kill our hdd?

well hdds only have a certain amt of load cycles they can have before they die

to put it in perspective, if you download smartctl, you can see the amt of load cycles your hdd has been through

my mb, which has 336 power on hrs has 38,587 load cycles

my desktop on the other hand, has a power on time of 8453 hrs with only 672 load cycles

i am convinced that this is the reason why my macbook caused my 250gig hdd to die on me in under a year

how can we fix this?

we should be outraged

anyone know how to fix this?

fwiw, my thinkpad x61 running xp sp3 shows a power on time of 1741 and a cycle count of 37492. ive used it walking, on bed, on cars, on airplanes, on tables, on my lap, indoors, outdoors. it has a sensor that parks the head.

maybe if others can post their smart data we can get an idea if its a faulty machine or some other hardware/software factors......

 

[dukebound85]

http://colorfulcuriosities.blogspot.com/2008/05/ubuntu-hard-drive-cycle-linux-only.html

more to read up on

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=320349

i dont know what to think anymore

 

[Beanlok]

no, at least it didnt for me



youre kidding me right?

a hdd is a tad bit more impoartant than a batt as a batt doesnt store anything

You're kidding me right. Well you're probably kidding yourself. BACKUP YOUR DATA!!!!!!

Saying that apple is killing your HDD really is an ignorant claim.

 

[gnasher729]

so you think having a hard drive not lasting to 220 days is acceptable? because that is the rate mine is going at if we take those failures for being the avg life expectancy....

instead of telling me how i should treat my laptop, how about you accept the fact i want my laptop to not go through these load cycles when it sits on a desk most times i use it.

I think this measurement is like saying "your life will probably end around 30,000 breakfasts". That is about the right number for the average person who has breakfast once a day, 365 a year. You won't live forever if you don't have breakfast. You won't die at 16 years if you eat five breakfasts every day (as long as you don't eat anything else ).

The way I drive my car, I expect it to live for about 250 to 300 tank fills. If you drive the same car and fill the tank every 100 miles, yours will likely live for 1500 to 1800 tank fills.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...here's the next "class action" suit against =

 

[dukebound85]

I think this measurement is like saying "your life will probably end around 30,000 breakfasts". That is about the right number for the average person who has breakfast once a day, 365 a year. You won't live forever if you don't have breakfast. You won't die at 16 years if you eat five breakfasts every day (as long as you don't eat anything else ).

The way I drive my car, I expect it to live for about 250 to 300 tank fills. If you drive the same car and fill the tank every 100 miles, yours will likely live for 1500 to 1800 tank fills.

so you dont think load cycles account for any increase in wear and prematurely failing the hdd?

im curious as i would like to believe your logic

 

[danvan21]

explain how when i take the drive out of my macbook and put it in my desktop it doesnt increase in load cycles

it means that this is not the hdd, but rather how the machine interacts with the hard drive

i highly doubt you did this first of all, and because a desktop doesnt have sudden motion sensors, it wont dock as much. I am so mad at apple that they would have the nerve to built something to stop my harddrive from breaking when moved. Those jerks at apple!

 

[KnightWRX]

so you dont think load cycles account for any increase in wear and prematurely failing the hdd?

im curious as i would like to believe your logic

Sorry, I didn't read through all of the thread, but one question comes to mind. Has your hard drive failed ?

 

[sammich]

Okay, so in all of the posts made here, it doesn't seem like here any has had anywhere near the cycle-to-power on hours ratio dukebound has had (which was about 115). My own is about 35 cycles per hour (~624k cycles to 17k hours). And others here I calculated to be in the ~20 area.

You must have back luck when it comes to HDDs, something anomalous is causing your drive to cycle so often. What happens when you put the drive into another macbook? Because it might be a rare case.

 

[dukebound85]

i highly doubt you did this first of all, and because a desktop doesnt have sudden motion sensors, it wont dock as much. I am so mad at apple that they would have the nerve to built something to stop my harddrive from breaking when moved. Those jerks at apple!

um yes i did do that. its way easy to do granted i had to make a partition with osx on it and then carbon copied my desktop to it and then booted off of it

Sorry, I didn't read through all of the thread, but one question comes to mind. Has your hard drive failed ?

i have had one hdd fail within a year. i dont want the one i just put in to fail as well

Okay, so in all of the posts made here, it doesn't seem like here any has had anywhere near the cycle-to-power on hours ratio dukebound has had (which was about 115). My own is about 35 cycles per hour (~624k cycles to 17k hours). And others here I calculated to be in the ~20 area.

You must have back luck when it comes to HDDs, something anomalous is causing your drive to cycle so often. What happens when you put the drive into another macbook? Because it might be a rare case.

sadly i dont have another mb to test this out on

 

[sammich]

I think this measurement is like saying "your life will probably end around 30,000 breakfasts". That is about the right number for the average person who has breakfast once a day, 365 a year. You won't live forever if you don't have breakfast. You won't die at 16 years if you eat five breakfasts every day (as long as you don't eat anything else ).

The way I drive my car, I expect it to live for about 250 to 300 tank fills. If you drive the same car and fill the tank every 100 miles, yours will likely live for 1500 to 1800 tank fills.

Analogy check:

So car A fills 300 times, drives 400 miles per tank. car B fills 1200 times, drives 100 miles per tank. Car A & B travel the same distance. They both break down at the end of that. So that makes sense because the components in the car are rated based on distance driven. The distance is the factor here, the distance is related to the number of engine revs, or the number of loads on the transmission.
Car 1: 2mill revs, 150k miles
Car 2: 2mill revs, 30k miles
Which car do you prefer for normal usage?

What is the basic unit for longevity in a HDD? You could say a cycle (analogous to a 'rev' in a car).
HDD #1 600k cycles, 20k hours
HDD #2 600k cycles, 5k hours
Which drive do you prefer for normal usage?

(If I messed this post up it's because it's like 2am here )

 

[kyrian]

so after reading through 3 pages of posts, this is what I get:

you posted what you think is an important issue, presented your numbers and situation, and ask people what's going on?
people posted their opinions and you shot them down, saying they're ignorant and don't know left from right.
then you proceed to claim that all you've basing your conclusion is on 1 desktop and 1 laptop with the same hard drive.

if by dukebound85 handle, you mean you are going to Duke Uni, I would sincerely hope that by now some professors or TAs or random class material have tell you that in order to conclude anything, you have to be able to duplicate the environment and still come to the same result, numerous time.

so, in order for people to stop telling you otherwise, you should

1. get other HDDs and simulate the condition your current HDD went through on your laptop, then use those numbers to draw and post your conclusion.
2. get those HDDs on others' laptops (mac and PC, maybe even Linus) and see if those numbers are still the same.
3. BACK UP YOUR DATA in the mean time if you so afraid your HDD will die.

Kyrian

and I don't know, maybe you should be upgrading to SSD instead of using HDD or maybe even a Dell laptop, I heard they would BTO. they have different firmwares, then their HDDs should not die as fast as your mac will, right?

 

[ppc750fx]

Screw it. You're right.

Apple's conspiring to kill everyone's laptop drives early. So eager are they to murder your data that they forgot that 220 days is < 365 days, thereby causing their diabolical plans to require them to replace all the drives under warranty.

We should just give up. Clearly you know more than all of us. In fact, you should probably write to Apple with your feedback, as I'm sure that their engineers would be delighted to hear about your discoveries. You also might want to point out your findings about load cycles, etc -- I'm sure it will be a revelation unto them.

 

[Sareth]

My mini has 7012 hours and (raw value) 440195 cycles it has a value of 78 under SMART with the threshold being 0.

*shrug*

(Not a lot of point checking my macbook as its only a fortnight old)

 

[MacSociology]

so after reading through 3 pages of posts, this is what I get:

you posted what you think is an important issue, presented your numbers and situation, and ask people what's going on?
people posted their opinions and you shot them down, saying they're ignorant and don't know left from right.
then you proceed to claim that all you've basing your conclusion is on 1 desktop and 1 laptop with the same hard drive.

if by dukebound85 handle, you mean you are going to Duke Uni, I would sincerely hope that by now some professors or TAs or random class material have tell you that in order to conclude anything, you have to be able to duplicate the environment and still come to the same result, numerous time.

so, in order for people to stop telling you otherwise, you should

1. get other HDDs and simulate the condition your current HDD went through on your laptop, then use those numbers to draw and post your conclusion.
2. get those HDDs on others' laptops (mac and PC, maybe even Linus) and see if those numbers are still the same.
3. BACK UP YOUR DATA in the mean time if you so afraid your HDD will die.

Kyrian

and I don't know, maybe you should be upgrading to SSD instead of using HDD or maybe even a Dell laptop, I heard they would BTO. they have different firmwares, then their HDDs should not die as fast as your mac will, right?

Three pages, and finally somebody with the same position as myself.

The OP is making a claim without providing any documentation to prove it. Until the OP can bring any documentation to prove his claim, you should just put it aside as a funny thought.

 

[KnightWRX]

i have had one hdd fail within a year. i dont want the one i just put in to fail as well

So all this paranoia is attributed to some anecdotal evidence of failure ?

I've seem enough HDD fails in my life to know it's completely random.

 

[r.j.s]

So, what does Google's report have to say about this?

 

[michael.lauden]

So all this paranoia is attributed to some anecdotal evidence of failure ?

I've seem enough HDD fails in my life to know it's completely random.

hdd failures are not completely random at all....

sure some may be but when you have a disk spinning at 5400rpm/7200rpm in a laptop and you are moving around - in the car, train, airplane etc.

after a year or two if you aren't careful with it i'm sure that it wouldn't last.


not to say that they don't... in my mom's old laptop (before i got her the Mac mini) it has an 80GB drive that is about 6 years old in it... still working fine.


it's naive to say they are COMPLETELY random