11 Month Old Pro hard drive failure

bc dub

As stated, had a big system failure last Saturday. 38 days left on the warranty thankfully and the care team are excellent but I'm somewhat bemused by the whole thing. MacBook Pro 17" QuadCore i7.

I've treated it very well, always in a cushioned case, it's had one or two knocks but never one that stood out. I did use uTorrent as much as the next person and I only really got into web designing & photoshop recently so for the first few months I didn't use it heavily.

It had crashed on me a few times but thats normal enough...isn't it? Did I just get a bad egg or are they not the superpower of devices I was led to believe! Like most, it took me a while to get the €1,700 together before I could get it and I remember seeing various other laptops within my grasp with great specs... I'm half tempted to sell up and move ship at the moment to be honest !

Sarn

Probably just a dud drive. I remember spending a fortune on a Sony laptop back in the day, only for the hard drive to fail after two months. The replacement drive is still running 8 years later.

A HDD is a moving mechanical part, and therefore one of the weak points of any computer. You have just been unlucky it happened so soon.

A SSD does have the advantage of having no moving parts, but some have their own problems in certain models.

Sad Professor

bc dub wrote: »

Did I just get a bad egg or are they not the superpower of devices I was led to believe! Like most, it took me a while to get the €1,700 together before I could get it and I remember seeing various other laptops within my grasp with great specs... I'm half tempted to sell up and move ship at the moment to be honest !

It's got nothing to do with the quality of the computer itself. Hard drives are just unreliable. 11 months is pretty good in my experience.

Did you have a backup?

Hard disks are the most unreliable component in a computer so I wouldn't be too surprised. It's why keeping backups is so important.

bc dub

Yeah I have a back up of most of my stuff, just not some recent additions

Thanks for the replies, I didnt realise hard drives were so fickle! A (foreign) friend just recommended I upgrade to an SSD before they replace same with same. How much would that set me back here? He guessed a couple of hundred at least...

Stainless_Steel

Sad Professor wrote: »

It's got nothing to do with the quality of the computer itself. Hard drives are just unreliable. 11 months is pretty good in my experience.

Did you have a backup?

Ah bit harsh! I've never had a HDD fail within 12 months. Sample of about 20.

whiterebel

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

Ah bit harsh! I've never had a HDD fail within 12 months. Sample of about 20.

You've been lucky I'd say. HDDs have a hard life and a fairly prone to failure.
Someone once compared the head sitting over the platters in a HD as the equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 Jumbo 6 feet off the ground at 400mph......

darragh o meara

whiterebel wrote: »

You've been lucky I'd say. HDDs have a hard life and a fairly prone to failure.
Someone once compared the head sitting over the platters in a HD as the equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 Jumbo 6 feet off the ground at 400mph......

And counting every single blade of grass. I've heard it too.

Stainless_Steel

whiterebel wrote: »

You've been lucky I'd say. HDDs have a hard life and a fairly prone to failure.
Someone once compared the head sitting over the platters in a HD as the equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 Jumbo 6 feet off the ground at 400mph......

Yeah I've actually seen one running without the outer case. Mad stuff....amazing actually. They are easily the weak point of a laptop but still would expect them to last couple of years.

AgentMyth

Hard drives are one of the commonest failures for laptops these days. On the SSD suggestion, I'd give that my vote. I have a 3 year old 13" MBP with a 128GB SSD and it still flies.

The newest drives are on the 3rd generation and while their performance wipes the floor with normal HDs, early feedback from big datacentres does not show any improvement in reliablility.

They are expensive though. Here's a 128GB option. At 220 quid it's pricey, but maybe the Apple repair centre have an upgrade cost. I think recent MBPs need special firmware on their HDs to lock you into Apple upgrades. The guys at http://www.mactivate.ie/ should be able to tell you.

Having replaced a drive before using Time Machine, it worked really well for me. Good luck with it!!

BostonB

bc dub wrote: »

... I'm half tempted to sell up and move ship at the moment to be honest !

Do you realise that Apple doesn't make hard drives. They buy them in like every other brand.

Groinshot

BostonB wrote: »

Do you realise that Apple doesn't make hard drives. They buy them in like every other brand.

+1 on this, and most of the new models are coming with hitachi drives too, which beats the crap out of those crappy seagates that are showing up all over the place recently...

stimpson

AgentMyth wrote: »

They are expensive though. Here's a 128GB option. At 220 quid it's pricey, but maybe the Apple repair centre have an upgrade cost. I think recent MBPs need special firmware on their HDs to lock you into Apple upgrades. The guys at http://www.mactivate.ie/ should be able to tell you.

Having replaced a drive before using Time Machine, it worked really well for me. Good luck with it!!

No point in shelling out for a SATA III drive for a 3 year old MacBook. I got the 96GB version of this for my MacBook -> http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004APRLVC/ref=mp_s_a_3?qid=1332012093&sr=8-3

It has it's own garbage collection which is important on a mac as OSX doesn't support TRIM on third party drives. I also picked up 4 gigs of RAM on adverts at the same time for €20 and fitted it at the same time. Hugely impressive. Makes my i5 iMac look slow in comparison.