IMac hard drive failure

[plinden]

It is not the probability of failure that is important, it is the probability of those failures occuring in 1 machine,...

I don't think you understand. A priori, given the chance of one drive failing inside a year as 1/100, the chances of two successive drives failing on you is 1/10000. But once the first drive has failed, the chances of the second failing inside a year is still 1/100, not 1/10000.

especially if the 2 drives in question are supplied from different batches and probably different factories, unlike the "4 ordered and 2 failed" occurance mentioned in your response.

Granted, multiple orders are more likely to come from different batches ... but here's something interesting from Google - http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Google did a survey on its disk failure rate and found a 2% failure rate in the first year, but 8-9% failures in years 2-3. Drive temperature was not a statistically significant factor. If Apple's computer HDDs fail at 2% a year, then 200,000 users who bought in the last year are going to see failures. That's a lot.

 

[tunnelboy]

Well I'm not a MAC person either. I do casual computer repairs for friends. I stay FAR away from those Mac vs PC arguments, but I think the original poster has a point about the way Apple crams everything so tightly together. I was testing an IMac's hard drive for about 2 hours. I opened it up, and even though the fans were working, everything was VERY hot to the touch. In all my years of working on PC's, I've never felt components that hot.

So yeah, the argument about the $400 for the hard drive recovery is the posters own fault, but, I do think there is a point to made about the design of these things. As most of you may know, PC's are very open and there is usually tons of air circulation around most components. On the MAC it's kind of ridiculous how much they try to cram into such a tight space.

BUT... I have 2 Macs and 2 PC's and I like and use them both!

 

[driller2262]

Improve access to drive at least.

Apple do need to resolve either quality control of sourced components, improve air flow around components which I believe is the main cause of failure or at least make replacement of hard drive as easy as on most PC's.
I was die hard PC until 2008 when I 'saw the light' or at least beguiled by beauty of mac. Since then I would always choose Mac over PC and turn blind eye to cost differential. However, my imac has now had 2 hard drives go (in 2 years). Something hard to explain by simply blaming HD manufacturer. After first went I have religiously used time machine and it works beautifully when needed. Changing the disk is not simple though. Why should we be told to buy Applecare (not a cheap option) to get a product of merchantable quality. I ask you 2 drives in 2 years? 1 i can understand.

 

[slynger]

I just had my hard drive fail in my older iMac G5 - I had most of my data backed up, but some I didn't. Hopefully I am able to retrieve it, but if I can't, that is my fault and a learning experience (the hard way) that I will never let happen again.

 

[markustee]

Hard drive failed? So, change it!

I am a 51-year old former DOS power user. Two years ago, I converted to Mac, and would not change back for anything. I now have three mac's - two iMac's and a MacBook Pro.

My 500 MB Seagate hard drive started failing on my first (White iMac) shortly after I got it. I use a Time Machine backup (2TB) which makes data loss not an issue, and an offsite backup (Carbonite) for the important stuff only (which makes a fire not so much of an issue). Well, I finally (after two reformats) got up the nerve to change out the hard drive in the White iMac, which I had heard was a semi-impossible task.

Not so. It is really quite simple. I even made a video of it, which I intend to post. It took about two hours, and I made plenty of mistakes, which I will point out - for example, you don't need to remove all the taped shielding, just the little bit on the monitor. I think I could do it again in less than 45 minutes.

Hey, I'm 51. If I can do it, I am sure you young hot dogs out there can.

And now I have a sweet 1.5 TB hard drive in my White iMac for $144 (including 2nd day air) - and I am writing this on that same machine.

By the way, there was one problem with the Time Machine restore. Itunes would not work - it said that I needed the updated video player and didn't have privileges to install it. Apple tech support figured it out - just delete the contents of HardDriveName (whatever you call it)/Library/Updates and do the update. Then it worked fine.

 

[slynger]

sorry to bump this thread, I'm replacing a hard drive in my iMac - any tips on transferring the hard drive thermal reader to the new drive (thermistor, i think it's called?) - it seems pretty secure on the crapped out drive, just don't wanna break it??

 

[Mac OS X Ocelot]

My one year old iMac's hard drive just failed on me too. It waited until just after the one year warranty. I'm broke and the nearest apple store is about an hour away in good traffic, and I don't even know how much it will cost to replace. I've been booting from my (small, old and noisy) external drive. I just felt like venting somewhere. That is all.

 

[audiopablo]

been reading for years and this is the first time I'm compelled to post. Imac 2008 hard drive fail. Add me to the list. I love me my macs, but researching this brought me tons of fail stories...

 

[DaddoJohn]

I bought four 24-inch iMacs for my company two years ago. Hard drives have now failed in three of the four. The most recent failure was in my own iMac. Luckily we all used TimeMachine to back up our data and help us get us back to work after replacement of the hard drives. Still, to me this failure rate indicates either that Apple bought a batch of crummy hard drives, or the iMac case has a heat buildup problem that causes premature drive failure, or both. I have never experienced such frequent hard drive failure with any other computer model, and my company has bought hundreds of desktop computers. I tend to suspect that the drives were poor in quality and that heat within the iMac case contributes to premature failure. It does not help matters that the iMac's designers considered sleekness more important than serviceability. It is way too difficult even for a skillful user to replace an iMac's hard drive. Instead, we have to send these machines out to a repair shop. I love Apple's software. But Apple's hardware designers have only added fuel to the anti-Mac sentiment that prevails among many corporate HelpDesk departments -- including ours, I am sad to say.

 

[BillGates]

iMac case doesn't cool all that well

We have 128 - 24" iMacs (circa 10/2007) in service

10 Hard drive failures so far. We repair these on site immediately following a failure. The failed hard drives are so hot when they come out you nearly need to wear gloves.

I sure hope all the 27" iMacs we just put in service don't have the same cooling issues.

 

[Hellhammer]

We have 128 - 24" iMacs (circa 10/2007) in service

10 Hard drive failures so far. We repair these on site immediately following a failure. The failed hard drives are so hot when they come out you nearly need to wear gloves.

I sure hope all the 27" iMacs we just put in service don't have the same cooling issues.

All AIOs and laptops have this problem. There is simply not enough space for the air to flow. Desktops don't even need HD fan as they run cool because they have so much space around.

It's a flaw in design, HDs aren't meant for +55c. In desktops, they stay below 40c, usually few degrees hotter than room temperature

 

[mtnDewFTW]

I can see why you're pissed, I had HDD failures myself, in fact when I bought my brand new 27" iMac, the Seagate HDD broke within a month.
But what you have to keep in mind is that HDDs have a 50% failure rates. That's A LOT for something that everyone uses.
And Apple doesn't manufacture HDDs, they get them from other companies like WD or Seagate.

Although you make a GREAT point when you say that Apple pack a lot of stuff in a very small space, but HDDs themselves are VERY unreliable, no matter where you put them. Apple need to start using SSDs in their iMacs. That would be perfect. Unfortunately SSDs don't come in 1TB. Actually there is one but it costs 4k. I think we'll need to wait a few years until SSDs become a normal thing so Apple can officially retire the HDD and move onto SSD like they did with the MacBook Air and Pro.

 

[firewalker2222]

24 inch imac hard drive failure

I also have had 2 hard drives fail in my imac. Apple lovers can say "well hard drives fail" and "it is not apple's fault". However, I have worked with computers for several years. Purchased many hard drives as upgrades and I did have one hard drive fail. But I have never had two fail in the same computer. Not like this. I have read that most of the drives that are failing are WD 500 gb drives. Unless apple releases some sort of data that would show exactly how many imacs had hd failures we can say it is chance or just normal failure, but the more I read I find this is a problem. Also it seems most of these computers have had the drives fail within 18 months.

 

[WilliamG]

Totally ridiculous. For every person with 2 hard drive failures in their Mac, there's probably thousands with 0 failures. Count me among then. Tons of Apple laptops etc, and zero disk failures in any of them. And if one fails?: Not Apple's fault at all. I'll get a new one and move on. HDs are indeed ticking time bombs.

 

[SoCalRich]

News Flash just in :

Hard drives can die in PC's as well as Macs. Ive never had one die in my mac, but have on a PC more than once, but I dont draw any conclusions from that. Ive had failures from Seagate, Western Digital and my latest build now uses Hitachi !

Your venting is misplaced. It sucks.. sure, but it can happen to anyone, on any computer and if you had a proper backup routine in place you would not have had to pay $400 (which sounds like a rip off to me).

Make sure you put all your important stuff on an external HD as well, and you will be fine next time.

I actually had 2 out of my 3 HD's fail at the same time. I was REAL happy that I had the 3rd and suffered no data loss.

Backup, backup, backup. Over the years, I have learned that the hard way. Because my data is important I run Time Machine on 1 HD and still back up my Photos (300GB and increasing every day) and iTunes (640GB approx. 1,200 CD's) redundantly onto 3 external HD's... just to make sure...

 

[firewalker2222]

What is totally ridiculous is some one claiming that for every person that has a hard drive failure there are thousands that have not, when they have no data or information to base this claim on. So if some one has any sort of statistics from apple on how many hds they had to replace in the newer imac please share with us. Otherwise the more I read the more I find out about how big of a problem this is.

 

[mdnz]

I can see why you're pissed, I had HDD failures myself, in fact when I bought my brand new 27" iMac, the Seagate HDD broke within a month.
But what you have to keep in mind is that HDDs have a 50% failure rates. That's A LOT for something that everyone uses.

50% failure rate? A source on that please? Or is it something like they either work or they break down - 50/50.

 

[iShellac]

My 24" work iMac (iMac7,1) is on its third HDD. It went through two in a year due to overheating. iStat Menus showed the HDD temp at 55 C all day, well above safe environmental operating temps for the drive. If SMC was supposed to kick on fans at a certain temperature and didn't, I'm sorry, but that's Apple's fault.

In that same year, a coworker across from me also had two HDDs fail in his 24" iMac, and a coworker next to me had one drive fail in his 24" iMac.

Our Mac technician even admits it's a problem with these iMacs and has recommended we put in orders for external drives.

Meanwhile, the HDD in my work PC sits at a frosty 36 C or lower all day.

Fact, heat is a major contributing factor to premature HDD failure. Fact, the iMac case design is not conducive to heat dissipation and/or fans aren't being automatically controlled as they should.

Btw, it's strange when people say they "made the switch and never looked back" or "converted" to Macs and even remember it down to the date. It's like you found Jesus or something.

 

[Stonefly]

All AIOs and laptops have this problem. There is simply not enough space for the air to flow. Desktops don't even need HD fan as they run cool because they have so much space around.

It's a flaw in design, HDs aren't meant for +55c. In desktops, they stay below 40c, usually few degrees hotter than room temperature

I agree. Before this iMac I had a Dell Studio 1735 laptop, bought it in August of 2008. According to archipellago who thinks apple care is fraud, well most if not all manufacturers have a 1 year warranty to. Dell wanted $168 for an extra year, that's ridiculous compared to 2 extra years for $199 from apple care. Anyway on the 9th month my mother board went bad so sent it to dell for repairs. Got it back and 3 days later the hard drive went bad, had 2 200GB 7200 rpm hard drives in it so had a back up on the spare one. Sent it out again and got it back 8 days later. A month and a half or so later the main drive went again. This time they just sent me a hard drive and I replaced it, it's very easy. Am on my third one and so far so good but my point is it's not just macs that have these problems. I paid almost $2600 Canadian for that laptop, a premium price but it still broke (more than once).

 

[Stonefly]

forgot to mention that they tried to replace my 7200 rpm drive with a 5400 rpm, both times. The drives were bigger, the first being 250gb and the second was 320gb but that's not the point. The language barrier was enough to put up with.

 

[Randomwalker]

HD crash while installing new OS

Using 24-inch iMac (6,1). Thinking, well, it has been a long time since I have backed up, and Time Machine is neat, so I ordered Snow Leopard to update Tiger. Started the install, and BOOM...while installing the software I wanted to use to BACK UP my HD, my HD fails! Ironic, no?

So I connect external HD, put Snow Leopard on that, change startup disk, and using software recover a lot of my data.

Now the plot thickens: I call Apple Sales. "Hi, I am thinking about buying a Mac Mini, if I do, can I use my iMac 24-inch cinema display with that Mini? My HD died while installing Snow Leopard."

Salesperson: "No, that won't work, only the new 27 inch display can do that. The same thing happened to me while I was installing a new OS on the same machine. I just boot from an external hard drive now."

Coincidence? Probably. Does it make me wonder? Hmmm.....

 

[musicstudio41]

I have owned Macs since day one. Between my businesses, recording studio, home, total of 26 Macs. I had my first hard drive failure on a 2007 iMac which my 11 year old nephew uses for gaming. We pulled it out and you could cook bacon on this thing. I'm wondering if this is a heat issue being i've not had a hard drive failure before except on a Seagate external. just my .02 cents

BTW, it is three weeks out of apple care warranty.

 

[mangrove]

It sounds like, based OP's comments, that's the first hard drive to fail him. Good for him!

We also bought two 2007 iMac's after using IBM's, Dells, HP's & Toshiba's since 1982. We had one iMac HDD go bad after 1 year, had it backed up and had Applecare, so no problem, Apple fixed it on the spot. Before going to Mac, I had 15 hard drive failures. It just happens. That's why we backup, make bootable clones and keep backup drives off site, etc.

Anyone who does not backup is asking for it. Plain and simple! Today all manufacturers buy from a limited number of manufacturers. Any can fail at anytime. There is a reason so many companies offer backup devices, Apple included.

Let's look at the LaCie 4big backup box. Think of the philosophy of its construction. They offer up four swappable 2TB drives for 8TB maximum (4TB in RAID1). Why the swappable nature of the device? They admit even on paper that there is a chance their HDD's can fail, so you can swap out the bad one for a good one while not losing any data, if configured in RAID1. It automatically writes the data over to the replaced drive once one is installed.

I own one and keep 2 spare drives on the side just in case of the inevitable-drive failure.

 

[wirelessness]

it is costing me the data recovery $400

If only Apple would have provided a built in application that can easily back up ALL of your valuable data to a backup storage device other than the primary disk........Doh, they do it's called Time Machine.

Seems to me the only person you should be mad at is yourself. This day in age with the cost of external drives being practically free and the multitude of quality backup programs available for OSX there is no excuse for losing any data. With Time Machine and Super Duper you can create up to date BOOTABLE copies of your primary drive and all of your data. You could even boot off the backup drive(s) in the event of a catastrophic failure of the primary driving leaving you with ZERO downtime.

Sure, then you have to replace the hard drive and that sucks but it does happen even on much more expensive systems. Being totally unprepared and having to paying over four times the cost of a simple backup solution for data recovery services in pretty embarrassing. I probably wouldn't lead with that in my attempted rant on Apple.

That said, most hard drives come with a five year warranty so you should not have to pay any money for a replacement aside from labor if you are not capable of replacing it yourself...which is probably the case.

 

[geerlingguy]

I just had the HD in my 24" 2008 iMac fail. It's happened to two friends, and it will happen again.

Luckily, I have all my data backed up on a Time Machine backup, and also my important documents are on DropBox + another laptop that's synced to that.

Hard drives fail. Even when you spend $500+ for an enterprise-class drive, it fails. There's a reason servers usually have some sort of expensive RAID system set up (where even if one drive fails, the server can continue to run while a replacement is plugged in).

I simply replaced my drive and moved on.

Another solution is to buy an cheap FireWire drive (external) and install OS X on it. You can run your Mac off an external hard drive pretty easily (that's something that's a LOT harder to do on a PC).