Comments on: Some MacBooks experiencing HDD failure 20x more than rivals

By: Doug G

Doug G — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:25:32 +0000

How would a user determine a suspect drive’s firmware info? Would it be listed in System Profiler?

By: Duncan Clarke, Retrodata

Duncan Clarke, Retrodata — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:31:26 +0000

Re Mac Mini drive failures

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has suffered specifically from failures of the Chinese Seagate with firmware 7.01 – and especially those who had them installed in a Mac Mini (Minimal – would appreciate a contact – thanks.)

Contact via http://www.retrodata.co.uk

By: Minimal

Minimal — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:46:54 +0000

My Mac Mini’s Seagate 5400 80gb died catastrophically just out of warranty, so it’s not just MacBooks I fear.

By: arebelspy

arebelspy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:52:35 +0000

Yup, had a Seagate HD fail on my MacBook after about 10 months. Ugh.

By: Alysse M

Alysse M — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:37:45 +0000

Happened to me too…lost my hard drive after 13 months. I also had every other problem that has come up with the macbook…battery, case, etc. I had it in for service 4 or 5 times in less than a year before I gave up and sold the piece of garbage on ebay.

We had 2 Macbooks..purchased about a month apart. My husband has had all the same problems that I’ve had. I’ll be first in line to join the class action lawsuit that is inevitable.

By: Kev

Kev — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:13:56 +0000

Yep, same happened to me.
8 months in to a MacBook and the hard drive died.

Technically it was only 7 months, as Micro Anvika the shittiest Authorised Apple Service Centre known to man took 29 days to replace a dead logic board. Exactly 30 days latter the HDD died taking way too much info with it.

I couldn’t be arsed with another repair so ordered a new HDD off eBay, replaced it, flogged the old MacBook and went and bought a new one.

I will never learn not to buy Rev.A products.
I just can’t resist shiny new gadgets.

It was an 80GB Apple stamped Seagate drive that failed for me.
Not the greatest situation but hey it spurred me to go on somewhat of a spending spree and now have all my data slightly obsessively spread over 1.5TB of external drives with one for each category of data.

i.e: Porn, Torrents, Real good porn and finally a small 120GB drive for work stuff.

By: seagram

seagram — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:12:10 +0000

Where do you check for this? Is it “Serial ATA”? If so mine’s Hitachi so I’m okay, right?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:44:54 +0000

UNPOSSIBLE!!!! I run photoshop 24 hours a day and never had a hard drive fail in a mac ever!!! OMG Macs are the greatest computers ever and made from the best parts theres no way they would cheap out and use crappy drives!!! /sarcastic rank

By: Tom B

Tom B — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:41:37 +0000

I had this problem myself. I am disappointed Apple chose Seagate drives when they have the worst reliability of any major vendor but for, possibly, Maxtor. The Seagate drive failed without warning.

I swapped in a Toshiba and, fortunately, lost not much data since I’m pretty good about back-ups.

I WILL get another MacBook someday, of course. What’s the choice? A PC? No, thanks. I put the BLAME 90% on China, because we all know the Chinese govt is totally without business ethics, or standards, or quality control. Unfortunately, Chinese goods are also pretty hard to avoid.