# MacBook and MacBook Pro owners please read..serious



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

* we covered the Leopard Finder issue elsewhere* this is WORSE but limited to those with affected drives.



> Apple chastised for ignoring two Mac data loss issues
> 
> By Prince McLean
> Published: 01:00 PM EST
> ...


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## FeXL (Jan 2, 2004)

That's so last month...


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## hhk (May 31, 2006)

I have that drive and revision number. So you have me concerned, now what?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Where are you??

I would clone a back up and work off the external immediately.


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## WorldIRC (Mar 7, 2004)

I luckily have the Hitachi in my MBP


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## hhk (May 31, 2006)

MacDoc said:


> Where are you??
> 
> I would clone a back up and work off the external immediately.


I do daily backups. Running off an external drive kind of defeats the purpose of owning a laptop, doesn't it? 

What are the chances that Apple will fix this with a recall?


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## gwillikers (Jun 19, 2003)

WorldIRC said:


> I luckily have the Hitachi in my MBP


My MBP has a Fujitsu drive. Phew! I feel lucky too.


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## Pelao (Oct 2, 2003)

Apart from a statement from this company in the UK, is there any other supporting evidence that this series of drives has a problem?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Well we have not identified it with any particular drive but we've certainly had a few in MacBooks fail far too early so I'm not all that surprised there is a problem out there.


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## madhatress (Jul 22, 2007)

gwillikers said:


> My MBP has a Fujitsu drive. Phew! I feel lucky too.


Me too! :clap: 

I wonder what drive the MB I sold last month had in it? I never looked....


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

Whew. I have a Toshiba HDD in my MacBook. Awesome.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

I have a Toshiba drive in my Macbook as well, though I don't feel any safer. I've seen a lot of Toshiba 2.5" drives fail. My old 12" Powerbook had one, and it died... 

But so far so good.... I know I'll definitely be getting Applecare before my year is up.


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## Moscool (Jun 8, 2003)

Do I see FUD-ware?


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## groovetube (Jan 2, 2003)

fujitsu here too. That's wild to hear about seagate, the momentus drives were so great.

Was thinking of moving to the faster hitatchi drive upping ram, and selling the mac pro. Work on tis new beast the most now.


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

I'm sorry, I'm calling FUD on the part of the data recovery company. 

"The head may detach and plow into the drive platter, and that's bad" Well, yes that would be bad. 

But what is the likelihood of this happening? Is it more likely to happen *on a per capita basis* on these Seagate models than others? and is there any independent corroboration that the Seagates are more prone to this?
It mentions a specific Firmware level. Can the firmware be upgraded on the Seagate? Do these Seagate drives have the same problems in PC laptops, which outnumber Mac laptops 4 to 1 at least?

And where does the company extrapolate that Apple is "Utterly irresponsible" for not recalling machine for a Seagate-made component which has an alleged defect - alleged by only one source?

I have Googled some, and the only mentions are the sites that have picked up on this one company's press release. Realize that the drive recovery company has seen fewer than 100 units, maybe much fewer.

"he warned that you would need to see several hundred or several thousand drives with this problem to know for sure there is a design flaw.
Retrodata's Clarke concedes *he does not see these numbers of failures* as his is a small firm, etc." So far no other firm has been willing to agree that there is a systematic failure rate on the Seagates.

Yes, be backed up. That goes without saying

Now I want links and some corroboration of this story. Otherwise it is a small company with limited data getting free advertising by raising an alarmist speculation.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

The new MacBookPro which arrived Oct 1/07 had a Fujitsu drive in it, so I assume this issue does not apply - but just in general, how can a problem of the "read/write heads detaching themselves from the arm" be possibly be related to firmware?

Doesn't make any sense unless there just happens to be a chance correlation which is highly unlikely.


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

krs said:


> The new MacBookPro which arrived Oct 1/07 had a Fujitsu drive in it, so I assume this issue does not apply - but just in general, how can a problem of the "read/write heads detaching themselves from the arm" be possibly be related to firmware?
> Doesn't make any sense unless there just happens to be a chance correlation which is highly unlikely.


If the firmware of the drive, or indeed, the routines in the OS, are faulty and do something silly like slam the heads against the stops repeatedly (click of death, remember Iomega Zips?), or 'park' the heads on a data area rather than the safe 'landing strip', then they could increase the chance of hardware failure. 

We had an example long ago (Macintosh IIci timeframe) of Apple firmware that on Shutdown didn't allow the drive enough time to write the contents of the cache to disk and park the heads before the juice was cut... that caused lost data (not hardware breakdown, but the net result to the owner was pretty hard to differentiate...)


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## zmttoxics (Oct 16, 2007)

I have a different seagate. Those model numbers look like 60 and 80 gig disks, which probly meens they are getting old anyways.


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## Ottawaman (Jan 16, 2005)

daneoni said:


> About Hard Drive Update 1.0
> The Hard Drive Update 1.0 includes bug fixes and important updates for the following systems:
> iMac Core 2 Duo (Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later)
> Mac Pro (Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later)
> ...


http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=383459
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/harddriveupdate10.html


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## Gamalen (Sep 7, 2007)

If you are really worried about the seagate hard drive, there is always the option of just buying a new 2.5 SATA notebook hard drive (Toshiba/ Fijitsu) and replacing the seagate one. The prices have significantly dropped in price. I just upgraded my 80GB hard drive to a 160 GB for less than a $100. Just clone it your existing hard drive and move it over to the new one. It took me less than 5 minutes to replace the hard drive and an hour to move everything over. You can use the seagate hard drive in an external enclosure to use it as an external hard drive. Or if you have no morals, sell the seagate hard drive to recoup some of your costs.


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## cchaynes (Oct 25, 2007)

well i have a newer macbook and it has a fujitsu.

this however does not make me feel any better, fujitsu has had some brutal recalls over the years, the only drive i have ever had fail was a fujitsu....

oh well, thats what time machine is for, need time machine via network!!


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## hhk (May 31, 2006)

I have been using my MBP for almost a year now and have had no problems. I will wait until I see more confirmation of this "problem" before I do anything about it. Of course, I will continue to backup. I also need a bigger drive anyways so this problem will go away when I upgrade in the next few months.


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## lreynolds (Dec 28, 2005)

I have a 1st gen MacBook, and the HD failed on me weeks out of warranty. I didn't check to see what was in it, but Apple replaced it for free, and the new one is a Toshiba.


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## JAGflyer (Jan 10, 2005)

I have a Fujitsu in my MBP, guess I'm ok then?


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## Ian Seyler (Nov 15, 2002)

I just purchased an updated MacBook (Santa Rosa chipset) and it was shipped with an 80GB Hitachi hard drive.

The only issue I have with the MacBook so far is that sometimes the keyboard doesn't respond! Looks like I am not alone either...

Leopard bug: keyboard goes off into space after wake from sleep? - Topic Powered by eve community

-Ian


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## treif (Jul 12, 2004)

*Widespread problem or Chicken Little?*

Thank you CanadaRAM, for the voice of reason. Given the sheer number of drives manufactured, there will always be some lemons. This is true of most electronic devices, especially with the lower quality of today's componentry in general. 
Fact number 1-hard drives fail. Fact number 2-EVERY MacBook comes with the ability to burn either CDs or DVDs, so only back up the data you want to keep. Fact number 3-external drives are so inexpensive these days there are no justifiable excuses for not backing up your laptop. So back up early, often, and get some sleep.


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## hhk (May 31, 2006)

treif said:


> Thank you CanadaRAM, for the voice of reason. Given the sheer number of drives manufactured, there will always be some lemons. This is true of most electronic devices, especially with the lower quality of today's componentry in general.
> Fact number 1-hard drives fail. Fact number 2-EVERY MacBook comes with the ability to burn either CDs or DVDs, so only back up the data you want to keep. Fact number 3-external drives are so inexpensive these days there are no justifiable excuses for not backing up your laptop. So back up early, often, and get some sleep.


True but nobody wants their hard drive to fail. It's a major hassle no matter how diligent their backup routine. So, I'm glad to know about this potential problem. It keeps me honest about my backups.


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## treif (Jul 12, 2004)

hhk said:


> True but nobody wants their hard drive to fail. It's a major hassle no matter how diligent their backup routine. So, I'm glad to know about this potential problem. It keeps me honest about my backups.


Certainly a major hassle, but in the scheme of things germaine to drives I don't believe this is a new issue. From what I've seen working on computers in general (not restricted to Macs, because I don't reside in heaven, darnit!) for 20 years, the most failure-prone drives have been IBM deskstars, then Maxtor, then WD, and then Seagate. Just because you have a Seagate drive does not mean press the panic button, stick frowny faces on posts and freak people out. Any authorized service provider should exercise restraint and due diligence before doing this, especially in this kind of a forum rather than in an actual conversation.
If you want the wisdom of thousands of users of specific hardware, I'd refer to xlr8yourmac.com
I hope this doesn't sound hostile! Just trying to apply perspective...


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

There are specific models and specific firmware involved and if you have those you bloody well SHOULD press the panic button.

We have warned again and again that we are seeing a large number of failures of 2.5" drives EVEN LATE MODEL.

Another larger data recovery firm got pissed enough to make it public that they think Apple has a problem with that series of drives.

If you want to be sanguine about catastrophic UNRECOVERABLE data loss by all means it's your privilege to do so.

We on the other hand will issue warnings when we think the circumstance warrants and in this case we certainly do.

If you had a portable with one of those drives and in that range of firmware what would you do? Ignore it??

I'm curious if you even read the OP



> certain 2.5-inch Seagate SATA drives, commonly found in notebooks such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro.
> 
> "The read/write heads are detaching from the arm and plowing deep gouges into the magnetic platter," says Retrodata Managing Director Duncan Clarke. *"The damage is mostly on the inner tracks, but some scratches are on the outer track -- Track 0 -- and once that happens, the drive is normally beyond repair."*
> 
> *The problem is reportedly prevalent with Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives that are manufactured in China and loaded with firmware Version 7.01. Model numbers affected include ST96812AS and ST98823AS.*


*

That is a VERY specific warning.*


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## treif (Jul 12, 2004)

*FUD = fear, uncertainty, doubt*



MacDoc said:


> I'm curious if you even read the OP
> 
> That is a VERY specific warning.


I certainly read the "OP", I wonder if you even read the considered responses from CanadaRAM. Or stopped to ponder my main point, which is...have a current backup, and avoid catastrophe. As your sig. stresses.
I have been an ehMac member for 3 years and have 55 posts. I really have to be moved to throw in my 2 cents. That VERY specific warning came from one source.
Besides, emoticons are so PeeCee...

FUD is also Scottish for...well, check wiki...


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## genuineadvantage (Mar 14, 2007)

I do have a Seagate... thankfully though its the ST980811AS  Firmware version 3.CAE Thanks for the great find Mr. Doc!


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yeah well two clients have already contacted me to change their drives.
Catastrophic failure is gives no warning and both of these clients and I'm sure others will feel much more secure without a problematic drive.

There is no reason on earth for the recovery company to lie about this.

Your approach is a disservice to the community. You have NOTHING to say the head of the recovery company is incorrect in the warning.

We have many many 2.5" drive failures we've been warning about. We get 10 or so a month and some from newer machines.

Earlier in the year we had a rash of failures on MacBook drives - with a week of new.

We did not at the time associate a particular model and of course they went back to Apple service. Most we had zero recovery.

With a higher number of incidents it's clear the company issuing the alert has determined a problematic model.

Ignore it if you wish, let others make up their own mind.
We don't issue these likely - we make our assessment on 23 years of serving the Mac community.

A quick google on MacBook hard drive failure returns lots...



> MacBook hard drive failure epidemic
> Posted: May 15, 2007 9:52 AM
> 
> I'm an IT guy at a medium size ad agency and I've had 3 MacBook hard drives die in the a similar way in the past 3 months. I'm told that the computer was on low battery when they put the machine to sleep and the next day (or later) that machine failed to restart. Even with the power adapter a restart produced only a flashing question mark. All the user's information is completely gone and not retrievable.


Apple - Support - Discussions - MacBook hard drive failure epidemic ...

Gone not retrievable.



> Hard Drive Failure
> I have had *4 replacements Apple laptops from Apple in 18 months.* If you believe in Murphy's Law and Probability theory then that means Apple reliability CAN NOT be relied on i.





> Harddrive on brand new Macbook (2 months old) failed catastrophically. Our local experts here in SF (Rosai Group) is currently running recovery software, but to no avail. I'd like to hear mefites recommendations for data recovery firms.
> I don't care about my software, but I've got about 15 gigs of files I want off that machine.
> 
> Don't worry about telling me to back up, I have much of the totally critical old stuff backed up, but this would lose me about 6 months of day-to-day work.





> A sad day for me… My prized Mac Book Pro just died only 6 weeks after arriving. I powered it up the day after boxing day to hear the lovely noise a Mac makes when you power it up… Followed by a rather unusual noise… A noise I've heard before… A noise that brought back memories of data loss… anger… and regret that I hadn't backed up…
> 
> …Except this time I HAD backed up. Fortunately I have lost very little. What I have lost is the entire laptop for 2 weeks while Apple replace the drive.
> 
> My concern is that this is the second time in 2 months





> The drives all shipped with firmware version 7.01, and this can be checked inside Apple System Profiler. The people that found it have gone as far as to suggest replacing the drives proactively (even without any recall in effect), and are saying that Apple should initiate a recall immediately.
> *Having had one of these drives fail under those exact criteria…* I’m taking this one personally. I want my $22 for an advanced Seagate RMA back. *My Seagate OEM 100 GB 7200 RPM hard drive that I had in my last MacBook died in exactly the manner that this “future recall” dictates*.





> MACBOOK HARDDRIVE FAILURE
> Posted on July 16, 2007 at 12:45AM
> The harddrive in my MacBook decided to die on Saturday afternoon. Wasn’t doing much — had a few programs open and was in the process of checking out some books from the British Library. Tried to load up some bibliographic software, got the spinning beachball and most of the programs locked up. So, I did a hard reboot. After turning it back on, I received a grey screen with a blinking folder containing a question mark.
> 
> ...


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

I'm not saying that the recovery guy is lying, but that his sample size is small, and SURELY with 100,000's of Seagates of these models in circulation in all brands of laptops, there would have been some other corroboration of this. But there isn't, at least as I have been able to find on Google. Remember the 'stiction' on the Sony drives, and the 'Deathstar' IBMs - they were all over the media (and later, the 'net) with reports from many many different companies.

Yes his claim is specific. Doesn't mean that it is true across the larger population, or that it necessarily points to a defect in the particular drives. He doesn't say how many of this type of failure he has seen, or what the proportion is vs other brands. He doesn't even know what machines these drives came from, for example, or why they are in for service or recovery (such as, customer dropped the machine). There's just way too many variables.

In your experience of failed drives, MacDoc, could you say 
a) what proportion of these were Seagates vs Toshiba, Fujitsu & Samsung? 
b) what proportion of the Seagate were these particular models
c) how many of those drive head detachment as opposed to all the other causes of drive failure (I know you can't say on yours, because they go back to Apple without being opened. I'm just making a point that the guy's methodology in declaring a systemic problem is potentially faulty)

(Note: only one of the quotes above refers to the Seagate in question. We don't know what the other brands were, or indeed what the actual problems they had were, except for the IT guy with the three MacBooks - He said in the linked article that they were Fujitsus. Oops  )

'Course there's motivation for the recovery guy to make a sensational press release and accuse Apple of outlandishly dastardly things. He's a small fish in a big pond. If he thinks he has a scoop, he's going to want to get some traction out of it. How many 'independent security labs' have announced the discovery of Mac viruses or vulnerabilities? And the moment he moved from saying "Based on our experience Seagate may have a manufacturing problem" to "Apple's irresponsible' and 'the drives are from China, what do you expect" he lost credibility big time.

So I think it's premature for people to panic and start pulling drives because they are this model number. Yes, back up - no question about that.
But I wouldn't pull the trigger on yanking drives until there is more than just one guy saying it.

If I was to be worried about anything regarding an 'epidemic' of hard drive failures in MacBooks (hard drives of all brands), I would be worried about the APPLE firmware having a flaw that parked the heads in the middle of the drive on low battery or sleep, or something like that.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

If you read the post you will see one other corroboration on that EXACT drive and no I have not coorelated with a specific model - Apple snags them back immediately - BUT I've seen far too many and very very early in their product life - within weeks of new as any number of people have experienced on the web.

THEY DO NOT GET TO SEE THEIR OLD DRIVE.

One person is under warranty - so you blame thenm for being proactive.

Another needs more space so is choosing not to take the risk.

I would not either.

The ONLY one with enough info is Apple and you can bet they won't admit to it. They are the only ones aside from last ditch recovery that see the failed drives.
How would users know what they had in the machine??

What's your explanation for early catastrophic failure???/

I've NEVER seen it before.

C'mon - look at the multiple failures even with a single user. This is simply NOT a normal pattern.

He is saying he's seeing 20x the failures against other models.
What's your explanation??



> MacBook hard drive failed - software recovery options?
> By peroty May. 16, 2007 ¦
> 8 Responses (Latest Response)
> 
> ...


These are catastrophic failures...I've tried to recover some - impossible...FROM NEW MACHINES???!!!...give me a break.



> September 26th, 2007
> 
> My poor little macbook is once again in the throws of hard drive failure. I returned from lunch and attempted to unlock the screensaver, to find that bringing up the login dialog took ~2 minutes. The only large processes running at the time were firefox and azureus on a machine with 2gb of ram. When I was finally able to login, I noticed an error message from azureus regarding failed writes. At that point, I craned my head towards where the hard drive was located. That tell-tale click-grind-whir noise was repeating softly above the fan noise. I


I understand drive issues with iBooks and older Powerbooks......they are getting into their service life and far and away most often it's bad blocks.

Not on new machines, it's wrong, there is something amiss and I don't blame anyone for swapping one of these drives out.



> Kiza's place
> main » software » declunk
> Mac Mini hard drive "declunker"
> 
> ...


Kiza's place » software » declunk

Coincidence???


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

In the Apple MacBook forum thread among the drives mentioned by brand I count 7 failed Hitachis, 4 Fujitsus and 3 Seagates, two of which were the subject models, one was a user installed 7200 RPM. That's trending away from the conclusion that the Seagates are much more problematic.

A relevant quote from that thread: "this cannot be a rash of bad drives...! The stats are too many and from too varied an array of drives and too much tied to users of Macbooks.."

What I am saying... if there is a problem I don't think it is specific to those Seagate models - the reports don't support that conclusion. 

Coincidence? I think there may be a problem with MacBooks and SafeSleep (maybe plus people shutting the machine and dropping it into their carrying bag while it is still writing the cache file) or maybe with the Apple firmware. I don't know. It looks like there are enough people complaining about early failure that it may be a systemic MacBook thing - 3 or 4 in one machine is not a normal pattern, certainly. But the $64 question is -- what is the causality? Is it the drive, the machine, the user, the environment?

Tell you a story: we had a customer whose network kept going down. The routers went non-responsive. We replaced 3, maybe 4 routers (all of the same model) and they all failed within 2 months. We eventually tracked it down -- behind the walls, the electricians had driven a staple through an Ethernet cable and nicked an electrical cable -- just enough to leak some AC into the Ethernet line, and burn out each router after a month or 2. It would have been very easy to conclude that the whole batch of routers was substandard.

I just don't believe that UK guy unless he comes up with hard numbers, and unless there is third party confirmation.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

So has this now become only a potential MacBook issue or do I need to worry with the MacBookPro as well?

At one point it sounded like all 2.5 inch drives in general suffer from reliability issues but now the focus seems to be on MacBooks only.


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## treif (Jul 12, 2004)

Thank you CanadaRAM for your considered response. I find it quite apropos of this discussion that Apple very recently issued a firmware update for certain iMacs and Macs Pro for...hard drive firmware.
I agree that while drive failure followed by zero success in any data recovery is troubling, it is a fact that some drives last 20 years and some fail very early on. I would like to see some numbers on drive reliability related to the newer technology used to provide significantly higher data capacity in 2.5" drives, i.e. perpendicular recording, etc.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

> In the Apple MacBook forum thread among the drives mentioned by brand I count 7 failed Hitachis, 4 Fujitsus and 3 Seagates, two of which were the subject models, one was a user installed 7200 RPM. That's trending away from the conclusion that the Seagates are much more problematic.
> 
> A relevant quote from that thread: "this cannot be a rash of bad drives...! The stats are too many and from too varied an array of drives and too much tied to users of Macbooks.."
> 
> What I am saying... if there is a problem I don't think it is specific to those Seagate models - the reports don't support that conclusion.


You have no basis to conclude anything about branded failures from the Apple forum - 99% of those suffering the problem never see the drives. They go back to Apple.

In actual fact the higher number of other non Seagate mentioned could just as easily be confirming the recovery firms position- that the Seagates fail catastrophically. End users don't see the model - 
The other brands may be failing in a manner closer to normal where there are recoverable files. All brands will have SOME failures early on. ALL brands have some models with higher failure rates than others and with different TYPES of failure associated with them. I ran across one site that noted the type of failures certain brands of drives experienced.

It may well be more prone to occur in MacBooks due to sleep and age profile of the users. It may well be a combination of the Seagate propensity to sleep and park the heads as the MacMini owner noted. I found his post very informative and in keeping with the recovery firm - the heads are failing and detaching and he gave a very plausible reason.

But there is ZERO motivation for a drive recovery firm to single out two models and not say twice the number, not even 10 x the number but *TWENTY times the number over other brands/model.*

Now I just spoke to a senior tech who DOES see the drives when they come in for Apple service and he handles notebook repairs for several firms. He's been in the Mac biz longer than I have. His comments

a) an inordinate number of failures in early MacBook and MacBook Pro - very few with recent revisions of either.

b) almost EXCLUSIVELY Seagate - that's what Apple WAS using - 

We also are seeing far less now than we were earlier in the year and last year.

The language that HE used about the issue was far less polite than what I've indicated here.

•••••

For the record.
Seagate is our number one recommended brand so we have no bias against them. We are a Seagate partner and buy hundreds of their drives.

*We have never liked or trusted sleep mode for a variety of reasons and recommend not letting drives spin down on their own. This includes desktops. *

With portables, it is our advice to *shut the machine off and make sure it's completely off before moving it.* Leopard in particular takes its time to complete the shut down ( we approve of this trend as it indicates more attention paid to complete dismount of devices and a stable state and may improve boot times ( we note caching ).

I think people have enough info to make their own risk assessment and once more I ask and have not gotten an answer.

*If it was your portable with one of the designated problem models in it, what would you do?

If it was your client or associate with one of the same model in their portable...what would you do?*


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

My basis is the same as yours -- of the brands reported in the thread you linked to, 7 vs 5 vs 3. The rest are unknown and we can't draw any brand conclusions one way or another on the unknowns. 

Now your independent comment from the technician *is* new information. It throws more weight on the possibility of a Seagate specific problem.

I've given you my answer -- I would not act based on a single uncorroborated report from a small recovery firm in the UK who uses inflammatory language and does not provide numbers. They may be right -- but on their own they are not credible. I would make my decision when there are hard numbers and independent corroboration.

The thing that worries me is I can find no similar reports of head failure on these drive models from Dell or HP or Acer or IBM owners. This leads me to believe that there may be a problem specific to MacBooks, and it may affect more than just 2 models of Seagate.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

I also think it's related to Apple head parking/sleep functions - he says flat out its a design error.

We'll never see the numbers out of Apple for reasons I mentioned.

The MacMini guy confirms the overly active head parking of the Seagate's in question.

I feel sympathy for the recovery guy - I detest when people lose their data especially when it's "out of the norm" failures like this and catastrophic meaning unrecoverable. Can't blame him at all for strong language.

Not like I don't rant about backing up 
We do make money on recovery DESPITE our best efforts to never have a client in that situation. I'd rather make it on the safety not the disaster.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

any other questions 



> Apple aware some MacBooks contain flawed Seagate drives
> 
> By AppleInsider Staff
> Published: 12:00 PM EST
> ...


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## Irie Guy (Dec 2, 2003)

Well finally paid attention to this thread and now I am ultra paranoid. I have a 1st Generation MBP with one of the mentioned drives.

ST98823AS: 
Capacity: 74.53 GB
Model: ST98823AS
Revision: 7.01

This is my work machine and is pretty mission critical. I am the only Machead company wide and I am not sure how I convince the powers that be that I should be replacing my HD. Is this a fairly easy to replace drive for the user.


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## Benito (Nov 17, 2007)

You guys had me worried about this. I just checked and I have a Fujitsu HD.


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## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

*Seagate Drive*

I just swapped out my drive for a new toshiba 160GB, and guess what:

Seagate Momentus 60GB? Yep.
Made in China? Yep.
Model: ST96812AS, check.
Firmware: 7.01...

I was going to use it as my backup drive for Time Machine, I'll have to rethink that strategy! The SECOND a recall is announced I'm sending it back with love for a new one. I back up religiously but I also use superduper to clone my drive. I'd have been sooooo upset if it died on me mid copy considering the other leopard data loss bug.

I just have to say, I love my Macbook. But it's the one and only time I've bought 1st gen apple (my hand was forced by, ironically, a dead iBook hard drive) and until I see a recall or warrantee plan I have to say this doesn't encourage me to do so again.

Thank you Macdoc for the concern. It's good of you to be concerned for other peoples sanity. :clap: A dead hard drive is THE biggest heartbreak for the unprepared.


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