If there’s a phrase that’ll put the fear of God into any mobile user, it’s “critical manufacturing flaw”, but that’s just what data recovery firm Retrodata has accused Apple of experiencing in some of their machines, particularly MacBook and MacBook Pro models, but also potentially Mac mini deskop units. Retrodata chief Duncan Clarke has gone public with his concerns that the 2.5-inch Seagate hard-drives manufactured in China and using firmware version 7.01 that Apple fits in many of these computers are experiencing hardware failure 20-30 times more frequently than any other drives his company receives.
The problem sees the read/write heads of the drive make contact with the storage platters, gouging tracks in them with no chance of repair. Clarke blames poor quality manufacturing standards in Chinese factories, but also saves some ire for Apple themselves:
“We believe that any sizeable manufacturer would by this stage be aware of such a problem and issue a product recall notice, or an offer to have the drive exchanged for a suitable alternative at their own expense” Duncan Clarke, Retrodata
Current advice for Mac owners with Seagate drives of Chinese origin is to make regular back-ups and consider replacing the storage. Neither Apple nor Seagate responded to The Register’s request for comment.
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.
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
Where do you check for this? Is it “Serial ATA”? If so mine’s Hitachi so I’m okay, right?
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.
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.
Yup, had a Seagate HD fail on my MacBook after about 10 months. Ugh.
My Mac Mini’s Seagate 5400 80gb died catastrophically just out of warranty, so it’s not just MacBooks I fear.
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
How would a user determine a suspect drive’s firmware info? Would it be listed in System Profiler?