Hard Drive #4 for the MacBook

Wait, so let me make sure I understand.

Hmm... When you buy a Mac, what you're basically doing is paying a premium for, uh, marginal hardware. Thereafter, when that hardware fails and you're looking for support, the customer service you receive is equally, uh, marginal.

Listen, folks can rave about Apple all they want, but Macs use mechanical bits, too, such as hard drives, which fail, and when they do, you still have to deal with a human. Apple does not have the volume of sales to lean out their processes and thereby force them to become efficient. Nor do their customers, who largely compute for image, enforce market efficiency back on Apple since they buy... you guessed it... marginal hardware for a premium for reasons other than reliability and value.

Four notebook hard drives failing in such a short period of time is statistically indicative of (a) a defect in the drives themselves which gives them a propensity for failure (design, manufacturing, poor QC), or (b) an external cause in the interface to the drive which causes it to fail. For example, image a scenario where a failing hard drive controller caused it to seek randomly for periods at a time, causing wear beyond spec for the motor in the "arm" inside the drive. This is not likely.

You should do a search in the Mac forums, which I presume exist!

In general, an end-user is not in any position to do anything to a hard drive mechanically, unfortunately .

I would attempt to find the underlying manufacturer for the drive, and try to get a compatible model from a different manufacturer.

Finally, I'm sure that with some persistence you can get some decent customer support. I would attempt to document the four failures and you may get some special consideration.


--Mike

 

Not likely. It could also be a problem with handling at the vendor you shop at, or just the fact that the drives you are using may be Toshiba/Samsung/Fujitsu/Hitachi.

 

Doesn't mean it's not the drives. If I'm correct, different manufacturers use the same plants to build their HD's, so you could have got a very unlucky batch or something...

I'd point the finger at the laptop though, especially when you said that more and more bad blocks were showing it. Seems the laptop is destroying the drives. Virus? I know they're rare on a mac, but it's what it sounds like.

 

Nope.

Not a virus. Either a bad power connection, or more likely a run of bad drives.

 

What type of Macbook do you have? I'd like to know because I have one also.

 

Just to make up for the people that post an apple link in threads that have to do with pc's not working.

www.dell.com
www.hpshopping.com

 

Makes sense.

 

This link might explain it. *YES*, it is a Mac-related problem, and, yes, Mac problems abound, contrary to what the fanboys claim. I had an iBook where the 'p' key died on me for no apparent season within 9 months of ownership. Apple has been suspected to be using substandard hardware in its machines, and that might explain my keyboard issue. It doesn't however, account for this hard drive issue, which is in fact due to a poor design of the hibernation/standby feature, one of the very few OS issues.

 

When I had a battery problem, I took it in to a local Apple store and they replaced it for me without even scheduling an appointment... I got a new battery mailed in 2 days... turns out there was a recall...

What do you mean Apple wont do anything without sending your laptop to them? Every Apple store as far as I'm aware has on-hand tech support if you schedule an appointment..

 

Maybe if you still have the orginial HDD from Apple, put in the comp, and take it to an Apple store or call AppleCare because you should still be in your 1 year warranty because the Macbook came out late spring late year, i think.

And which Western Digital drive, did you buy? Because there has been issues with one line of WD HDDs because they have built-in sudden motion protection, and various error correction methods, and that messes up the Macbook's own HDD sensor called the Sudden Motion Senor, so numerous people on various forums have noted that they cause kernal panics and I/O errors. And if Western Digital drives don't work to well, I suggest trying Seagate, Hitachi, or Toshiba drives. I personally have a toshiba in my Macbook, and it has been flawless.

 

My guesses would be 1 of 2, like what has already been said, a power delivery issue (which would be a problem with the motherboard. Another possibility that I've seen before, is a bad stick of RAM. However, the bad motherboard issue can show up as a memory error, so you may want to see if you can run any hard-ware testing applications on your machine.

 

Wow!

 

You're most welcome, I hope it solves your problems.

 

I'll pass, thanks.

www.apple.com

 

ive got 4 hard drives running in my Mac Pro since Aug. i havent taken off my comp since then and only have restarted.

no idea why yours are frying

 

That's funny.... an Apple product managed to screw up my hard drive too! When I installed iTunes 7.0, it was sooooo buggy that it forced me to do a hard reboot when it froze Windows 45 seconds after booting up, EVERY TIME. I didn't even have to run iTunes to have it freeze; it must have screwed up the registry or boot log or something like that. After 15 hard reboots in 20 minutes, the hard drive had had enough and threw in the towel. Microsoft might not be perfect, but I've never had an instance of their SOFTWARE causing a HARDWARE failure. Since that incident, I've made a promise to never purchase anything from Apple. Ever. If they're the only computer company left on Earth, I'll use a f$%#ing abacus.

What's in a modern Apple computer? Hardware originally designed for the IBM clone market. The GFX cards, hard drives, processors, sound cards, etc were all designed for and used in IBM clones long before they appear in an Apple. An OS based on BSD which was designed in the 70s. Apple simply puts on a shiny interface and sells it at a great premium. Apple is a marketing company, not a computer company... they sell an image, a persona, a statement. The amount of money people pay for their marginal products is astounding. The iPhone craze will hit this summer and people won't care when the touch screen malfunctions and they have a useless "phone," when the batteries suck, when they realize there's no need to have all that crap in a "phone"... because, hey, it's a status symbol: "Look at me! I have an Apple! I am smart and independent and different and progressive! You should all wish to be like me!!!"

And regarding not moving your computer when the hard drive is spinning... I'm pretty sure that's pure BS. Provided the forces aren't substantial (less than a few Gs.. I'm always moving around my 8 month old laptop and no problems yet), a true notebook HDD should keep on chugging. You do know that they use a hard drive in the Zune and iPod and several other portable players.... a true portable HDD is designed to handle the forces, some up to 100G. My guess? Apple is pawning off the reason for the HDD failures: "Whoops, looks like our design blows. Let's tell the customer they need to keep their 'portable' computer stationary and when the hard drive fails regardless of whether or not they moved their computer, we can blame it on their stupid arses. It's not like they know anything about computers anyway... after all they did buy an Apple from us!!!" Meanwhile, Steve Jobs is laughing his way to the bank as all his Apple minions continue to worship him.

So, if anyone still is unsure of my opinion of Apple, let me know and I can clear it up with another post.