MacBook SE (Late 2008) on its third HDD - WTF?

[MacinJosh]

Effin Opera for iPad seems to be buggy as sin. My long rant disappeared as this browser, while freakin fast on my POS internet connection, has a mind of its own. That'll teach me to copy whatever I type before posting.

Anyway, my stupid craptop had its second HDD death today. I must be cursed as I have pretty much had every computer I've owned have its HDD die at least once.

First time it happened was soon after the warranty expired. Living in Papua New Guinea for the last 2 1/2 makes it impossible for me to go to an Apple Store to try get them to do something. So I swallowed it and bought a new one...

...which died today after 1.5 years. Everything froze, BBoD... Had to hold power button to kill it. Nothing else I could do. It never booted again from the HDD. Disk Utility and Drive Warrior say it's a hardware failure and neither can repair it.

So, wtf is going on? Is my MacBook faulty? Now, before you say it, it's been sitting on the desk pretty much the whole time HDD#2 has been in it. No bumps or such, ever. I dont get it. How do I give an earful to Apple? Will they even listen?

Next purchase SSD, no doubt. My lovely TC is restorin my backup as we speak to a spare temp drive. Guy with my luck with HDDs gets to appreciate TM's hourly backups. Saved my ass several times.

 

[alust2013]

HDDs fail, and often at random times. There's not really anything your computer could be doing to eat the hard drives, sometimes they just fail.

 

[dizzy130]

Same thing happened to me...my 2007 Macbook destroyed two harddrives about a month apart so it's now on it's third. It's been fine for about 2 years now, though.

All you can do is keep your backups up to date.

 

[MacinJosh]

Ok, thanks guys. Seems like HDDs just don't like me then...

Well, restore complete and here I am just as I was before the failure. Gotta love TM.

Drive Rescue 3 can't even analyze the drive and Disk Warrior can't do anything to it. I guess it's toast?

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

I worked at the HelpDesk for a college that provided laptops to the students. All students of a particular graduation year got the same model. I had students that would have HDD failures twice a semester and students who never had them on the same model.

It's not your computer. With HDDs, the question is not if it will fail but when. Especially 2.5" drives, they tend to fail more often.

 

[MacinJosh]

I worked at the HelpDesk for a college that provided laptops to the students. All students of a particular graduation year got the same model. I had students that would have HDD failures twice a semester and students who never had them on the same model.

It's not your computer. With HDDs, the question is not if it will fail but when. Especially 2.5" drives, they tend to fail more often.

I guess when you really think about it, it's a small wonder they last as long as they do. I mean platters spinning at thousands of rpms and heads hovering over the surface. Data densities increasing year by year. Crazy. Just a few years ago I still had a *working* 20MB 5.25" HDD from waaay back. They don't make stuff like they used to.

I already had a vision of SSDs back in the mid nineties. Already then I was experiencing drive failures. On the Atari ST and Amigas we had Ram Drives which were stinking fast but would not obviously last a cold-boot. I envisioned a SSD like device that would replace conventional drives. This was before USB Flash Drives, heck, it was before USB.

Here we are and my "vision" is fulfilling. Looking for my first SSD now.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

They don't make stuff like they used to.

While this is contrary to your personal experience, I would argue that HDDs today are far more reliable than they used to be. Computers in general are longer-lasting as well. You have to take into account the volume of HDDs being made. Back when 20 MB was large capacity, the sheer number of HDDs being produced was a fraction of what is being made today. More numbers = more stories of failure. Thus, when any mass-produced item (cars, computers, appliances, anything that "isn't made like they used to") goes up in production significantly, the perceived reliability usually goes down even if actual reliability goes up.

That isn't to say that plenty of items today aren't produced at the same quality as they were years ago... there are plenty that truly are lower quality. HDDs aren't one of them, I believe.