Comments on: MacBook Pros Have Hard Drive Problems?

By: Notradamus

Notradamus — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:09:07 +0000

Apple does not make disc drives. Nor is it feasible for any mfr. to do an exhaustive test of every single component used in a production run.

Enough said.

You can now go back to your inane dickering.

By: Joe Anonymous

Joe Anonymous — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:19:20 +0000

Please have Mr. Malik purchase a lottery ticket and send me the numbers. I want to buy at ticket with the exact opposite numbers. Based on his luck, that will make me a sure winner.

By: Richard Garrett

Richard Garrett — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:13:50 +0000

Its a little late, I suppose, to ask Om to identify the hard drive since he can’t access ‘About This Mac’. Nevertheless, I wonder if each of the failed drives was from the same manufacturer? I am not a fanboy of Apple or MS or Compaq or IBM. That said, the hardware failures that I have experienced have all been on Macs. Software failures, meaning down-time, wasted effort are much more prevalent on MS OS systems. So, BSOD on Mac, for me, is a hardware failure, whereas on a Windows machine, its software and/or OS.

By: Darwin

Darwin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:59:01 +0000

I doubt your story.

By: Darwin

Darwin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:58:35 +0000

Because a Mac Genius supposedly said something does not make it true. My company has thousands of these laptops and has not seen the issue. Apple uses standard hard drives and failure is on the hard drive although if it makes you feel better I suppose you can blame the company.

By: AdamC

AdamC — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:21:30 +0000

Is it a coincidence that tech bloggers always have this kind of problems and they love to whine about it like crybabies.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:10:42 +0000

My iMac had the exact same problem last year. Oddly there were symptoms prior to failure rather than a simple complete death. It was possible to get the machine out of the state to back up…

By: danny

danny — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:52:17 +0000

I knew a lot of people with this issue in the very, very first 13″ macbooks but have not heard of it since.

I’m curious about the battery setup in the current gen – we’ve now had 3 of the 13″ macbooks come up with a battery that refuses to charge waaay to too soon into their working lives. Apple blames the batteries but I wonder if it isn’t something in the circuits because it has already happened again to one of the replaced batteries.

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:50:34 +0000

Desktops and laptops are often available with different internal components within the same model. Knowing if and which components have a high failure rate would be helpful to me in picking which internal components to avoid.

By: JM

JM — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:32:22 +0000

A laptop purchase is a whole purchase. Components are chosen for each model, so in effect all components have a say about the laptop’s reliability. You can have a car with a faulty alternator, but the reliability is seen as a whole for the model and brand, not for the faulty alternator.

By: Jj

Jj — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:22:37 +0000

Which model MBP? Did you find out which HD it was?

By: Michael Fraase

Michael Fraase — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:05:30 +0000

I gave up on ThinkPads when one of the last to come from IBM, a T42p (probably manufactured by Lenovo), failed once with a something I can’t even remember (wouldn’t boot), two times with a fan error (refused to boot), and finally with a graphic board failure (no longer worth repairing). I really miss the keyboard and IBM’s next-business-day on-site service. Really wish Apple had both.

By: David

David — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:03:39 +0000

Are solid state drives susceptible as well?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:00:37 +0000

I had two friends this week have to reinstall everything on their Macs due to OSX failure (not HD).

In light of the latest commercials: if you’re going to move all your stuff anyway, why not get a Win7 PC? :D

By: dev

dev — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:48:17 +0000

The real equivalent on the mac is the GSOD, or gray screen of death, where OSX tells you “something blew up and you have to reboot” – so helpful. That screen is the result of a kernel panic caused by a memory fault or hardware failure, which is the same cause of BSODs. So really OSX just made the same problem prettier, and less helpful to IT.

The part where you start crying is when it won’t reboot because your machine is actually dead… that happened to my mac mini (and before that, my G5 – a couple months after I sold it). :(

General rule of thumb… all computers suck, there’s just no escaping it. ;)

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:45:31 +0000

Doesn’t that say more about the HDD reliability than the laptop reliability?