This is what we get with wanting cheaper and cheaper goods, globalization and getting the Chinese to make everything. Meanwhile in Derry N Ireland over 900 skilled workers loose their jobs. If ever Apple shut their Cork plant and move overseas to China, us Europeans can expect to see the standard in quality of pro desktops drop.

Subject says it all, but yeah, I've had two drives fail in my black MacBook (Late 2006). After the second replacement I asked the Apple "Genius" at the Apple Store how many more times I'd go through this before they just replaced the MacBook, and was told the drive failure wasn't Apple's fault, so, tough luck.

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iGrouch wrote:
This is what we get with wanting cheaper and cheaper goods, globalization and getting the Chinese to make everything. Meanwhile in Derry N Ireland over 900 skilled workers loose their jobs. If ever Apple shut their Cork plant and move overseas to China, us Europeans can expect to see the standard in quality of pro desktops drop.

I have the ST98823AS firmware 7.01 drive in my Mac mini and I've had data corruption issues since the very beginning. As a result, I keep a clone on an external HD.

I hope they figure out what's happening and fix it quickly (that includes replacing the drives!).

The drive in my MacBook failed about 2 weeks ago. Not sure of the model number, but the model number of the new one is ST96812AS. Oh joy. I've been extra diligent about backups ever since I received the new drive. Usually I will back up once a week, but now it's daily, or even a couple times a day, especially when I complete a project.

This sucks. I hope Apple investigates and does something about this.

Americans really make no sense and often are quite hypocritical. Americans love to talk about human rights and freedom. Yet, what do they do? They support one of the biggest enemies of both. Namely: China. All big business in China is either owned by members of the Communist Party or people with close connections to people in the Communist Party. So, when you buy a product that is made in China you are supporting the Communist government and sending money over there that supports their economy not Americas.

Worse, Communist workers make very little money, have no political voice, and often are political prisoners. Buying Chinese products support that as well.

I love how Google's China search engine was given a hard time for censoring information on the web as the Communist government required it to do, but meanwhile our government is supporting free trade with China and giving big tax breaks to American companies who move their manufacturing operations overseas.

If you're going to do a geo-political rant, take it to the appropriate forum. This is about the quality or otherwise of Seagate drives.

My macbook hard drive went bust a couple of days ago. Its serial number is ST96812AS. It seems that apple is ignoring quality in quest to make quick bucks. Mr. Jobs are you listening?

macBook Pro with Fujitsu hard drive.

Make a quick buck? Macs have suffered from the whining of non-users for years "wah! they cost too much!"
So when they do what every other manufacturer does; buy cheap parts. Dell does it like ganbusters. Lenovo IS overseas, Acer too...
There's a legitimate gripe to be made about outsourcing, but this is not it.

Sheesh. Have some perspective.

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Anonymous wrote:
My macbook hard drive went bust a couple of days ago. Its serial number is ST96812AS. It seems that apple is ignoring quality in quest to make quick bucks. Mr. Jobs are you listening?

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Intruder wrote:
Ahhh, yes. Because Apple controls what Seagate does.

No argument. However, to call this an Apple design flaw (which folks are alluding to) is disingenuous.

It is likely that Apple will replace the drives with ones from a different vendor. Saying that they are "ignoring quality in quest (sic) to make a buck" is trolling. All manufacturers get hit with parts that have issues. That is a fact of manufacturing. See the mass recalls of power supplies and batteries for various computer manufacturers.

Implying that Apple effectively said "give us the cheapest parts you have, we don't care if they work" is BS.

Once upon a time.... (1998)

Seagate was known for making very good SCSI drives and horrible IDE drives, so horrible infact that they were forced into the "cut rate cheap" pricing level because no one would buy them otherwise. Then Seagate figured out that using spare parts from their high quality SCSI drives that didn't meet quality control standards in consumer market drives was a bad move, so they stopped doing that. Since 2002 Seagate has made very good consumer market hard drives, so I doubt anyone can provide a serious basis for accusing Apple of cutting corners to make a buck because they use Seagate drives.

No, it seems to me that it's a Seagate screw up since it's being called a design flaw, however since design flaws affect every single drive made with the design, I'm confused as to why they haven't issued a general recall.

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Guest wrote:
Subject says it all, but yeah, I've had two drives fail in my black MacBook (Late 2006). After the second replacement I asked the Apple "Genius" at the Apple Store how many more times I'd go through this before they just replaced the MacBook, and was told the drive failure wasn't Apple's fault, so, tough luck.

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daemon wrote:
Once upon a time.... (1998)

Seagate was known for making very good SCSI drives and horrible IDE drives, so horrible infact that they were forced into the "cut rate cheap" pricing level because no one would buy them otherwise. Then Seagate figured out that using spare parts from their high quality SCSI drives that didn't meet quality control standards in consumer market drives was a bad move, so they stopped doing that. Since 2002 Seagate has made very good consumer market hard drives, so I doubt anyone can provide a serious basis for accusing Apple of cutting corners to make a buck because they use Seagate drives.

No, it seems to me that it's a Seagate screw up since it's being called a design flaw, however since design flaws affect every single drive made with the design, I'm confused as to why they haven't issued a general recall.

I may have missed this in the general discussion but what models of drive and period of time are we looking at?

What the public is waiting for now is the company bean counters. Once the drive failures reach a certain amount, and risks of lawsuits ensue, then you'll see movement-not before.

That said, I'm glad that I opted for a drive on my model that does not happen to be seagate. I've had very good luck with their drives over the years, but none were the 2.5 inch variety.

I am a Mac user from Spain with a 14 month old MacBook bought from the Mac Store whose 80 Go ST98823AS Seagate drive failed catastrophically a couple of months ago. Since AFAIK Apple doesn't have a direct presence here (e.g. repairs are performe elsewhere), it might be that the MacBook came from the UK. In any case, if my problem is that which Retrodata has observed, it is clear that the issue goes beyond the UK, however small Apple's computer presence in Spain might be.

I think the better word would be naive...

If you want to move this to the Politics forum I'd be happy to debate...

???

Heh... That was unclear. Sorry 'bout that.

I had started to write a long post in response to Terrin, but then realized that this wasn't the right place to do it.

I bought my macbook in singapore almost a year ago. Last week without any warning, the screen froze, I got a gray screen with a question mark. The professionals at the apple center were not able to recover any data, so I'm getting a new hard disk installed. But I'm REALLY pissed that such a "fatal" flaw could by pass the "quality" standards of Apple.

Can you tell us what you know of Apple's quality standards, or anyone's quality standards? Do you know what has to be done to show that something has quality? It doesn't prove that something is not going to fail; actually it's an indication of the probability of failure - and that's completely different.

It is impossible, and I really mean impossible, to prove that something is not going to fail. Hard drives break down. You may (or may not) have heard of MTBF - mean time between failure. Your drive may last for fifteen years, or it may crash in a week. But the mean time will be some time way in the future.

Did you have backups of your data? If not, why not? I'm sorry you lost stuff, but you have to take a little responsibility yourself.

(Goes off and reads Robert Persig's Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, again!)

So I have the afore mentioned hardrive above and the computer won't read it at all. It won't boot and it won't let me restore the operating system. I took it to the mac store and they tried to reset it and everything and they ended up telling me that I would need a new hardrive and that it is basically my fault. I just passed the one year warranty and I probably should have gotten the extended warranty (I will next time) but if this is apple just trying to get out of paying for faulty hardware I'd rather not pick up the 250$ bill myself.

so basically what I'm wondering is what kind of errors or what will indicate that my hardrive is affected?

I can recommend DiskWarrior, because you can set it to tell you when your drive is reporting hardware problems, through its SMART settings.

Alternatively (and it's free), regularly check SMART through Disk Utility.

When you click on the drive (not the volume), down the bottom of the pane you'll see: SMART Status: Verified. Or not.

I don't know where you are and what your consumer rights are like, but since it's out of warranty Apple is not obliged to help you. It all comes down to attitude. I'm not presupposing that you've got on your high horse and yelled at the shop staff (you didn't, did you?!), but at that point the only person who can help you is the one you're talking to. Explain that it's only (say) ten days out of warranty, and you'd rather not have to pay it all yourself.

It's worth a try. Charm, rather than smarm, and a smile mixed with a hang-dog look.

Did they actually say it was your fault, or was that just you thinking the worst?

LF, I have always thought MTBF was an acronym for Mean Time Before Failure, being an engineer's estimate of how long, on average, it will take before a device is likely to fail.

Have I been labouring under an allusion?

Or even Laboring under an illusion? (<- Warning: obscure political reference)

Or perhaps, most likely, labouring under an illusion?

MTBF = Mean Time Between Failures

MTTF= Mean Time To Failure

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coaten wrote:
Or even Laboring under an illusion? (<- Warning: obscure political reference)

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The Age wrote:
John Howard likes the revolutionary Bob Dylan but — here's the thing — not his lyrics. Few things sum up our Prime Minister better than that. To like Dylan but not his lyrics is akin to liking Don Bradman but not his batting.

My drive crashed in the middle of trying to back it up! I have now been told that there might be a 50% chance of getting my life back- oh my data- my job! If Mac knew about this why didnt they tell anyone??? I have lost images that can never be replaced- never.. my father passed away! Is there any hope at all?

Ann Linsley
alinsley@swbell.net