hard drive replacement oopsie

[thermodynamic]

When I swapped my 2011 MBP's original HDD with a Seagate Momentus XT, I forgot to carry over the 4 nibble things that fully secure the drive inside the chassis.

I had updated the XT's firmware, installed OS X, upgraded to 10.6.7, and installed Logic Studio before realizing the oversight. During this time, the laptop was sturdily perched and wasn't moved, but a net amount of 70GB was written to the drive during this time.

After putting in the nibbles and powering back up, I felt no difference in the vibration I would expect to find coming from a mechanical HDD.

With the drive hanging half-loose in the chassis, should I be worrying about problems down the road, such as premature drive failure?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

No.

 

[Tonepoet]

The hard drive mounting screws are meant to secure into the casis that holds the Hard Drive solidly in place. I think there's a small cause for concern that the differences in vibrational tolerance might wear the drive down faster eventually leading to drive failure sometime down the road or scratch alongside the sensitive adjoining parts, otherwise why have those screws? More importantly, your entire warranty may be voided if improper installation breaks your device and those missing screws are exactly what an applecare professional might first notice as possibly causing problems when he opens up your computer.

You'll need a torx screwdriver to swap them over.

 

[mac8867]

Don't worry about it - at all. The drive was seated securely enough for the short time you ran without the bolts. As for your warranty, it doesn't come into play at all here. The hard drive is a supported owner upgrade.

 

[Tonepoet]

To clarify I'm not saying the hard drive isn't a user supported upgrade. I know it is if the transfer is done properly. If it's not, I reference you to page 36 of the manual.

WARNING: Apple recommends that you have an Apple-certified technician install replacement drives and memory. Consult the service and support information that came with your computer for information about how to contact Apple for service. If you attempt to install a replacement drive or memory and damage your equipment, such damage is not covered by the limited warranty on your computer.

I'll also reference you to page 2 paragraph 3(?) of the warranty:

Apple does not warrant that the operation of the product will be uninterrupted or error-free. Apple is not responsible for damage arising from failure to follow instructions relating to the product’s use.

Emphasis my own. On page 41 of the aforementioned manual, in step six of replacing your hard drive, the given instructions state:

6 Hold the drive by its sides while you gently pull the connector on the left side of the drive to disconnect it. Don’t press the drive between your fingers, and avoid touching the circuitry on the underside of the drive.
The connector is attached to a cable and remains in the hard disk drive bay.

Important: There are four (4) mounting screws on the sides of your hard disk drive. If your replacement drive doesn’t include mounting screws, remove the ones from your old drive and mount them on the replacement drive before you install it.

Basically what could happen if you need to take it into the apple store without the mounting screws is that thy'll tell you're screwed because they don't know what the problem is, that you may've messed it up and you'll have no way to reasonably verify if that's really the case or not.

Not that it's too important. The part most likely to fail from failure to mount these screws is the HDD itself, which isn't covered by the warranty either way. The HDD is very failure prone BTW, probably the most failure prone part in the entire computer. Both my 2008 MBP and my mom's 2009 MBP failed. Discussions me and my friends had with Apple Store employees confirm this much. Exactly how failure prone they are on the other hand, I don't know but I'd not take the risk of making it even more likely.

Since you haven't broken anything yet though, everything will be fine if you just replace the original mounting screws, assuming you still have them. It doesn't take too much longer than the original procedure did anyway. If not the screws appear to be surpisingly expensive to replace. I don't even think those are the right ones judging from my recollection.

 

[mac8867]

Welll... That was a lot of work to put that post together. The OP specifically stated that they put the mounting bolts on the drive very shortly after installing the os.

Now, I don't work as a "genius" (personal chuckle) but I am pretty sure they have no way of ever knowing that w drive was mounted in the machine for 10 minutes without the bolts in it... LOL

 

[thermodynamic]

Welll... That was a lot of work to put that post together. The OP specifically stated that they put the mounting bolts on the drive very shortly after installing the os.

Now, I don't work as a "genius" (personal chuckle) but I am pretty sure they have no way of ever knowing that w drive was mounted in the machine for 10 minutes without the bolts in it... LOL

Yep. I do appreciate his post, but I did get the bolts transferred and Apple would not be covering the drive affected.

There's clearly no damage to any of the electronics (impossible, given the internal construction of the MBP and how the drive is inserted (electronics side down, so there would be no short-circuit in any way shape or form).

Any damage would be about the drive's platters, if they lost alignment due to being less-than secured despite the computer being on a stable surface.

As was said, there could be a small chance of damage over time, and that damage might not happen either.

 

[BigBeast]

Just to ease your mind I'll post.

I've had many drives-lying diagonally, horizontally, and vertically- unmounted, and have had no problems with any of them. I frequently fix computers for friends and I've learned over the years that these drives vibrate very little. Being in your chassis without the nubs won't affect your HDD. Don't worry about it. Even IF the data somehow got corrupted (it won't be), you would just have to reinstall the software. Being in the chassis without the nubs will not harm your drive (if left on a stable surface). The problem arises when there is a BIG jolt to the drive such as dropping your computer. And if you can't seem to believe the numerous people that have just told you this same thing- reinstall your software and be done with it.

 

[thermodynamic]

Don't worry about it - at all. The drive was seated securely enough for the short time you ran without the bolts. As for your warranty, it doesn't come into play at all here. The hard drive is a supported owner upgrade.

Thanks!

I knew enough about not upsetting the Apple warranty, but I was definitely concerned about the Seagate drive and it going out earlier than it ought to because it was hanging inside its bay... but I doubt if the drive had wobbled while writing (the weight of the drive combined with gravity of hanging down would have likely kept it immobile while the heads were moving. Had I used the thing on my lap and moved the MBP around before putting in the bolts, then I'd probably want to worry as the drive would not have been properly seated and that scenario would likely cause damage... but, again, the MBP was fully stable on the table.)

And if there was damage, I'd have heard a shifting of the whirring noise.

And given I once wobbled my work PC, which has a larger HDD with larger platters and it didn't go out on me, I oughtn't worry...

And, in all honesty, I like to worry just for the face value of worrying...

And I love to start sentences with the word "And"...

 

[bozz2006]

Don't worry about the drive at all. It has built in sudden motion sensors that immediately park the heads if things get too bumpy. And if you've opened her back up, inspected things, and see no damage to the interior of the computer, you've got absolutely nothing to worry about. No worries whatsoever. Don't let Tonepoet scare you. I'm not trying to come out against him because what he said is right. But the only way you'd have voided the warranty was if something in the computer or in the HDD broke because of this little oopsie. And everything is fine, so you have nothing to worry about.

 

[thermodynamic]

Don't worry about the drive at all. It has built in sudden motion sensors that immediately park the heads if things get too bumpy. And if you've opened her back up, inspected things, and see no damage to the interior of the computer, you've got absolutely nothing to worry about. No worries whatsoever. Don't let Tonepoet scare you. I'm not trying to come out against him because what he said is right. But the only way you'd have voided the warranty was if something in the computer or in the HDD broke because of this little oopsie. And everything is fine, so you have nothing to worry about.

Thx for the info!

I forgot about the shock sensor... I did look up its SMART status and the G-Scan Error number was at 0.

 

[Criticalmass]

When I swapped my 2011 MBP's original HDD with a Seagate Momentus XT, I forgot to carry over the 4 nibble things that fully secure the drive inside the chassis.

I had updated the XT's firmware, installed OS X, upgraded to 10.6.7, and installed Logic Studio before realizing the oversight. During this time, the laptop was sturdily perched and wasn't moved, but a net amount of 70GB was written to the drive during this time.

After putting in the nibbles and powering back up, I felt no difference in the vibration I would expect to find coming from a mechanical HDD.

With the drive hanging half-loose in the chassis, should I be worrying about problems down the road, such as premature drive failure?

Keep an eye on the temps of this drive. It routinely spikes above 60C which is it's max operating limit on one of my Notebooks.

 

[thermodynamic]

Keep an eye on the temps of this drive. It routinely spikes above 60C which is it's max operating limit on one of my Notebooks.

Thanks MUCH for the forewarning, especially as I often keep my wrist resting over that portion of the chassis, but I do keep a cooler fan under the MBP. I've got SMCFanControl to help as I keep the fans at 3000RPM minimum... I've yet to try the iStat 3 demo to see if it senses the HDD temp -- iStat 2 does NOT see the temp for the HDD (but does for everything else, grr... )

ADDENDUM: iStat menus does see the HDD temp (34C), so all is well - and cool! (So far)

 

[Tonepoet]

Huh?

Gah! Ack! Eeeek! I so didn't see that the screws were back in already. I need to go back to school so I can learn how to read again. Quite sorry about that. Yeah, if everything appears to be working fine you should be all set.

 

[thermodynamic]

Huh?

Gah! Ack! Eeeek! I so didn't see that the screws were back in already. I need to go back to school so I can learn how to read again. Quite sorry about that. Yeah, if everything appears to be working fine you should be all set.

No problem! Your information was appreciated, actually.