MacBook Pro 2010 hard drive died

[gorichard]

Happy new year to all,

On Christmas Eve my 6 month old MBP 13" hard drive packed up - got the apple logo and nothing else on boot up. Apple Care phone support couldn't fix so had to send it off for repair (due back this week).

I know there are more important things in life, but to have spent a month's wage on a computer and to be let down like this was really disappointing.

My last backup was a month ago, so everything since has been lost, and I was without a computer for two weeks.

Is this a common fault? What bugged me most was that at no stage did anyone from Apple offer any glimpse of an apology for the floored (and very expensive equipment).

I switched from Dell to this and love the computer, and had heard a lot about Apple's amazing customer service. Not what I've experienced.

Richard

 

[miles01110]

Is this a common fault?

No.

What bugged me most was that at no stage did anyone from Apple offer any glimpse of an apology for the floored (and very expensive equipment).

Why should they apologize? The odds of getting a bad hard drive that fails in the first week are exceedingly low. Apple doesn't make the drives, either. Plus, being sorry about what happened isn't going to fix the problem any faster.

 

[gorichard]

No.



Why should they apologize?

Politeness? 'Sorry you've spent £1000 on a computer that has broken within six months through no fault of your own. It's a rare fault but we apologise for the inconvenience caused.'

I don't think it's asking for too much

 

[newdeal]

...

the failure rate of mac hard drives is exactly the same as for any other computer since no one makes their own drives. I suppose an apology would be nice but in the end its just words and the outcome is the same regardless of if they are said or not. Personally I would forget about it and get a better backup solution so you are covered if it happens again, best way is a time capsule or an external drive mounted to an airport extreme

 

[mwhq]

It happened to my 5 month old 15" MBP...

Resolution is...go into apple, it's still under warranty and they will fix it.

They swapped my 320GB HDD for a 500GB at no extra cost and in the same day. I needed a quick turnaround they came up trumps.

As for the apology, don't expect one, these things do happen, the best way to be is to act friendly and in return they will want to help you out promptly if not they will stick you straight at the back of a long que.

I would recommend you invest in a time machine solution to avoid loss of data over a month period. People underestimate the importance of regular backups and with the ease of use that time machine provides it really is a no brainer. If you have important documents on your local machine have peace of mind and invest in an external storage option.

 

[NickZac]

Hard disk drive failure is pretty common. The hard drives Apple uses, especially in my own 13, are not very good. Higher enterprise grade hard disk drives offer larger sizes, quicker data transfer, and better durability and long term reliability. HDD failure happens more commonly than you may expect; about 7% of hard disk drives fail within the first year and about 25% fail within the first 3 years. Higher quality and more expensive hard drives have lower failure rates and the lower quality drives have higher failure rates; keep in mind the percentage figures are an average of different brand and level drives and so it does NOT mean that all drives have the same failure rates.

As stated, Apple gets their drives from an outside source (actually multiple including: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung and others). They are not very reliable when compared to certain premium and enterprise grade aftermarket drives. A lot of members here, myself included, have upgraded to a more premium and presumably more reliable hard drive. With that said, I have never had a laptop in which the company has put a disk drive in which I felt was just as reliable as the high-end models.

There is a possibility that you may have accidentally caused the drive to fail as they are probably the most fragile part in the computer. Hard disk drives are sensitive to shock, magnetic charges, power surges, elevation changes, humidity, air quality, and even seismic activity (very recently + developing find). Heat and amount of use have only a weak relation to failure rates.

Hard disk drives do occasionally fail for no apparent reason, and head crashes still occur. If the 7% failure rate is not an acceptable level to you, I would spend about a hundred dollars on an upgraded drive (ex: WD Scorpio Black). The only other option is purchasing a Solid State Drive, which is most likely the most durable data storage system available and has a lower 5yr failure rate than hard disk drives. With that said, SSDs are much more expensive and store less data.

Obviously, no matter what you select, it is still critical to back up. No matter how reliable your data storage solution may be, there is always, at least, a small chance of failure. If your data is highly valued, backing up frequently is a must.

Should Apple have apologized to you? Perhaps, but if they replace the item free of charge, that is in many ways a thank you. While they may have showed a lack of good manners, good manners has no real relation to warranty service. Despite being unfriendly, I will predict (based on experiences documented on this forum) that the turnaround time will be quick and they will adequately fix/replace any problematic parts.

 

[pricej636]

I think its silly to be expecting a company to kiss your azz just because a piece of electronics failed. Not to mention its a HD anyway... HDs fail for numerous reasons, and a good chunk of those reasons are because of the owner.

I'd say be grateful its being replaced and move on.

 

[Blu101]

Please remember that when closing the cover to put the MBP into sleep mode, the "sleep" light must begin to flash BEFORE you can safely move the MBP. Moving the MBP while the sleep indicator light is ON (not flashing) may damage/crash your HDD.

No pun intended, just an fyi tip.

Cheers.

 

[sydenham]

Hard disk drive failure is pretty common. The hard drives Apple uses, especially in my own 13, are not very good. Higher enterprise grade hard disk drives offer larger sizes, quicker data transfer, and better durability and long term reliability. HDD failure happens more commonly than you may expect; about 7% of hard disk drives fail within the first year and about 25% fail within the first 3 years. Higher quality and more expensive hard drives have lower failure rates and the lower quality drives have higher failure rates; keep in mind the percentage figures are an average of different brand and level drives and so it does NOT mean that all drives have the same failure rates.

As stated, Apple gets their drives from an outside source (actually multiple including: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung and others). They are not very reliable when compared to certain premium and enterprise grade aftermarket drives. A lot of members here, myself included, have upgraded to a more premium and presumably more reliable hard drive. With that said, I have never had a laptop in which the company has put a disk drive in which I felt was just as reliable as the high-end models.

There is a possibility that you may have accidentally caused the drive to fail as they are probably the most fragile part in the computer. Hard disk drives are sensitive to shock, magnetic charges, power surges, elevation changes, humidity, air quality, and even seismic activity (very recently + developing find). Heat and amount of use have only a weak relation to failure rates.

Hard disk drives do occasionally fail for no apparent reason, and head crashes still occur. If the 7% failure rate is not an acceptable level to you, I would spend about a hundred dollars on an upgraded drive (ex: WD Scorpio Black). The only other option is purchasing a Solid State Drive, which is most likely the most durable data storage system available and has a lower 5yr failure rate than hard disk drives. With that said, SSDs are much more expensive and store less data.

Obviously, no matter what you select, it is still critical to back up. No matter how reliable your data storage solution may be, there is always, at least, a small chance of failure. If your data is highly valued, backing up frequently is a must.

Should Apple have apologized to you? Perhaps, but if they replace the item free of charge, that is in many ways a thank you. While they may have showed a lack of good manners, good manners has no real relation to warranty service. Despite being unfriendly, I will predict (based on experiences documented on this forum) that the turnaround time will be quick and they will adequately fix/replace any problematic parts.

Why do you keep posting ridiculous statements like the hard drives Apple use are not very good. I don't mean to be hard on you but you have been posting quite a few silly blanket statements lately. I am sure you mean well but some people may actually believe you.

Happy new year to all,

On Christmas Eve my 6 month old MBP 13" hard drive packed up - got the apple logo and nothing else on boot up. Apple Care phone support couldn't fix so had to send it off for repair (due back this week).

I know there are more important things in life, but to have spent a month's wage on a computer and to be let down like this was really disappointing.

My last backup was a month ago, so everything since has been lost, and I was without a computer for two weeks.

Is this a common fault? What bugged me most was that at no stage did anyone from Apple offer any glimpse of an apology for the floored (and very expensive equipment).

I switched from Dell to this and love the computer, and had heard a lot about Apple's amazing customer service. Not what I've experienced.

Richard

What exactly has been the problem with their customer service? Sounds like they handled your problem pretty well, considering they had no way to tell if you dropped your computer or mishandled it in another way.

 

[NickZac]

Why do you keep posting ridiculous statements like the hard drives Apple use are not very good. I don't mean to be hard on you but you have been posting quite a few silly blanket statements lately. I am sure you mean well but some people may actually believe you.

Because their hard drives are NOT as good as other drives. Furthermore, you are criticizing me with complete lack of evidence, so that really makes you credible. So, I don't have time to get every statistic to show that what I say has meaning, but here are a few points so check it out dude!!!


If you don't believe, go look up the reviews of the drives used in MBPs and compare them to the Seagate, Western Digital, and Samsung drives of the exact same price.

Here is an example. A common factory drive in the MacBook Pro, 13inch, mid 2009 is the Fujitsu MJA2250BH FFS G1. ALSO, the Toshibas seen in the 13 are likely the Fujitsu design as well, given in late 2009, Fujitsu left the hard drive business and sold their assets to Toshiba (and right around this time we started seeing Toshiba HDDs). Let's compare how the Fujitsu drive stacks up against a random hard drive...I am going to compare it to the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 250GB HDD (model number ST9250410AS), as you can buy it for as little as $40, so the cost of the existing Fujitsu drive is almost the same as the Momentus (actually the Fujitsu is on average more than the Momentus). Also, the Momentus is 250GB; you can get the 500GB version for an extra $20. Keep in mind. The Momentus is one of numerous hard drives a lot of people here upgrade to; with that said it is not the fastest nor most expensive HDD on the market. None the less, its performance figures and user ratings have shown that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a nice hard drive.


Overall Rating
-Fujitsu-289 (3rd from the bottom and notice what other hard drives are their)
-Seagate Momentus: 537

RPM Speed
-Fujitsu-7200RPM
-Seagate-5400RPM

Latency
-Fujitsu-5.56 to 22 ms (conflicting data)
-Seagate-4.17 to 14.3 ms

Transfer Min/Max/Average
-Fujitsu-38.7/88.9/67.5 MB/s
-Seagate-49/107.3/81.3 MB/s

Cache
-Fujitsu-8MB
-Seagate-16MB

Reliability
-Fujitsu-Unable to find consistent data
-Seagate-0.5% AFR

Warranty
-Fujitsu-1 or 3 years, conflicting data
-Seagate-3 years

Buffer
-Fujitsu-8mb
-Seagate-16mb w/ 512 bytes per sector

Recovery
-Fujitsu-Not disclosed
-Seagate-1 sector in 10^15 bits

Noise
-Fujitsu-Unable to find
-Seagate-2.5-2.8Bel

Durability-Operating/Non-operating Shock
-Fujitsu-300-350G/900G
-Seagate-350G/1,000G

Operating Altitude
-Fujitsu-Unable to find
-Seagate- -300 to 3,000 meters

Operating Temperature-min/max
-Fujitsu-41/131
-Seagate-32/140

Operating Humidity-min/max-%
-Fujitsu-8/90%
-Seagate-5/95%

Power Consumption
-Fujitsu-1.4 to 2.3 watts functioning
-Seagate-appr 1 watt standby/6 watts functioning


This is not a fluke; many hard drives, which cost the same amount as the factory Apple drive, are superior. There are tons of reports on the Fujitsu failing quickly, some within a few days of initial use. Apple should have used a better hard drive on such an expensive laptop. With that said, I love my MBP and had no problem getting a better one. I will continue to advise people to AVOID purchasing another factory hard drive as it is clear as day that you can do better for the same dollar amount.

Some of the Numerous Sources:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Laptop-harddisks-HDD-SSD-comparison.22089.0.html?&desc=1&sort=31

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=Seagate+ST9250410AS

http://www.directron.com/mja2250bh.html

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=e9f188b2ea9dd110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4777425&CatId=2682

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116168

Product review
http://www.google.com/products/cata...9250410AS&cid=11016687524722808046&os=reviews

http://www.zdnet.com/reviews/produc...mja2250bh-hard-drive-250-gb-sata-300/33629015

 

[gorichard]

Thanks for all the feedback on this. Laptop is due back tomorrow. Yeah

 

[sydenham]

I have seen plenty of stock hard drives in Apple computers. I have seen Fujitsu, Hitachi and Western Digital over the years. To say that Apple puts unreliable drives in their computers is stupid and you should refrain from saying it. To say the Fujitsu drives are any less reliable than other drives is stupid as well. Can you get a faster hard drive for the same amount of money? Yes I am sure you can, but don't insinuate that the stock drives are any less reliable than a drive from other manufacturers because this is not true.
Reliability
-Fujitsu-Unable to find consistent data
-Seagate-0.5% AFR

Real good proof there.

I also find it strange that you are bringing up the Momentus when people seem to be having the spindown issue with them. Reliable? We will see in a year or two.

 

[NickZac]

This is a public forum and if I want to say factory Apple drives suck, then I can. Especially because they do suck for such a high end computer that has so many positive features. Obviously, no matter what I say you are going to tell me I am wrong, so I am done discussing this with you.

I have seen plenty of stock hard drives in Apple computers. I have seen Fujitsu, Hitachi and Western Digital over the years. To say that Apple puts unreliable drives in their computers is stupid and you should refrain from saying it. To say the Fujitsu drives are any less reliable than other drives is stupid as well. Can you get a faster hard drive for the same amount of money? Yes I am sure you can, but don't insinuate that the stock drives are any less reliable than a drive from other manufacturers because this is not true.
Reliability
-Fujitsu-Unable to find consistent data
-Seagate-0.5% AFR

Real good proof there.

I also find it strange that you are bringing up the Momentus when people seem to be having the spindown issue with them. Reliable? We will see in a year or two.

 

[xlii]

It doesn't make logical sense that Apple would stick with a hard drive that has higher failure rates than other drives at the same price point. Every time a hard drive fails in an Apple computer that is under warrantee it costs Apple money (giving you a hard drive for free). Much better to Apple's bottom line to use parts that don't fail while the machine is still under warrantee.

 

[NickZac]

I agree with you. And Apple may have realized this as the new MBA has a completely different hard drive which is fully flash based. Also, the hard drives used in the MBP have changed brands without changing size which indicates for some reason (most likely cost), Apple switched up their hard drive source.

Quality wise, the MBP is arguably among the best of high end laptops. If you look as user reviews, professional reviews, consumer reports, and stories on this forum, it shows quality, style, capability, ingenuity, etc. The point of me noting that is most of us here can probably agree on the MBP being a fabulous system, which has made a profound impact on the portable computing world. If you look at long lists of consumer reviews, the amount of hard drive failures reported in these reviews are more frequent than other brands in the same price point. What complicates this is that users who have hard drives go bad still tend to rate the computer highly for overall quality, design, satisfaction, warranty service, and because of this, it is easy to see a 10/10 or 9.5/10 rating and move on without reading it as the MBPs have many many many ratings, and almost all are 8 and above. Because of this, people may only read the poor reviews and not be able to judge the scope of the hard drive reliability. The lack of data on some of the drives is also sketchy.

Finally, I make my argument in saying that the MBP hard drives suck because if you look at everything else in your computer, it is top shelf. Stuff like LED backlighting, LED lit keyboard, aluminum body, ergonomics, uniquely spaced keyboard, unmatched track/touch pad, etc is what characterizes this computer. The MBP should have a hard drive, which is dirt cheap, to match the rest of the computer.

Perhaps the 15 and 17 have better hard drives, but the 13 uses a hard drive which is inconsistent with the rest of the computer. And to be honest, if I still had my HDD in and it died, I wouldn't rate the overall computer differently as it has, by all measurable means, served me without any issue and has held up to the test of time. I think the hard drives are disappointing, but you can upgrade them for next to nothing and it is easy to upgrade. At no point would I ever say, 'the hard drives suck so don't buy the computer'; I honestly can say that 'even if they stopped selling them with hard drives you should still buy the computer'.

 

[Neolithium]

The stock drives are exactly why I toss aftermarket hard drives into my laptops. I have had bad experiences with Hitachi and Samsung (out of 40 hard drives, 8 Hitachi and 11 Samsungs died), Seagate and WD have both been very reliable for any of the work I've tossed at them.

 

[sydenham]

This is a public forum and if I want to say factory Apple drives suck, then I can. Especially because they do suck for such a high end computer that has so many positive features. Obviously, no matter what I say you are going to tell me I am wrong, so I am done discussing this with you.

You can say whatever you like. However when you try to indicate that Apple uses "unreliable" hard drives in their computers then I certainly will call you on it. They use most of the major hard drive makers out there. If you are trying to say that they should use "faster" hard drives in their machines then that is fine, we all know they could if they chose to. But to say that Fujitsu, Hitachi, WD and whatever other hard drives they get in bulk are "unreliable" is ridiculous. As I said before some people may actually believe what you say.

"If you look at long lists of consumer reviews, the amount of hard drive failures reported in these reviews are more frequent than other brands in the same price point."

This is complete garbage, are you making this stuff up?

 

[NickZac]

You can say whatever you like. However when you try to indicate that Apple uses "unreliable" hard drives in their computers then I certainly will call you on it. They use most of the major hard drive makers out there. If you are trying to say that they should use "faster" hard drives in their machines then that is fine, we all know they could if they chose to. But to say that Fujitsu, Hitachi, WD and whatever other hard drives they get in bulk are "unreliable" is ridiculous. As I said before some people may actually believe what you say.

We aren't going to agree on this. I have no issue with you questioning my credentials as you should (although the way you phrase things can come off as rather cold). As a consumer, people wanting the best information should look directly at consumer reports and customer ratings. They shouldn't trust EITHER of us, as you could be someone on Apple's PR team, or I could be the CEO of a new hard drive company that is trying to strike a deal with Apple. An educated consumer should check consumer reviews and let the data speak for itself. You and I can debate this all day without coming to a concrete answer or consensus, but the thousands of reviews on MBPs can show trends.

There is also the possibility that we are both right and wrong. Perhaps I am wrong in that the hard drives used are no different reliability wise in relation to the drive itself. At the same time, hard drive failure does occur more in Macs due to a smaller infrastructure compared to Windows. I really don't know the specifics on how that works, but there are numerous cases in which the same software on OSX v. Win does have different outcomes. Also, if the MBPs see more abuse than other laptops, then I am wrong as shock kills HDDs pretty easily (and the MBP hard drive is located in a different place than my other laptops). Perhaps the hard drives are not made to the quality of other hard drives and the single piece casing better protects the hard drives than other laptops and doesn't give a good picture (some people have reported picking heavier laptops up at 1 end causes a 'flex' when can be bad for the internals.

This is complete garbage, are you making this stuff up?

Yes, it is all fabricated. Only 3 people have ever reviewed a MacBook Pro and since I want to take over the hard drive world, I had to do something dramatic.