Macbook owners: warning about hard drive failures

divorcingjack

Hello all,

Just a quick warning whivh hopefully will save any Mac owners some money and heartache!

I have a macbook which is about 2 weeks outside warranty (just over 1 year old) and I was just browsing the other night when firefox hung and would not quit. This is unusual in itself!

I had to hold down the power button to get it to switch off, and when I went to reboot, I just got a startup chime and a blank grey screen. After a very long conversation with Apple, they diagnosed a catastrophic hard drive failure. GRRR.

After a bit more reading around on the internet, I discovered that a batch of Macbooks and some Mac minis were fitted with Seagate hard drives which were later recalled by Seagate for premature and total failure.

Apple DID NOT tell anyone or issue a recall of these drives.

If you have a Macbook, please check your hard drive model by clicking the apple and going to "about this mac".

If the drive code begins with ST, it is a Seagate drive - version 7.01 was the dodgy one. Model numbers affected include ST96812AS and ST98823A5.

After a "discussion" with Apple, I have been given an extended warranty for free replacement of my drive. If you have one of the drives, get onto Apple and get it replaced, or make sure you back everything up. The failure occurs with NO warning.

I was lucky and didn't lose too much, but people have lost data that is irreplaceable. Some drives fail within a few months of buying a new machine.

Hope this helps!

Best wishes
dj

isofa

It's worth reading the Mac press regularly about things like this, it was well covered in the printed edition of MacUser, and I suspect discussed on their forums at https://www.macuser.co.uk too.

Glad you got it sorted, lesson - backup, backup and backup.

Any HD can fail at any time, but this was known as a problem batch.

Stang

Luckily for me mine is a FUJITSU:T