Apple Working on Software Update for MacBook Pro Hard Drive Issues

[michelepri]

We're talking about premium price laptops, with prices reaching 3000 $ or 3000 Euros. This is incredible. If i offer a service for a client at that price, i would never even consider the chance of mistakes. I am careful even at lower prices. Maybe for Steve Jobs $3000 is only play money. You buy a MacBooK Pro today and tomorrow you go play with a new car, so who cares if it doesn't work well.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Finally?

 

[t0mat0]

I am the original topic poster both here and on the apple support site. Please see the following links for reference:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/727453/
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2049659
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2042490

Just to say thanks for setting up the threads- got attention to it and on the news sites eventually! With Apple giving official word they're working on it, we'll see how it goes.

One annoying thing is that it seems this is just the click beep pause issue - they haven't acknowledged, and neither do many of the news stories, that there is also an issue of sporadic beachballing in terms of 30 or more seconds for some.

 

[JFreak]

We're talking about premium price laptops, with prices reaching 3000 $ or 3000 Euros. This is incredible. (...) Maybe for Steve Jobs $3000 is only play money.

3k is dirt cheap for a laptop as powerful and insanely great it is today. I recall buying a 15k computer in 1998 and it was less powerful than my iPhone today. It is only premium price laptop because some dubious companies sell crappy excuses for a laptop for few hundred. They're losing money in that business!

I would only compare businesses that actually make money by doing what they're supposed to be doing. Company that sells product for a loss and taking profit from ads and such is in my eyes not a company worth supporting, per se.

That said, there *are* other profitable computer companies besides Apple. My point being not all "computer" companies make their money from selling computers, and in that case I don't consider them computer companies, because their profit comes from elsewhere. If the real money comes from ads, then we're talking about advertisement company.

Apple on the other hand is a traditional hardware company that makes its profit from selling hardware; computers, accessories and gadgets (such as iPods and iPhones).

 

[michelepri]

I would only compare businesses that actually make money by doing what they're supposed to be doing. Company that sells product for a loss and taking profit from ads and such is in my eyes not a company worth supporting, per se.

.

That would be nice if your rule was respected at Apple. That would mean selling their phones at unit prices without forcing people to get ripped off from ATT, German Telecom, and other criminal organizations.

 

[zw-gator]

I haven't read though this thread, but shouldn't this be a firmware update and not a software update?

 

[JFreak]

That would be nice if your rule was respected at Apple. That would mean selling their phones at unit prices without forcing people to get ripped off from ATT, German Telecom, and other criminal organizations.

Move away from such country that allows such policies! Here in Finland I'm not at all ripped off from Sonera contract. I'm getting my iPhone 120 euros cheaper than if I insisted on buying unlocked model and paid it at once. That's like free data plan during the "rip-off period", which is not so badly ripped off in my opinion.

 

[JFreak]

I haven't read though this thread, but shouldn't this be a firmware update and not a software update?

Firmware is software thus can be delivered via software update.

 

[heisetax]

Apple CarLess Care

Yes I would like to know why they chose to ship G-Force drives in these systems too. At this point, I have no confidence they will actually be able to fix the problem in a firmware update.

Bottom line is this blows away the myth you get a premium product without all the headaches associated with owning Windows machines with OEM support.

AppleCare has been completely useless in helping solve this problem. They have refused to acknowledge there is any kind of problem until today, only after media probing. Every time you call they tell you they have never heard of this problem before. And the system freezes are by design.

Give me Dell support every time over these CrappleCare nonsense.

I had the same problem with Apple Care & my 1st Gen Intel Mac Pro's ATI X1900 video card. But unlike this even after an article in MacWorld it took Apple 9 months to admit to the problem & use the fix given in MacWorld. Only the local Apple store changed the wrong video card the first time. So good luck with Apple CareLess Care.

 

[calebsr2k]

Seagate Drive Issue ???

I just bought a new MBP and I purchased a Seagate 500GB drive from CompUSA. I have not had any problems. Granted that I purchased the 5400 rpm unit that is supposed to be recommended for the MBP. It was an easy install. I have not read up on the Gforce specs. Can anyone shine some light on this please?
Thanks

 

[soundman2385]

I think possibly a bad batch of hd's. Mine was replaced by apple with the same type of seagate HD and no beeps or read and write issues smooth sailing. It is stupid that with a brand new computer there is issues like this. Was there not testing done that should have prevented this type of thing from happening?

 

[heisetax]

HDD drive changing

js wondering, can you replace the HDD now that the battery is locked?

Tom

HDD drives are easy to change in the TI PowerBooks & the Unibody Intel MacBook Pros & the newer Intel MacBooks. All of the AL PowerBooks & Non UniBody Intel MacBook Pros are much more difficult to take apart & change.

Some others have reported problems with non GeForce drives as well. I use a couple of external 500GB 7200rpm SeaGate GeForce drives hooked to my PPC PowerBook & Intel Mac Pros. They both operate fast & quiet starting & running both systems.

I hope that a fix can be found here shortly. In 25+ years of using a Mac I've only had problems with 2 hard drives. The first was a Western Digital that would not work after it was formatted using OS 8.1 & the new HFS+ rather than HFS under OS 8.0. The Clone manufacturer simply replaced the drive with a Quantum Atlas one. The second was as early IBM 7200 rpm 2.5" drive that came DOA. But one thing I have always done is change out my internal PowerBook drive on a yearly or sooner basis. Then that drive was used for backup & additional storage.

If Apple can get this problem solved the bad hard drive problem can be kept to the low end Windows units. They seem to be the ones that I have a few customers each year have hard crashed hard drive problems.

Book Luck

 

[miketcool]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.5; en-us; T-Mobile G1 Build/CRB43) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1)

I just sent a guy home to backup his system because his 500gb 7200 RPM HD just failed on his new unibody MBP. I got Norton Disk Doctor to rebuild the directory and Disk Utility to verify it all. It will not at all boot into OS X. It will mount normally in target disk mode, but will not at all, get past the Apple logo on startup. I wonder what the odds are this issue having an effect on that.

I'm not surprised it won't startup if you used Norton Disk Doctor on it, that software was discontinued before 10.3. It used to break filesystems all the time even before it was discontinued. Running DiskWarrior on the drive might be able to fix it.

I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro, with a Hitachi 7200RPM drive. My MacBook does make the drive park its heads very often, even with a slight nudge, or with certain sounds. The iChat received message sound tends to park the heads too. Maybe Apple is going to make the sensor less sensitive, so it won't park the heads at the slightest movement or vibration...

Haha, I meant I used DiskWarrior with our beloved 12inch PowerBook. Man I wish this little guy was Intel friendly...

 

[madmax_2069]

Thats why i try to stick with Western Digital (no issues with any WD branded drive i own).

every Seagate HDD has died on me in within the first year of ownership. i do not like Seagate

Why in the hell did Apple go with this crappy brand and not go with a better brand. hell you are paying for it (paying a premium at that) and get a crappy drive.

WD is way better.

 

[JFreak]

every Seagate HDD has died on me in within the first year of ownership. i do not like Seagate

everyone has bad luck for whatever the reason; my bad luck has been with Toshiba and Maxtor brand hard drives -- never with Seagate or Hitachi/IBM

 

[jmcguckin]

everyone has bad luck for whatever the reason; my bad luck has been with Toshiba and Maxtor brand hard drives -- never with Seagate or Hitachi/IBM

same here, I've never had a bad experience with any Seagate product prior to installing this drive... to be honest, it came as a surprise to me that I'd suddenly be having problems with both my MacBook and the new hard drive when I've otherwise been nothing short of impressed with either one until this.

needless to say, I'm definitely looking forward to that software update...

 

[Bill Gates]

everyone has bad luck for whatever the reason; my bad luck has been with Toshiba and Maxtor brand hard drives -- never with Seagate or Hitachi/IBM

FYI, Seagate now owns Maxtor. Two different varieties of **** merged together to start anew.

 

[JFreak]

FYI, Seagate now owns Maxtor. Two different varieties of **** merged together to start anew.

Maxtor has always been a low-end product. This only means that now Seagate can sell their old designs under the Maxtor brand. Old lack of reliablity of Maxtor designs has nothing to do with current Seagate models.

For what it's worth, I do think that hard drives are a dying breed. All moving parts must go. IBM saw this years ago and sold their great hard drives to Hitachi. About 5-6 years ago I always insisted Hitachi drives, because they were the great IBM designs, but things have moved since that. Current high-end storage are SSD drives, so whoever (myself included) brags about having the latest and greatest HDD should feel embarassed when one compares to the fastest flash available.

BTW, is there a company that currently offers 5-year warranty for their hard drives? Seagate used to be one, together with IBM, but I don't know if anyone should give such warranties today, the moving parts will eventually fail.

 

[Ubele]

I have a 320 WD Black Scorpio in mine and could not be happier. I do not have any problems.

If you are looking to upgrade then I would recommend this drive.

Earlier this year, I upgraded the stock 200 GB drive in my early-2008 MPB to the 7200 RPM 320 GB WD Scorpio Black (the model without the built-in motion sensor). Within the past month, it's developed the beeping/clicking problem. When I run Disk Utility, it says that the drive is fine. I checked Apple's support forum and found an 80-page thread devoted to this issue. Although the vast majoiry refer to the 500 GB Seagate, it looks like any 7200 RPM drive can be affected.

 

[antistupid]

FIVE (5) MBP 320gb 7200rpm FAILURES

I purchased my 2.86ghz MBP in January 2009.

Over the course of the next four months I had 3 failures. Each repair took about three days in the apple store to complete.

They ended up replacing my computer, giving me the newer 2.93ghz model with the same hard drive. It's worth pointing out I use my computer rarely on my lap, and usually it's on my desk connected to an external monitor.

Two months later it failed again, got replaced, and failed again in exactly 3 days.

I am now on my 5th drive, 2nd computer.

Each time this happened my work had to be halted and all my clients had to contacted saying I will be inaccessible for a few days. I estimate the entire debacle took 20 days out of my work schedule, or hundreds of dollars. I am also a full time student and the money while my computer was in limbo will hurt me in a few months.

IT IS ABOUT ****ING TIME THIS GETS FIXED!

Anyone else have it that bad?

 

[mrgstiffler]

I don't think it's limited to the Seagate drive. I have the Hitachi 320GB 7200 RPM model in my 2009 MBP and I get the hard drive clicking and occasional beep.

Same here. I get hard drive clicking and if a video is playing it freezes.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Nothing about it in the Developer networks.

 

[DELLsFan]

CONSUMER ANSWER: Switch to SSDs.

APPLE ANSWER: Offer more SSD options in Apple computers to consumers at reasonable prices.