MacBook Hard Drive Failures

keet83

i have had a macbook intel core duo since july 2007, the first batch of intel core duo. within the first few months the hard drive failed, so i took it to the mac store who replaced it for me. then in spring 2008 it failed again this time losing data i had not yet backed up, yes my fault, however it cost over £300 to retrieve back the data and i didn't manage to get it sorted untill october when it was again replaced with a new hard drive. only yesterday my hard drive failed yet again.

i searched about this, (having to use my parents computer), and discovered several forums stating that there has been problems with a certain firmware of the seagate 7.01 hard drive. i'm not quite sure what my first hard drive was but i know they replaced it with an hitachi and this current one is a fujitsu. i believe that it must be more than unlucky for this to have occurred several times and believe it may be something more serious, however i'm no computer expert. i read on one of the forums that if there had been 3 major faults then the actual product should be replaced rather than repaired under the 1979 sale of goods act in the UK. someone else had stated that they had been given a new replacement macbook after 5 failures, although they live in mexico and went through to apple US.

i wondered if this was true and what i should do about this problem? 3 failures in less than 2 and a half years is not acceptable, especially with such a reliable name as apple mac.

sinar

I'm assuming you didn't buy Applecare for your Macbook? if you did it's covered for 3 years, so just take it to an Apple store.

If you don't have the extended warranty, hard drives are fairly cheap (and some come with 3 year warranties) and very easy to install in a macbook, could you not just buy a new hard drive and install it yourself? I'm assuming all your data is safely backed up given the previous problem you have had.

keet83

i've still got it under the applecare 3 year warranty, and i know it is quite easy to replace the hard drive myself, however this is more about costumer satisfaction. i mean 3 failures all within a short space of time all to do with the hard drive. what's to say it wont happen again? last time i questioned them about if it was a regular problem they are having with this version of the macbook, they replied with saying, "no, we haven't had this happen before". there's many web forums disagreeing saying it has happened to them several times.

Blacksheep1979

you don't keep dropping/knocking it do you?

keet83

no i keep good care of my macbook. if i every carry it around its always in a padded laptop bag and never knocked about.

keet83

i ended up going into the store and they offered me a replacement hard drive of 160Gb instead of my current 120Gb, install snow leopard, originally on tiger, and extend the warranty for a further 12 months. they also offered a hard copy of snow leopard for £15.
:T
the guy also said because there has been several faults with the hard drives on this macbook then even if the hard drive failed out of warranty they take the history of this and replace it for free.
:j:j:j:j:j

if you have a failed item go in store and politely discuss your problems and they will offer you more than if you went in full throttle.
:beer:

The_Pedant

Sounds like a nice result!