Some MacBook hard drives contain fatal defect, according to report
By Nilay Patel 
posted Nov 27th 2007 4:30PM
posted Nov 27th 2007 4:30PM
We've been hearing vague rumblings about potentially flawed MacBook hard drives for a day or two now, but a report from UK data-recovery firm Retrodata finally backs up all the noise with some hard data -- according to the company, revision 7.0.1 Seagate drives manufactured in China have defective read / write heads that can become detached and slide across the surface of the platters, making recovery impossible. Apple says it's only received "a few reports" of the problem, but Retrodata says the issue is severe enough to warrant a recall. MacBook users will want to fire up Apple System Profiler ASAP and check under the Serial-ATA listing to see what kind of drive they have -- and probably start backing things up, just to be safe.
I don't know what they're talking about. I haven't experienced a singl.
yeah, I just lost my macbook, got the question mark of death!
Superfresh, you were so close to pulling that joke off but that period at the end killed it.
ROTFL.
No way.. he totally pulled it off. I got good laugh just now. +1 for superfresh!
Lesson of the day: English class makes you unfunny.
haha superfresh,
good thing i run windows,
never had a single problem,
no hardware or software acceptance issues,
no update issues,
not even a single Blue Screen Of Dea..........
"revision 7.0.1 Seagate drives manufactured in China"
I think all hard drives are made in China - with the exceptions of a few :P
This just happened to me and I was furious! I spent extra money on this laptop because I heard Apple computers lasted forever. My one year warranty had just expired when this happened. I lost all of my data and had to buy a new hard drive (which had a 3 year warranty ironically!) I sent angry letters to Apple, complaining that I shouldn't have to pay extra money for an extended warranty just in case they make a faulty product. Who cares if someone else makes it? They put it into their product. They should stand by that product. Bottom line: If you pay a certain amount of money for a product, it should have a longer warranty for certain issues. I didn't by a cheap computer and to ask me to buy an extended warranty on it is just a scam. Apple did care enough to call me back and hear my complaint, but did they admit fault? NO! They did nothing and they lost me as a customer. I was just thinking about buying an iphone, but I just don't trust their products anymore.
Maybe this will stop the "Apple can do no wrong" bull crap.
1) Apple has done plenty of wrongs. Many iPhone related.
2) Apple didn't make the drives with the problem.
This would not be the first Apple product to contain a defective hard drive, but it seems sketchy to pin on Apple.
My 600mhz G3 iBook had an IBM/Hitachi TravelStar (laptop version of the famous DeskStar AKA DeathStar). Puked after 2 or 3 years. Fortunately it gave me a death rattle for about a month before it died; plenty of time to backup my data and source a much higher-capacity drive.
It's not like Apple hasn't had the occasional quality problem with their products; at least wait for a legit Apple screwup before you start your trolling.
...and that China really can do no good. It's pathetic how whatever China touches turns to crap.
@jus10
Apple is liable.
If a third party makes parts for a car, who gets stuck with the recall obligations? Who gets stuck with the financial implications in the press?
Deal with it, stop apologizing for a company. They're a company, just like any other. And if this story pans out, then they are just as liable as any other company would be.
Look at Sony made batteries, they were included in laptops by many companies, is it the company that used that parts fault that they were sold defective merchandise?
If you have a car that is sold with Michelin tires, and the tires burst, is it Toyota's fault?
Yes, it is Toyota's fault. When you buy a car, or a computer for that matter. You are buying a complete product off one vendor. There may be lots of third parties who sold to that vendor, but the vendor in question is responsible for testing and making sure that all equipment that makes it to the consumer are in perfect working order. The party who sourced the parts to the vendor will probably have a hoard of memos fly to them, along with some monies changing hands.. But to us, the consumer, in this case Apple is at fault for not testing the drives for defects, no matter that its nearly impossible for Apple to do it, they are still the guilty party.
Apple can definitely stand blame *IF* they already know about this higher than normal failure rate (after all they are doing the replacements and should absolutely be tracking this data) and have failed to issue a recall before another Macbook owner loses their valuable data...
Clearly halycon404 was not around when tires were exploding.
prelude to the SSD.
Right now on this laptop, I'm using... 10 GB of space...
One for the OS and such, 6 for all my media, and 3 for the ton of programs and libraries I have installed.
So if I could probably get along fine with one 8GB SSD, but 16 would give me more headroom.
How much would an 8 GB SSD cost me?
Weird. Didn't include my full post. Sorry for the confusion.
Please stop while your behind.
What about his behind?
Crapola... I have this drive in my MacBookPro 2.0 ghz... i've been meaning to upgrade.. now sounds like a great time~!
Better yet, get Apple to pay for it...
Better yet, get Apple to pay for it...
Well... until either:
A) Apple acknowledges the defect and offers to replace it.
B) Seagate acknowledges the defect and offers to replace it
C) My drive actually dies (prayers)
I'm having a hard time thinking I'll get a new free drive to replace one that appears to be working fine right now.
Chris, you're being too skeptical.
I work for the University of Texas and we have about 17 of these bum macbooks. We took all of them back to apple over a period of the last two weeks and they are all getting new drives via apple for no charge. We staggered taking them in and the effect on our staff was minimal. Just waltz into your local apple store. It's real quick.
I hear ya... my only concern now is turn around time. Did you have to surrender the machine in order to get the replacement? Or can they order the drive and swap it right at the apple store? Did they replace it with the same size drive?
Ryan: So you just tell Apple you want the hard drive replaced?
Vista is the fatal defect on my hard drive.
Well that's easy enough to fix. If you get me some basic hardware info, I can tell you how well everything would work under Linux.
ethana2@gmail.com
Just stop.
The first one wasn't funny, and each one fails more and more.
My first gen macbook seagate drive just failed...wonder if its related!!! To bad I already got a new one...........
Apple has quality control issues with hardware? What a surprise! The fact it was Seagates fault is...
How long did Seagate know about the fault? And will Apple replace the drives... or will it wait for a class action suit before doing the right thing?
I wish I didn't recommend my mom should buy Apple. I should have guessed, since ALL my apple laptops have had defects from failed logic boards to hard drive failures (harddrive, then logic board failure in the first two weeks of purchase, another two logic board failures at the 3 year old stage).
I was blinded by pretty hardware and a decent operating system, but the hardware needs to actually work first and be reliable.
Sorry to hear that Ben. Usually these computers should just work. Hardware fails in both Macs and PCs. Unfortunately, I have seen end users with just really bad luck and computer after computer go down. Sounds like you're one of them :( -- That is unless you store these things next to a heater or a high voltage area.. or.. a giant magnet.
It's my high voltage magnetic personality I guess...er... Well, it could be...
Macs just work.
Yeah they work ....and then they crash
Had either of you considered that these drives are not just sold in Macs...
This is stupid, I bet half the people who are insulting Macs have never used one, nor the new operating system. I've had windows based computers my whole life, and about a year ago I got a MacBook, and its the greatest computer I've ever used. OS X Leopard is amazing too, definitely beats out vista like it promises
What a great way for a previously unknown data recovery company to get tons of free publicity.
Or did they?
Man, has Jobs been pissing on his worshippers lately or what? One die hard Mac friend of mine is now a EX-cult member. He no longer prays the "Our Jobs, who art thou in Cupertino, grant us thy coolness" mantra.
About time Apple starts showing their true colors... But of course, you'll still have a few old holdouts --- the diehards --- that will defend it with "well apple (may peace and blessings be upon them) didnt BUILD that hard drive! ..... they just chose the manufacturer and the specs and yada yada yada"
Sounds like a pretty legit defense to me.
Or do you have a better idea of who to blame?
Will Dell and Toshiba make your blacklist once it's revealed that, *gasp*, these drives aren't just in Apple products?
Laptops are just generally unreliable products. Apple may have tops in quality (source: Consumer Reports, past 5+ years), but the extended warranties on these things really pay for themselves.
... and obviously hypereric wants to blame Apple for not being able to see into the future and predict that a part from a reputable hard drive manufacturer will exhibit a failure some time down the road when they chose the hard drive to go into their MacBooks two years ago... right.
Apple is not clairvoyant. Obviously, they didn't intentionally give us a part that they knew would fail.
Lets see... I don't remember the exact stat, but the overwhelming majority of BSOD's on Windows machines were from drivers that --- gasp -- weren't made by MS; yet, Apple (see icon for Win machine in latest apple "OS") and its' followers love the BSOD thingy. That's why this, and all of the other Apple screw-ups lately, put a smile on me.
Apple worshippers are pathetic. Actually, I'll chnge that to sad. If you have ever been in a real cult or known someone in a real cult, you see it in the "Jobson's Witnesses". Rationalization, Cognitive Dissonance, Double Standards, etc, etc.
Example: A friend who is a pro photographer (no... not a portrait type, but big enough to be an asst photog on several national retail catalog & magazine shoots) came by my office a few years back. Back in the Win2000 days. I had a BSOD while he was there. He about fell on the floor laughing.
Not long after that, I went by his studio. His Mac (pre OS-X days) locked up so hard that he had to pull the power plug to get it rebooted. I didn't laugh (much). But, in retrospect, what was really sad is that he justified it with something along the lines of "must have been something I did". Typical cult thinking. The organization is never to blame.
And for those of you that think these drives were just picked up off the shelf from a local best buy in china and then put into a laptop, you don't have a clue. Anybody care to get the part number from one of these drives and see if tigedirect or someone like that carries it? Bet they don't. When your large company like Apple (yes yes, I know Apple worshippers: large companies are evil, but Apple is soooooooooo different) you don't choose a drive from a catalog and say gimme 250,000 of those. YOU tell Seagate what YOU want.
If you are anything _but_ an atheist, hypereric; I'm going to laugh, because irony is awesome.
My Macbook just experienced the question mark of death. Any ideas of getting some pics off the harddrive that weren't backed up, mostly everything else important was.
First they kill our kids with lead. Then they steal our WOW accounts. Now they kill our Apples. CHINA!!!
Is it really China's fault?
Who supplies the parts, and trains the supervisors (that in turn train the workers)? You can only blame so much on those sweat shop workers. This is just as much Apple's fault, as it is Seagate's, etc.
@ Tony
Jeez...way to kill the humour...
Good to know. I just checked and i have a Hitachi.
You could yank it out and if you have an external enclosure, you could try to plug it into that.
The only thing missing from this MacBook is a fresh coat of lead paint.
You know, I think that Apple's has fallen victim to its own hubris. I love my MacBook that I purchased for college, and I wouldn't have it any other way. However, I've noticed the quality of their products to have dropped significantly (do not mistake that word for "greatly" or anything like that).
In my opinion, I think the major changes to Leopard (which I own) are nothing special. Stacks are garbage, Spaces is fantastic, and I do like the transparent toolbar, but that's about it. The OS runs slower, takes longer to boot up, and performs at a lesser level than Tiger, imo.
Regarding the iPods, look at all the problems with the current generation, the iPhone's issues, and things of that sort. I think Apple has forgotten what garnered them such a great user-base (not large, but [maybe too] devoted).
Quality went down because they had to increase manufacturing. It is pretty much what happens to all these companies at one time or another and while it sucks balls it is no surprise at all.
As far as leopard though, I would look at if you did an upgrade or a clean install, because if you are running 1-2 gigs of ram leopard should run better than tiger. All of our macs, g5 onward at least, run far better with leopard. We used to have massive issues with finder crashing when accessing huge file directories over the network, and now we can access them with cover flow and have zero problems.
Apple can't be blamed for this.
If the drive was in a Dell PC would people blame Dell for the problem, I think not.
When the battery problem was reported did people blame apple for that, no Sony got the blame because they made the part, it's the same with this.
Bigger question is what other laptops are the drives in, is it going to end up being as big as the problem with the batteries and the same number affected.
Checked my MBP which is a few months old and I've got a Fujitsu drive in it.
Apple still controls how their laptops are made.
I don't think Fujitsu just sneaked into an Apple factory, and snuck some Fujitsu drives in them, do you?
Apple is responsible, or at least partially responsible for all their laptop problems, since Apple still makes them. If they're a good company, they go through tests on their laptops, to determine what should go into them.
So Apple IS responsible, because they chose the drive.
Actually, people do it all the time. In fact, people blame Dell, HP, Sony, etc. for Windows problems, malware issues, and hardware failures. I still hear people commenting about Dell Laptops exploding because of the battery. Nobody seems to remember that it was Dell that was one of the first that recognized the need for a recall. Then, other companies followed suite.
Sorry, my above comment was meant @ Jacob B
"If the drive was in a Dell PC would people blame Dell for the problem, I think not."
We aren't talking about PC's here; we are talking about laptops. If the drive was in a Dell laptop, people would be all over Dell. The only difference is Dell doesn't have blind fanboys.
Designed in California. Made in China. Wait! That is like half the stuff I buy!!!
Remember kiddies, buy HDs that are ES rated.
I hope Mossberg's MacBook has this faulty drive.
Strangely I had two hard-drive failures with my original MacBook, November '06 and March '07, so probably not related to this issue, but strange nonetheless.
Swapped to a MBP at the second failure, and have had no issues since.
Here, have a cookie.
He He........I knew it .........
My Mac Mini core duo has that drive... is this isolated to just Macbooks?
Give me a new hard drive Apple.
Just to be clear, anyone who's bought a machine with a 2.5" SATA drive in it in the past few years should probably do well to check the brand and the firmware revision on the drive, Mac or PC. It just makes no sense that Apple would be the only one to be hit with this if it was a bad batch of drives from Seagate.
Its really ridiculous how many people will sya its not Apple's fault. It IS Apple's fault because Apple picked the hardware to go in it. You Apple fanboys are crazy and are completely blind. Apple is a great company and usually do make great products, but this problem IS there fault and they made a bad product with it. So YES Apple is to blame and NO Seagate isn't. And as was said before if this happened with a different problem people wouldn't blame the company, well that person is crazy. It IS the companies fault.
Take a chill pill.
And btw how are Apple to blame? YES, they are responsible for replacing the drives in the users laptops, but NO it is not there fault that the hardware fails.
S**t happens, get over it
It is Apple's fault becasue they let the faulty hard ware into there devices.
Oh ye and apple can predict the future and knew it was going to be faulty in the years to come.
Here's the exact affected models.. guess I'm ok
“The affect drives -- model numbers ST96812AS and ST98823AS
yeah I agree Tim Flicke,
anybody who can't predict the future is just dumb.. that goes for mind reading and magic tricks as well.
Just like to add in that my HD died recently and yep it was the 7.0.1 revision. Back up people!
mine failed about 2 months ago and the guys at the apple store southlake swapped it out, no questions asked. took maybe 10 minutes, but i didn't wait for them to install OS X.
my system profiler says 7.01, not 7.0.1 is mine different or the same?
Same thing goes for OEM that don't provide the right hardware to run Vista or update their drivers but all the problems related to Vista is MS fault, not the hardware, third-party, companies. Apple has always had software and hardware issues
My hard drive went out. I recently upgraded to a WD 160 GB. Sucks a$$ and Apple won't even acknowledge the problem after a call (just over a year of normal use too). I've replaced a total of 4 hard drives in Apples' laptops, 3 of my own and 1 in my wife's coworker's.
You know ... stuff happens ... hard drives are cheap ... people who don't back up data are playing with fire anyways ... the mac is a pc as far as the hardware is concerned ... PCs can fail ... back your stuff up if you don't want to lose it.
It's not Apple's fault some hard drives are defective ... they'll take care of you if you are under warranty.
I have a Fujitsu in mine...
No worries!
I had a catastrophic drive failure on my MacBook Pro (200G version) - Tried Disk Warrior - etc. Completely unrecoverable. Installed a different (3rd party) drive in its place since I was working in Canada and couldn't wait the 2 weeks for the warranty replacement. When the replacement drive came in, I installed it in an external enclosure and it too has failed - not totally this time but I did lose some files that I had saved on it. Apple didn't make the drives of course but this kind of thing should be addressed aggressively and immediately when it is discovered. The folks at the Canadian Mac shop that I frequent when I'm here said they had seen several previous problems with the 200g drives in the early pros. Obviously not the same drives in the instance listed here but there are product runs that have critical defects in other places too.
Is this another one of those scenarios where Apple's stock price falls a couple points before we get an "oops, my bad"?
A friend of mine lost his MacBook HD a few months back. Pretty sure it was a Seagate.
Hard drives are generally unreliable devices. In fact, any device with moving components has a high probability of failure. That said, loose drive heads in this defect is a preventable occurrence. The question remains, is Apple to blame? Sort of. Is Seagate to blame? Definitely.
It seems that a lot of people on here seem to think that this hard drive problem is an isolated incident. Seagate's hard drives (as well as other manufacturers) both retail boxed and OEM editions have been known to have defects. These defects have appeared over the years and on many hard drive models. But, overall, I've seen less of this issue with Seagate than other hard drive manufacturers. As other people have stated that, yes, Apple choose the drive. But, they probably didn't specify an exact model... only the specifications that they needed. Seagate did the rest (especially related to manufacturing and quality control). No one can predict a defect, though. So, Apple's liability is limited to replacement of the failed component while the equipment is under warranty. If the issue is prevalent enough, Apple can issue a recall which will cover out-of-warranty equipment.
Since this equipment is OEM, Seagate may or may not replace the drive for the consumer directly. You may have to work through this issue with Apple.
If you are Apple bashing because of this issue, it makes no sense. Apple chose the drive, yes, but had no way to know it would be defective. I'm also sure that Seagate sent these drives out to more computer makers than Apple.
What it comes down to is that you should always backup important documents. Defects or not, hard drives are sketchy devices.. especially notebook sized drives. If you want easy recovery, you should make periodic snapshots of the hard drive as a fully bootable entity. This way, you can easily recover your hard drive (and documents) with minimal issue.
On MacOS X, it's simple to use 'dd' to create a perfect drive image on another external drive or a tape device. Since 500GB drives are relatively inexpensive now, make a dd copy and leave the drive turned off.
GAAAAAAHHH!!! ITS NOT THE HARDDRIVES!!! Its the Macbooks. L:SKDJFL:SKDJF:LSKDJF
Head over to the Apple forums. There are HUGE threads of people complaining about this, not all the Harddrives are Seagates. I have had 7, countem, 7 drives fail in my macbook, all different brands. The common denominator is that they were all in first run Macbooks, thus they would all happen to have old Seagates. Every single one resulted in head failure!
The specific issue they are discussing in this article is related to a drive defect. I'd also venture to guess that it's next to impossible for a MacBook to do anything to a hard drive that could cause the read/write heads to fall off and become loose inside the drive (scraping up the platters). The only specific thing that a Mac could do to exacerbate this issue is move the heads in rapid-fire succession way to accelerate the heads becoming dislodged from the head mount. But, the heads completely falling off of the drive arm is a quality control issue with the manufacturing of the drive and is not attributable to a MacBook specifically.
That isn't to say that MacBooks don't have other issues that may cause drive failures, but this specific drive failure issue with loose drive heads appears to be a manufacturing defect in the drives. Of course, a defective controller can fry a drive. I've also seen this happen. But, generally, when that happens, it's the electronics that get fried in the drive and not the drive heads directly. It's almost impossible for a computer to do anything physical to the drive and cause it to fail for that reason. Of course, there may be ways of banging the heads against the insides of a drive that may cause the heads to go out of alignment and also cause failure. Again, this is may be a MacBook issue, but it may still be another hard drive issue. Hard drive manufacturers should put safeguards in place to prevent such blatant misuse to a drive. It could also be a hard drive controller issue.
But, those hard drive failures you mention sound like a separate issues from this specific defect.
my Seagate drive crashed also a few weeks ago.
They needs to recall these!
I have had one fail so far. One day the computer just froze and I got a flashing folder with question mark. Took it to the repair centre and the tech said it was common thing with the MacBooks. The new drive I have is a Seagate 7.0.1 and I am literally waiting for it to fail after first reading about this problem weeks ago. Some MacBook owners have had three or four drives fail already! Apple's statement of "a few reports" is absolute BS. Seagate needs to own up to this and recall the drives as not everyone is covered by Apple's warranty anymore.
I'm confused how this is related to Apple. These are just standard Seagate Momentus hard drives that Apple happens to have bought - I have a 5400.2 (80GB) in my MacBook which is from Jul 06.
I would think other people with 2.5 in Seagate drives should check their stuff out - it's the same drive after all.
Also these drives have been failing for a while- but not widespread enough to know until now I guess, but I've heard that if you have a drive that fails Apple's been very good about fixing it (if you live near a store). Take it into the Genius Bar and they swap the HD for you.
I'm confused how this is related to Apple. These are just standard Seagate Momentus hard drives that Apple happens to have bought - I have a 5400.2 (80GB) in my MacBook which is from Jul 06.
I would think other people with 2.5 in Seagate drives should check their stuff out - it's the same drive after all.
Also these drives have been failing for a while- but not widespread enough to know until now I guess, but I've heard that if you have a drive that fails Apple's been very good about fixing it (if you live near a store). Take it into the Genius Bar and they swap the HD for you.
Time Machine, anyone?
how do i know if my computer has the problem? i have a serial-ata w 7.01 revision... it says its intell.. someone help fast, i have 2 macbooks like this
how do i kno if mine is seagate? i have an infected model # with the revision 7.1 and am backing up as a type this..
help would b greatly appreciated!
It may be more than MacBooks. My MacBook Pro had one of the Seagate drives and died recently. Just got it replaced.
What can we do to make sure this doesn't happen to us? I backup as often as possible, but my MacBook makes a funny noise sometimes.
What's funny is that the other day I was at the Apple store, and one of the "geniuses" was explaining to a customer with a bad hdd that its just internet hype and that there is NO way possible that this supposed "batch" could be defective. Lol what a moron.
i hate to break it to people, but if you have a computer, mac or PC, you should ALWAYS keep a consistent backup. it cracks me up to hear about people who blame apple or microsoft on their data loss. it's people's own fault for not backing things up. my old roomate had his powerbook stolen a while ago, but didn't break a sweat because he had his data on an external drive. they found the powerbook a week later, he restored his data. done.
it's hardware. it breaks. mac or pc.
Word. The company I work for replaces drives on an almost-weekly basis, and it's not that big a company. Maybe 3000 drives in production.
I do not want to know how much it costs NetApp to send a 144GB FiberChannel drive via UPS SonicAir (4 hours or less) to my desk.