Mac Book Pro Hard Disk Failure

Wow. What you went through is exactly the same as my experiences. I bought a macbook(black,core duo,2G RAM, 160G HDD) in late November, and one month later, the hard drive totally failed. It did not just start (mount) on one morning. Apple replaced the hard disk.

Then 6 weeks later, the hard drive again failed! All the programs froze suddenly, then I could not reboot the computer any more. It just kept on making some cluttering noise. Apple is now replacing the hard drive. I asked them to give me a new computer rather than keep on replacing the hard drive, but the request is refused.

I am a regular computer user and I never abused or dropped the laptop. I wonder what has been causing this rather unusual problem. What if this happened the 3rd time? I have been asking the Apple.

Firstly - thanks for your comment, its much appreciated. Its kind of nice to know that I wasn't alone in the hard disk failure area... Although it is concerning that I'm not the only one.

I am the same as you - my laptop gets treated better than most of my other possessions, but the hard disk still died (although my sister was using it at the time, I know she respects hardware in the same way I do - especially if its not her own... She's very tech-savvy).

This has taught me that although the OSX system is (at least in my opinion) the most stable and trustworthy OS to work in, it seems the hardware powering it isn't quite as trustworthy. This is turn has taught me to keep much more regular backups!

Thanks again or posting!

OMG, this just happened to my com yesterday!! Hdd suddenly failed and made some strange noise.....and i sent to for repair today, and guess what, the guy sitting next to me also had the same problem!!!

something fishy is going.....first was the Palm rest, then Random Shutdown, then flickering screen, and now screwed up harddrive........basically the whole com is f**ked......Macbook is one of the worst product Apple has ever release.....

I'm not sure I'd go as far to say its the worst - bare in mind that Apple don't make the drive. IBM went through a phase several years ago which ended up with the Deskstar brand of drive becoming popularly known as the Deathstar. Personally, I lost a 60Gb Deskstar, my parents lost a 20, and I know 3 friends who lost at least 1 each (one guy lost 3 I think).

Apple chose a brand of drive they thought was reliable and I think there has either been a bad batch, or there is something wrong with the architecture which is causing them to fail (Heat? Poor shock protection? Who knows). I know when I ordered my laptop, I had to wait over a month extra for it as the first drive they fitted died (I upgraded the 160gb 5400rpm to a 100Gb 7200rpm).

Hard disks always have and always will fail - they're one of the few remaining moving parts and, inevitably, moving parts WILL fail.

What concerns me is how QUICKLY they're failing!

This may also be my problem, now being on my FIFTH hard drive.

Take a look at:

The curse of the early adopter

The curse of the early adopter - part 2

[edited my admin for clearer links]

Thanks for the information. I just lost my second hard drive in five weeks. We own a dozen Macs including, 6 G4 powerbooks, and have never had any issues.

Sounds like apple needs to attach a big red sticker on the top of their new MacBook Pros "Do not move this computer until it is in safe sleep mode." Something I'll be sure to remember myself.

I back up pretty frequently, but I'm still out a few days work. Plus the huge hassle of having to wait another week to get this computer fixed again. And, I've spent a couple of hours on the phone and in person with Apple Support, they're not mentioning this issue. They should. All in all a pretty frustrating experience.

My Macbook - 1.83 60gb 2gb ram, just had the hard drive die. My iMac is my main machine but guess what's going on with that? A power supply recall. So, within the same week I've lost both my Macs. I'm not one to slam Mac for this, but c'mon that little 60GB shouldn't have failed in less than 8 months of use. I am pretty good about backing things up, but haven't done so on the Macbook in over a month (of course I've learned my lesson now).

I'm a strong proponent of Mac to my friends and coworkers, but this doesn't help my case! I also live in Indonesia (i'm american), so the support isn't nearly as easy to deal with as it would be back home.

… although I wont make out that it's out of control. We must remember that for every post here about a dead hard disk, there will be 1000 happy customers out there who aren't having these issues.

I had a battery recall on my iBook a while back. I'd had it for 1 year and it had been plugged pretty much the whole time. Then I find out from apple that the battery could have been explosive! It was probably apple covering their ass, but still! However that wasn't Apple's fault. Its Sony. Sony made those batteries, and not just for apple either!

I'm a Mac supporter too - but only for the jobs they're good at, mainly Web Dev and Design. For gaming they're pretty poor, but by far not the worst!

I have bought other drives other than the standard mac drives and they failed too. Luckily it's so easy to fix yourself. Three screws and you there. http://www.ifixit.com/cart/catalog/

I bought them from newegg.com for a fair price and have the history here:
#1 HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9SA00 (0A25016) 100GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM
#2 HITACHI Travelstar 5K160 HTS541616J9SA00 (0A28844) 160GB 5400 RPM Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

I don't think it's hitachi as much as it is the way macbooks use them. Of course there is a 1 year warrantee on the drives, but this happening so often is just silly. I had a titanium powerbook for 4 1/2 years and never experienced this.

One mistake I figured out that might help you... On my 12inch ibook I had thought the hard drive failed when really it was just my third party memory had failed. (Buying memory or hard drive upgrades from apple is ludicrous/stupid.) So when I switched out the memory it was good again. (Even though on the disk utility it had said hard drive error)

hope this helps maybe bring a case against apple. Other than this I love their products. Very good quality and well thought out. Mac help is normally very helpful, especially in person at mac stores, and I fully suggest them to everyone. Especially if they make music.

I don't think it's hitachi as much as it is the way macbooks use them.

I think I agree with you. My laptop gets VERY hot - I know for a fact, they all do. I also know for a fact that hard disks dont like getting hot.

I had thought the hard drive failed when really it was just my third party memory had failed

Interesting point. I upgraded my iBook via Apple and it was, as you say, ludicrous, however it did mean that if ANYTHING went wrong, Apple would be to blame rather than my own stupidity for static sparking the hardware or something equally annoying - like debugging hard disk failure based on RAM failure.

I also agree that, generally speaking, their products are of VERY high quality and its unfair to brand all their products as unreliable due to a few issues with a set of hard disks.

I am in the same boat but had a little heads up when the macbook pro hard drive was failing because it would make some nasty clicking noises and lock-up. I thought no big deal because I also have an iMac but the power supply was failing for the second time. Make sure you get an extended warranty because the parts are only covered for 90 days even if it is the same part that keeps failing.

I took mine into an apple repair centre today as I've been having problems. It's only an 80 gig drive, but the machine is running like a dog - taking 30 full minutes to boot if it boots at all. It's 4 weeks old. :o(

Should have said it's a black macbook.

Ditto for me. I have just had my second HD failure on my MB PRO of 10 months age. Both times, the laptop ran very hot prior to the failure. I am convinced that there is a recurring problem in this range of MacBooks, that is chowing up drives. I love my Macbook Pro, but it kills me to be without my laptop for 2 weeks! This is my work portal! I do not see this same pattern happening with other laptops. Will Apple start a new relationship with a different HD company instead or do we have to continue buying Applecare for life? I did not expect this standard from a Mac product.

If you want to go back to the good old days you can disable hibernation and make your Mac sleep when you close the lid, just follow the instructions here:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/10/sleepmode/index.php

If you want to disable waking up from opening the lid (quite useful if your lid has a weak latch), set the lidwake variable to "0"

... I will definately do this, thanks!

On my flight to the US, my lid latch must have triggered the laptop to wake up while it was in its 'second skin' (by Tucano) and bag. When I found it, the laptop was scorching hot and powered off. When I powered it up (after letting it cool down), OSX complained about a kernel panic which I can only assume was caused by an overheat.

Scary!

a week ago, my black macbook froze, so i held down the power button until it shut off. went to start it back up, and i got the blinking question mark. all of the startup options (hold x, restart pram, open firmware, ect...) failed. plus, i'm getting the seek arm click of death. i'm trying target disk mode using my ibook g4 as the host, but i can't get the hd to show up on my ibook's desktop. any tips? or am i completely screwed?

Once a hard disk starts clicking there is usually very little you can do.

Companies will charge hundreds of pounds to retrieve the data and even then its not guaranteed you'll get back what you want.

I've heard that putting the hard disk in the freezer for a few hours can help (put it inside a sealed plastic bag first to stop moisture being an issue. This might buy you a few minutes...

What happens if you try to boot it from a Linux Live CD (Like Knoppix)? You should be able to do that on Intel Mac's now shouldn't you?

If you do decide to try the freezer option - research it first, dont just take my advice! (This is a disclaimer!!)

Good luck - please let me know how it goes!

I have now had the same problem. Twice. 4 month old black MacBook Core Duo 2. First hard drive failed in February. Replaced.

Second hard drive failed this morning.

On phone with Apple for several hours. Clearly this is not simply a hard drive problem - likely motherboard problem. Machine going into shop for complete diagnosis.

I think I see a trend.

Also. In talking with Apple supervisor this morning - with 3rd failure they are authorized to replace the entire machine.

... before they say "hmmm It might be the laptop!"

I'm wondering if its a heat dissepation issue. MacBooks dont seem to have a HUGE amount of airflow...

Mine finally failed after 3 mos from new. I was setting it on the chair next to me after putting it in sleep mode. At first I would wake it and it would work for a couple of min then the click of the drive and it would go dark. I would restart it and everything was ok. While using it this time I noticed either the drive or the fan was gaining rpms until I thought it was going to either take off or implode then it went dark for good. every time I had the drive shut down before, it was after waking it up. I would see it go to sleep after I moved it so that must be the problem.

that sounds more like a heat issue than a general hard disk failure. Maybe the hard disk and laptop is shutting down as its getting too hot.

Whats it placed on when you are using it? Your lap? Your table? A duvet?

Nope it was my hard drive that went bad. When the tech guy got it he couldn't even boot it up. I have the sleep mode off now so hopefully it won't happen anymore. (knock on wood)

I've been a victim as well. Only, i am on my 2nd computer. I demanded a new computer instead of a replacement hard drive. This site scares me!!! My macbook is my lively hood. I make money with this instrument. Any time not operational is money lost!

(Edited by admin to remove all caps - please dont shout ;-) )

I got my MPB 10 days ago. About 7 days of use the HD failed (clicking). I took the laptop into the apple store on a Sunday. They had it back to my on Tuesday. Then, literally TWO days later (yesterday), the new hard drive failed again. I'm going into the apple store again today (Friday) to see about swapping out a whole mbp. This is ridiculous. I have several friends who treat their lappys with little care, yet I'm as paranoid as possible and mine *still* broke.

Something fishy indeed.

Last week I bought the White 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook containing a 80GB FUJITSU MHV2080BHPL drive.

I didn't use it much for now nore did I take it with me anywhere.

Today, as I was cataloguing pictures on my external HD from the MacBook, I noticed a strange clicking/clanging sound every couple of seconds coming from the MacBook itself... I owned many external mini harddisks making the exact same sound when they started to die on me... So I know what I'm going to be in for, aaargh!

OSX suppose to have a feature where it would warn you if a HD is about to fail (But that diagnostic tells me nothing is wrong)

What really puzzles me is the lack of proper support in the Apple store.. You will loose your Mac for weeks? How come? It took somebody who never-ever opened a MacBook before (Or any computer for that matter) only 30 minutes to replace the HD (His lasted over a year).. So why does it take Apple weeks to replace?!

I guess that's the price to pay for mass production (The problem PC users have had for years)

Anyway.. When I'm done I'm going to do some extensive doctoring to see if it IS a failing HD, heat problem or something else, aaargh!

I thought I had bad luck when my MacBook experienced its second HD failure today (first was 2 months ago) since I bought it on december. Thu tech guy said they would replace the HD (of course he will) but they will not do anything else (like trying to find what is the root cause!!).
Then I found this page and my hope vanished as it seems more of a design problem than a HW problem (some have reported diferent sizes and manufacturers).
Both times my HD crashed I was transcoding video and using a lot of apps (2GB of RAM) and experienced the same high rev fan sound and then the clicking. First time I am not sure, but this second one I did not move the damn computer knowingly. Now, I will put more attention not to move it after going to sleep before I hear the disk stop.

I know that TECHNICALLY the MaCBook should be capable of doing this without committing suicide, however Video Encoding is a pretty hefty task to ask of a laptop such as a MacBook (pro or otherwise).

No electronics like heat, so i'm not massively surprised that video encoding caused problems.

At the end of the day, if the laptop detects itself getting TOO hot then it should do something about it — under-clock itself or reboot/power down. I use an Akasa Notebook Cooler (AK-NBC-02) on my MacBook Pro when I'm at home. It has 2 USB powered fans and it basically an aluminium wedge which props up the laptop allowing FAR better air flow under it. If you're going to do video editing, I STRONGLY suggest getting one of these.

Is the disk dead yet?

I found this page by googling the disk model #, I have that strange noise you describe too.

My machine is a Mac Mini, and it's already been in for repair because of a more serious memory error, but they just ignored the hard drive noise.

I work for a big company with 800 macs, and so far I had 4 macbooks and 2 macbooks pro with hard disk failure.
This is something a company like Apple should be more concern about, since this will make a lot of my costumers to think twice before getting again an apple

Hello,
As everybody else here I have the same problem, and not with one Macbook Pro but two macbooks Pros.

Last year my hD failed in november, it was replaced and failed again in one month, after that it was replaced again and it failed in 2 weeks. I went to the Apple Store and filed a complaint with the manager , they exchanged my macbook for a new one. I had no problem with that machine. Last month, the company I work for decided to buy a new macbook pro for me. Guess what? In less than 1 month the hard drive failed on this new machine. I feel betrayed by apple and I think something needs to be done, they shouldn't be advertising a machine like it's better than other hardware and it's having this kind of problems.

My MacBook Pro 15in HDD just crashed also. It seems that this problem has been happening for a long time and has not been solved by Apple. Apple is using inferior HDD for their products. I'll be glad when large capacity flash drive will be small enough to fit for a MacBook that way there will be no moving parts for data storage and less chance of failure.

This issue just happened to me saturday night..

I had been sitting down with the lappy (no power supply connected) listening to a stream off internet radio.. Decided to do something with my parents, set the laptop down (with the screen up) was away from it for 1 or 2 hours.. Naturally it would have gone to sleep before the battery died.. Picked it up later when I went to bed, went to take it out of sleep mode and all I got was a grey screen.. shut it off, plugged in the power supply.. waited for a 10 min charge. started it back up, got the grey screen and then the blinking question mark... ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Bought my Macbook back in Sept 2006... Guess I will be going to get a new HD today for it.. Fair amout of lost data for me as it is only a personal computer for me, not business. :(

I just took in my MacBook to get the hard drive replaced because of that odd clicking noise. I got the computer back on Tuesday and now it's Thursday and the clicking noise is back. Is my hard drive dead again? How is it possible for a hard drive to die that fast?

I have heard that clicking noise before in hard disks which are actually fine. Sometimes a hard disk will park its heads if it detects a sudden movement - this could cause a clicking noise. Another possible source could be if your hard disk is trying to energy save by spinning down then having to spin back up again.

Might be worth investigating power settings and how steady the surface is which you keep your laptop on.

My MacBook died this morning too. Sounds like they're all over-heating. Unfortunately, I live in Africa so messing around with Apple care is going to be a problem. I don't want to switch back to a PC, but if I fly all the way back to the states and replace the HD and it's just going to fail again in a few weeks, what choice do I have?

Why fly back to get the HD replaced? I know you're under warranty still - but a ticket from Africa to the US is going to cost a LOT more than getting a 2.5" hard disk shipped out to you.

As I understand it, there are only a few screws between you and a brand spanking new hard disk in your machine.

As I said above, whenever I can - I use a laptop cooler

This is what my mac shop service provider told me today. All the same problem: overheating. Supposedly this is only the first generation of macbook and macbook pro. Mine died yesterday. 2 days after the warranty ended. Apple Online store is calculating the 1 year-warranty from the day of payment, not from the day of delivery, it arrived 8 (!) weeks later.... I have been a Mac user since a long time, but this is going to change.

I was thinking about getting a MacBookPro with the 7200rpm 160Gb drive. After reading all the trauma I am having second thoughts.
By some twist of fate I got a new upspec Dell Inspiron, from day 1 it was slow and after day 2 it looked like it would take 100 years to boot up so after another long phone calling day with the tech support it was concluded it was a lemon and replacement was recommended. I opted for a refund. Then I thought I would have a bite of the Apple for all the right reasons. But now alarm bells are ringing. The last thing I need is to shell out big time for what should be slick rig and then find I have to do more laps on the merry go round/ghost train ride of dodgy laptops. What to do?

It might just be "first gen" Mac Book Pro's which are suffering from heat issues... You might be ok. And not EVERY one breaks.

My dad bought a revision B MacBook 6 months ago. Now he gets a grey screen with blinking question mark. We've been told it is the MB. Let's hope it isn't the HD (because SuperDuper wasn't scheulded for automatic back-up, and the last one was 5 months ago.)

That's what I had when my hard disk failed - basically means the laptop cant find a boot device.

In the store they said you can boot from the recovery CD and run some hard disk checks.

My PB G4 lost a HD after 18 months of use. It happened when the machine was hot and concurrently writing HD video to and reading HD video from the disk. This was an 80GB Hitachi disk.

I replaced it with an after-market 120GB Samsung disk. Not only was this a cheap option but the Samsung has more capacity. It's been trouble free for 14 months now, but I back up regularly these days.

I use two 17" MBP's. One is a year old the other 6 months. I shift roughly 25-40Gb a day 4 days a week through them. My fellow colleagues (photographers) shift similar amounts of data. Images are shot processed and exported at times in very hostile conditions. Until finding this site by chance I do not know of a fashion photographer who has had this problem. However - when the DC MBP's came out it became very apparent that there were serious heat issues with them - just packing up. When processing 63mb files (2-300 at a time) the bar just above the keyboard would get so hot you could not keep your finger on it! We all knew that something had to be done as that much heat was not good. We like Nick above got coolers! There is a much better one than Nick has suggested but any cooler will make a massive difference. Go for this one - 17'' Notepal by Cooler Master. It has been specifically designed for the Mac with three high speed fans(approx£25.00). If you are driving your laptop hard it runs so much cooler and faster. As a plus its also a much better angle to work at. Interestingly the more recent MBP I have spins (fans) 3000rpm faster than the year old one when it gets hot. I believe there is a fundamental design flaw with this computer. To deal with the heat it needs to be bigger with larger/faster fans and greater 'through' airflow. We all want one of those?! Last tip - if you are sending the laptop to sleep by closing the lid we always keep them horizontal and not in a bag for reasons already mentioned above.

...my 17" MBP died on me last night. One minute I'm sat doing some work in Illustrator, the next...dead. If I take the battery out and put it back again...then leave it for a while, the MBP does actually start but runs for a couple of minutes then dies again :(

I must admit that over the past few days I had noticed it getting hotter than it had previously and worryingly so.

Ah well...I'm not sure I've lost *that* much stuff. Thanks to those of you that have given such good tips above - I'll be sure to bear them in mind when I get it back.

Great, looks like i just made it to the HARD-DRIVE FAILURE CLUB.
My drive died in 1 year.!
This is ludacris! This is a Mac problem! Is anyone taking action?? how can I take some action?? I'm PISSSED!

Another kick in the teeth for a long time mac user,
Mine is a first gen 2.16GHz 100GB 7200 HD
Bought the week after launch at the Regent Street Apple Store
I make that about 16 months ago.

I back up daily, using backup to an external drive. so haven't lost much (half a days work)

I've had the case open a couple of times previously to fix the fans, they fill with dust and jam, a good blow and a gentle kick start with a screw driver did the trick. No problems for about 5 months.

Which replacement HD should I go for? once the case is open you are only 6 screws away from replacement, 2 for the frame and 4 for the dampers on the drive sides.

I'm going to ask apple to pay for a cooler, I'll let you guys know what they say.

Woke up this morning to my wife's Macbook rev. A with the fans running full blast and the screen dimmed. Had to do a hard reboot and then got the flashing folder/question mark, fan's still running full blast. Hard drive is clicking. This is the 2nd drive in 12 months. First one went out after 7 months.

This time, though, I've been backing up every night and Retrospect says it backed up successfully last night. Hopefully didn't lose anything. I'm off to the Apple Store at 1pm to see what they say this time; warranty ended 22 days ago and I missed the fact that it ran out so I haven't bought AppleCare yet.

I'm going to push them for a new machine, since I'm sure I'll end up with the same problem 6 months from now.

-Joe

I guess I'm part of this party now too. I've had the macbook pro for 2 months. My entire livelihood was on it. Not backed up.... Why would I think I'd need to, its brand new. Now I know... I had it open checking email every so often during the day. I came back for maybe the third time that day and noticed it hadn't gone to sleep. I hit refresh on the email and the spinning wheel started. After several minutes I tried to force quit the program, no luck. I left and returned an hour later, no change. I forced the power off and when I restarted I ended up with the blinking question mark and a very loud fan. The Mac genius couldn't locate any remnant of a hard drive and they suggested I either pay upwards of $2500 for data recovery or get a new hard drive installed. I have neither the time nor the money, and they made it seem like there was only one place and one price $2500... I opted to have a new HD installed and had the new machine back in a few hours. At least they are fast. But now I want to have the old HD so I can try for data recovery. This failure is going to cost me upwards of $20k in lost productivity and projects. At first they wouldn't give it back, now I've convinced them to hold onto the original HD for one day. I get 24 hours....

Anyone successfully restored data after the blinking question mark???

I have also joined the party. Actually, I lost my first hard drive two months into my first semester of law school (October 2006). I bought my Macbook just as it came out. You would have thought that I had learned my lesson, but my second hard drive failed this week and I haven't back it up in months. I just learned about SafeSleep, so I am going to disable it and see if it helps. I think I'll also write a script or find a program that will automatically backup my hard drive on an external. this sucks...

I hate Apple. I wish I could like them cause I think their products are cool, but based on my own personal experience I am forced to hate the company.

My good friend works for Apple in California and convinced me to get an apple computer two years ago when I finished my Ph.D. I did and have been regretting it ever since. Absolute horror story! After only four months the Hard Drive died, it was replaced with a new one. Since new, the LCD Screen came with a "dead" or "blind" spot about the size of the tip of a ring finger on the lower left hand corner. They said that this was just a defect from the factory and their warranty policy stated clearly that all LCDs can include these sort of defects, so they could neither fix it nor get me a new one. So, as annoying as that is (it even vibrates as you are typing so you can't see much in that spot)I was stuck with it.

Then, three months later the keyboard stopped working (only two of the keys went dead) so I sent it again for repair and I got it back but they couldn't find the same keyboard I had (with the back light) so it came with a new keyboard without the back-light AND a NEW defect: the "o" key has diarrhea (sorry for the graphic metaphor), i.e. everytime you type it once, it outputs the letter "o" randomly from 6 to 9 times so I constantly have to erase it back as I am typing. I still can't believe I payed so much for this thing! I must note that I am very careful with it and keep it mostly at home and only use it for Internet and looking at pictures.

Then, this Sunday the hard drive failed -yet again! yes, I need a THIRD hard drive in two years. What is worse, is that it failed so badly that they couldn't recover any data. So now I have to pay over $2,300 (US dollars) to get my pictures and text files recovered at a data-recovery center.

Of course Apple is probably happy that many customers are happy, but what about the ones that get faulty drives over an over again? Why can't they pay for our data recovery needs if it's clearly THEIR fault. I honestly don't get it.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any suggestions/ideas (specially about the data recovery) please don't hesitate to contact me at

Thanks!!!

Thanks for the thorough reply. That REALLY sucks about your laptop.

Thing is, I do understand from a techie point of view that a laptop takes a hell of a lot more punishment than a desktop. They get hotter, knocked and wobbled around and are VERY compact. I still believe its the heat thats taking out the MBP hard disks.

I have a G4 iBook and its rock solid, but I know it could die at any moment (as a desktop, car or TV could).

Debbie - I hope, once you get your data back, you'll back it up! ;-)

For photo's I suggest something like Flickr - you can uploads, store, organise and share your photo's for a relatively low annual fee (or as a Yahoo user you can use the free account - you get about 200Mb a month free I think).

Until now, I've been very happy with Apple products...

This Intel MBP is my 4th Mac. I was installing Adobe CS3 when it went into sleep mode. I pressed spacebar to wake it up and it froze. After rebooting I got the flashing ? Apparently I can't mount the drive. This is the worst timing - I have an important project due this weekend and Applecare says a week to repair!

Apple, please do something about this!!!

I've had a 13" macbook 2ghz with a Seagate Momentus 60gb hard drive for 13 months and my hard drive finally failed this week, i've read all the other posts and CAN'T see anything in common. (Different models, different hard drives manufacturers) Mine ground to a holt approx 2 mins after turning it on (wasn't remotely hot) and doing nothing more intensive than checking my e mail, (admittadely whilst on my lap.) I never use the sleep function either! It wouldn't download my e mail and wouldn't respond to any commands so i held down the power button and now all i get is the flashing question mark and a very noisy hard drive whirling.
Word of advice, don't waste £40 on a usb to S-ata lead in an attempt to retrieve data onto your pc. Pc recognises the hard drive and even installs drivers automatically but thats it, it doesnt even show up under "my computer" but if you go into properties in device manager it says the device is working fine! I was a big fan of apple and splashed out on a macbook after owning numerous ipods. I had serious issues with it switching itself off continually and struggling to reboot not long after buying it but found an apple patch which cured that but now it seems HDD failure is par for the course! Unfortunately its out of warranty.
*** please note, if you don't mind the expense of the new drive, they are incredibly easy to change in a macbook. Remove battery, remove 3 tiny philips screws and pull on white tab! takes less than 2 minutes to change if you really cant be without your laptop for 2 weeks whilst apple do the same job! ***

I had the same experience with my MacBook. In less than a year my 80GB hard disk died. It couldn't be recognized at all; didn't show up on Apple System Profiler.

Over the weekend, I got a 200GB hard disk replacement and an external hard disk enclosure.

On a hunch, I installed the dead 80GB on the enclosure and attached it to my MacBook via the included USB cable. The hard disk mounted! All the data were there. It was even recognized as a startup disk in System Preferences/Startup Disk.

Basing it solely on my experience, your data isn't lost so don't throw away or reformat that seemingly dead drive; it just needs to be transferred to an external enclosure for it to work again.

The next thing I need to do is put it back as my MacBook's internal drive and see what happens. If it works of course I no longer would put it back since the 200GB is already inside but it'll be more to see if simply physically removing and reinstalling the hard disk would bring it back to life.

Hope that this has been helpful.

I run a small software company. We run UNIX and windows applications. I decided to buy Macbook Pros for all the programmers. I bought the first one shortly after the new version was released 29-Jun-07. When I started to use it I noticed the machine vibrates badly. Like getting a hand massage. Cool feature, but a bad combination of distracting and relaxing. I sent it back. Apple sent a new one. This one vibrates FAR worse than the previous one. Like having electric shock treatment throughout the day. My wife's previous generation 17" macbook pro is fine. The macbook pros as the Apple store appear to be fine. Anyone there at Apple happen to turn on any of these new machines, try to use them for a few minutes? Awful. Switching back to the ugly Lenovo Thinkpads.

If my drive fails again I shall try this - genius!

Please write back if you find putting it back in works.

I'm wondering if the drives haven't failed, but the cable has simple come loose...

Strange thing is - my friend has got one of this generation and is nothing but pleased with it. Its starting to replace many functions of his desktop!

Hi,
it died again on July,6th (one and a half month after the second failure&replacement).
This time I had all the enviroment controlled. After reading this blog I always worked on a ventilated enviroment, never moved it after closing the lid before getting the flashing light, I took care of it almost like a baby -well my wife says than I was more worried for the MB than for the child:-) - and after all, it died again, under no cpu load this time, just idle.
Called Apple and they decide to replace it (third failure in 3 months). I hope that statistically it doesn't happen again. But I've learned two lessons. First, I'll never again be lazy about backing up my data, an second, I will pay the AppleCare Protection Plan, just in case...

good luck to all
p.d. I simply can't drop this apple-drug and switch back to my old pc ;-)

Leo,

I had the same failiure (beach ball, no finder response, manual shut down then no visible HD in any utils) this morning and have spent ALL day reading about how many of these cases have occurred.

Your post is the first positive sign I have found! I'm eager to get the data back and have been considering an enclosure + a new HDD. Please let me know how you've got on and also exactly what enclosure you have used - I'd be really grateful.

I'm just begining a new freelancing role and to lose my entire catalogue of professional documents, propsoals and plans is a serious concern - made worse by Apple's 'If it's 13 months old, you're on your own' atitude (and my woeful back up regime)

Hope you have time to write back
Thanks Nick for hosting this thread. What's the best auto-back-up on the market?

-- fingers crossed

I'm joining this ever growing list... I got my maching Jan 1 of this year. By March it crashed and I lost everything. Apple replaced the harddrive. One month later it crashed again and Apple replaced my HD, 3 GIGs of RAM, and the processor. Then end of May it crashed yet again. Finally the Apple Genius (I'm using the term lightly here) decided that the machine was a lemon and replaced the whole thing. And finally, 4 days ago this new machine crashed. This time I was able to reformat and it's working, but the first reformat resulted in the HD making really loud churning noises and freezing the system. The 2nd reformat was a success but I notice my HD space is down from 160 G to 148 G. I'm thinking the HD is slowly dying again. I'm supposed to send it back to Mac but I'm not sure they're going to do anything as it "looks" like it's working. I know it's going to die any day now again.

Reading through this list a bit I do remember that I just shut the lid without putting the machine to sleep... I had a fabulous Powerbook for 2 years before this that I never had any issues with. I was in the habit of putting that machine to sleep as that model preferred that... but it never crashed.

As a freelance designer this machine is my life work... if this was a car it would be considered a lemon. I could sue. Apple support has been anything but pleasant. How annoying is it that after spending $3k on a laptop and having to call support for the 4th time, their first question is always "do you have Apple Care"? WHO CARES! I should be getting royal first hand treatment... I bought your most expensive top of the line laptop machine and it only worked for 4.5 out of 6 months!

Are there any support groups in Seattle?? I need a hug.

i had a 160gig drive fail this weekend, im pretty certain its because i dont wait to move the machine after i shut the lid, because only my OSX partition was affected. my XP still functioned perfectly.
started with apps taking forever to load, then they would freeze for several seconds. then the dock froze and i knew i was in deep sh*t. Tried to reboot and i got the apple logo, then a circle with a slash through it.
didnt back up anything.. videos, software, music all gone.
lame

Hi all, after being an onsite engineer (PC and Mac) for what seemed forever, a PC IT Manager for far too long and happily working as an AppleCentre Manager for a couple of years, I'd love to pass on this little gem that *sometimes* can give a dying drive one last blast from the paddles of life. This has worked on countless occasions for me personally, on PCs, Macs and HD based iPods:

Remove the drive from it's enclosure (excluding iPods, obviously!), hold it in one hand and give it a SINGLE brisk flat-handed slap on the top of the drive. Don't panic, when hard drives are powered down they can withstand multiple G's of shock force and not sustain damage. What prevents this (and is also the problem culprit) is the hard disk seek heads being parked away from the platters inside in their safe place. What is extremely common is for the heads to stick in the parking bay, especially when the drive has been exposed to quick temperature change. If the drive is unable to unpark the heads and continue spin-up, it will shut itself down until the next time it is powered off and on, hence the drive appears unavailable to the OS.

The reality is, it's not going now, so what have you got to lose. Just be sensible and resist the temptation to imagine Apple Customer Relations officers faces on the drive and don't belt the crap out of it. If the technique is going to work for you, it'll work with one slap. If no go after that, she be toasted.

Thanks for the tip. One thing to be careful of is that you don't invalidate any warranty by leaving evidence of this "abuse".

Logically that makes perfect sense though, so thanks "anonymous" :-)

The iSight camera went out a week before the warrantee expired, was promptly replaced by local Apple Care (in Padua, Italy). Then a week after the warrantee expired, the hard drive died, with the feared clicking noises. It was a Seagate Momentus 60GB, rated to run at 55 Centigrade. I believe the simple reason for the problems is three words, heat, heat, heat. So I ordered a Western Digital 120GB disk rated to run at 60 degrees Centigrade, and spinning at a conservative 5400 RPM.

But the fun had just begun. We couldn't reload the disk from the system DVD, it would hang maybe 20 minutes into the installation, saying "installation error, please try again", or some such. The installation log, accessible through a terminal window, said "i/o error", so we had either a marginal DVD, or DVD drive. We borrowed a MacBook Pro DVD installation disk, only to find that it wouldn't run on a MacBook. We thought of trying to copy the installation DVD on another machine, but apparently the installation image is "too big" for the standard disk utility.

Finally we put an "old" PPC Mac Mini into firewire target mode, put the installation DVD into the Mac Mini drive, and hooked it up via firewire to the MacBook. Lo and behold, this worked, the MacBook knew enough to find the DVD through the firewire port. It's running again, despite three hardware failures in under a year.

Somebody should instrument the disk to see how hot it's running, I wouldn't be surprised if it's hotter than the disk rating in there. It may actually be cooler with the new disk.

One more strange thing. I lent my MacBook to a friend for about a month, when it left my hands the case was a pristine white. Within days the hand rests and other parts of the case had turned yellow, a common problem which Apple acknowledged. Now I don't believe that I am more fastidious than my friend, he just has different sweat. So Apple managed to produce a plastic which is sensitive to genetic differences between people.

Amazing.

Thanks for this site, and the opportunity to whine.

Just out of interest, does your friend smoke? The tar in smoke has a nasty habit of making everything go a horrible shade of yellow - especially if the item in question is sucking in air (like a Laptop).

I think its the salts and or urea in the sweat which might also be contributing to the yellow stain (I think its urea which gives urine the colour it has). Your friend might be suffering from dehydration or poor diet if he has a high urea level in his sweat... But I'm not a biologist, I skim over Wikipedia articles! ;-)

After having having my MBP for about 5 months I've gotten the clicking HD. I was playing Warcraft at the time, so it was VERY hot at the time when it started to click, then it hard froze. I force quit Warcraft and was left with an unresponsive desktop so I shut it down by holding the power key. I tried to boot it up this morning to see if it was just because of heat, still clicking. I shut it down before it got to the ? Face to try to preserve the content of my hd. After reading all the posts here I am very discouraged about all this. I'm going to ask for an entire replacement of the computer today, I'm sure they won't but worth a shot, I'll post again with the rest of my headache as it unfolds...

That really sucks, however I hope you managed to pickup a few good tips from these comments which are, in my opinion, a goldmine...

• Grab one of the Akasa (or similar) laptop coolers - they make a HUGE difference
• Try getting one of the Apple techie to put your hard disk in an external enclosure and plugging it into another machine via USB or Firewire - this sometimes works
• There is a tip above about gently patting the hard disk as it might have got stuck in park mode due to the heat - use this with caution as there might be warranty issues involved.

Good luck getting a new laptop - however I doubt they'll replace the whole thing, sounds like the drive simply overheated.

Nick,

I have taken many tips from the posts here, and will certainly be changing my practices... They, of course, would not replace the computer, but they're running the logic board through diagnostics. As for putting my hd in am external drive, I back up the drive weekly, so I haven't lost a lot of work.

Those fans sound like a great idea, and I'm pricing them out as we speak. It all just goes to show that although our technologies improve, it's still important to assume things will go wrong and not rely on anything. I hope people reading this will learn from ours and others experiences

it's still important to assume things will go wrong and not rely on anything.

Black MacBook, 2gb ram, 80gb Seagate Momentus 5400

Working along normally, then beachballed. Hard boot produced a grey screen for a long time, followed by the question mark folder. RIP Aug 10, 2007: 5 days before it's first birthday.

Last backups were in May, so Data Recovery is somewhat relevant, if I can find a cheap enough option. DriveSavers look pricey, and even they couldn't help one of the other guys... I'm not optimistic.

Tried freezing. No go.

SmartReporter never suggested anything wrong with the drive:
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2005/12/smartreporter/index.php

I mainly use my MacBook as a desktop computer.

I think that I may have closed the lid during shut down and the machine hibernated during the process. (I hate that it's so hard to control lid-closed behavior on Macs)

I'm not optimistic about the external enclosure solution as the drive just spins and clicks, which leads me to believe that it won't pass its own POST.

i had my G5 senior for almost 4 years, and it's the oldest living laptop in the house...until now.
It clicked
It blinked
It snorted
And then it died... And I have to wait 2 weeks to get it back. What concerns me most about this hard drive failure is that it wasn't hot, (it was in sleep mode when ithappened), it wasn't installing/downloading anything, it wasn't near anything magnetic, out of the blue it just started clicking, and giving me the blinking question mark. I guess I'm lucky that this is the first time anything like this ever happened to me...'cause u guys are scaring me when u say that this happened to you not once, not twice, but three times. I just want to prevent anything like this happening again or atleast understanding what went wrong. So if you have any ideas on my dilema I would love to read them.

My Imac hard drive is failing. I used it only 9 months. It was light use too. I paid premium for 500Gb hard drive. It seams Seagate hard drives not the best. Even they have the longest warranty. My external Seagate hard drive has some problems too. The best thing is to back up everything to DVD or CD media. I am lucky that I saw the problem before it died one day. Check SMART data in disc utilities.

Sent my drive off to OnTrack, and here's what they had to say after a cleanroom eval:

"Hello Curtis,

We've completed the evaluation on this drive and unfortunately, we are unable to recover any data from it. There was an internal mechanical failure that caused damage to critical areas of the hard drive platters and we simply cannot bypass the damage that has occurred. Since there is nothing more we can do, I will send this drive back to you using standard ground shipping at no charge.

I wish I had better news for you but thanks again for choosing Ontrack for your data recovery needs."

Thanks for posting their reply up Curtis - such a shame they couldn't retrieve it, although it sounds like quite an 'impressive' failure!

I assume your plans are to just get a new drive and start from scratch?

btw, I love your site! You're very good at photography. My girlfriend recently got a Canon EOS 400D and has started a blog - www.kate-harris.co.uk

Nice site. Lots of good information. It seems like there's two kinds of photographers: the type that likes to share knowledge/techniques and those who like to keep their bag of tricks under wraps. I'm of the mind that information should be free.

Here is a photo I took of an external HDD that failed on me last year:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curtisjoewalker/96121158/

I'm guessing the Apple drive isn't quite that nasty, but close enough.

Plans for the future:
I bought a Hitachi Travelstar 200GB 7200RPM drive to replace the defective one. From what I've read, this drive is about 33% faster than the Seagate, and I can always use a little more performance. I bought a 250GB 2.5" WD USB drive so that I can keep the machine backed up while I travel and have something to boot from in the event of failure away from home. And finally, I bought a 1TB WD MyBook World Edition II NAS drive for backup of all the computers at my house. (desktop, laptop, girlfriend's laptop).

This weekend will be spent restoring my stale backups and getting on with life.

I think its dead anyway. This morning, I was doing my thing, I had to boot into OSX to disable journaling on my ipod so that Amarok in Ubuntu could read it. I do so, power off and goto start again only to realize it wont go past the gray screen. I reset the SMC, i did the command option pr thing, i tried everything, command V wont even display anything, shift on boot does nothing, cant boot single user mode to try fsck. Unfortunately I dont have the cd with me to try and repair. This really sucks, only had it 2 months! Grrr I dont know if its even covered by apple care since it was a refurb..

I purchased my MBP 15" on July 5th, and haven't really exeperienced any issues with it other than high operating temperatures. I got a call from apple care yesterday explaining that I needed to send my laptop in because there is an issue with the hardware and they are replacing the affected parts. They wouldn't specify which part was affected but in the follow up e-mail they quoted "hard drive usage issues." So I'm assuming that Apple is finally replacing the hard drives with another brand? I'm new to Mac's and never expected to have any issues with a 2500.00 laptop. BTW I have the 160g 7200rpm hard drive, 2gig ram and 2.4 intell processor.

It might not be hard disk related...

Check out this article about Expanding Batteries.

I've had similar problems where I turn on my MacBook Pro and it shows that blinking folder icon. But eventually the system boots! For a while, about a year ago I had the problem every other day for about 5-6 weeks, but if I let the system sit there for an hour or two, or turned it off it would eventually boot normally. It seemed like temperature might be a factor.

The problem went away for about 8 months. I didn't have it once. Now it is back. Today I turned the system on and got the folder icon for the first time in 8 month. So I tried rebooted several times and it didn't work...but I let it sit there for a while (2 or 3 hours) and when I tried to reboot again it worked ok.

I suspect that there is some problem that responds to heat. But I also suspect that the hard disk will eventually fail completely.

The SMART info from the disk utility shows no problem. But I don't trust it.

Not sure what to do with this system. I guess I should replace the drive, but I'm not about to pay Apple a huge ransom to do it...

I recommend backing up anything that's even remotely important to you and investing in a new drive. Having never installed one myself, I cant say this with any certainty, but I'd imagine they're pretty easy to install yourself.

I've built dozens of desktop PC's and they're idiot proof to build (usually). Its usually something like "red cable goes in red hole, the only way round it will go".

Thanks for this tip "A tip for the broken-hard-drived..."

Yesterday my husband's MacBook that we bought in December 2006 started up to a flashing questionmark folder. Where's the system folder it is asking? When we put in the install disk and looked at disk utility there was no hard drive listed. That looked bad. We are very happy that it is easy to remove the hard drive. It was a real pain to do with an iBook.

Yesterday we removed the drive and put it back in, but no improvement. I did a google search for "macbook does not recognize hard drive" and came across this forum. It is scary that so many people have had problems.. I consider myself lucky that I haven't had the problem of shutting the lid on my MacBook and taking it from one room to another. I live on a boat so it could have easily been jostled while writing the RAM to disk and thus cause another headache. So I learned something! Thanks guys!

And a very big thanks to Anonymous for reviving the hard drive with the "Proby slap" technique (NCIS reference). My husband performed this easy manouevre this morning and voila it worked!

Let's all do the happy dance!!!

I'm pleased that you've retrieved your hard disk...

It's funny - directly after an event like this EVERYONE says "Right, I'll backup - I've learned my lesson"... 1 week later and that whole backup idea is gone.

My wife's 15" glossy MBP --which she got through work-- died within the first week. She ended up with the three question marks & Apple is replacing the computer. My 15" glossy MBP lasted two weeks & a day. I returned to it Saturday morning & found it, I thought, in sleep mode. As it turns out, it was in death mode. I powered down & hit the on button. I would hear the first chime & then all I'd have is a white screen. The light by the latch button would blink three times, pause, blink three times, etc. I took out the battery, tried the various restart methods, tried booting from the installation disc, but never got anything other than that white screen. I have an appointment in another hour to see the Genius Bar folks at the Columbus Ohio store. It took two days to get the appointment; I figure they're busy processing dead MBPs. I am wondering if I shouldn't just get a a desktop Mac & use this little iBook G4 for those rare times I'm on the road. This is very frustrating. Thankfully, I had been backing up faithfully with SuperDuper so it shouldn't be a tragic ordeal.

I have to say that although your wife's situation is clearly hard disk related, yours sounds far more serious if it wont boot from anything...

I have an old iBook G4 and, although slow sometimes, its a great bit of kit. Fantastic battery life too!

SuperDuper... This sounds interesting I'll look into that!

My 7 month old Macbook just made a startup noise, followed by a horrible clicking noise. When I pressed the power button everything went black and it shut down. When I tried it next time, it worked

I bought my Macbook Pro 100 GB in august 2006. HD crashed witht eh dreaded clicking in April 2007. Replaced by Apple. The Applecare Plan ddin't get renewed in time, and they denied all coverage. A month later, the 2d HD crashed, and apple refused to cover it. I do recall the machine getting VERY hot the week before it died. I always shut down before closing the lid.

Very depressing. I think this smells of a class-action lawsuit.

Oh blimey I never thought I would have to add to one of these but....another me too.

First week back at school (teacher). Spent all holiday creating resources. Three years worth of work, photos, GB's of music, programmes etc all lost.

Forgot to resubscribe to idisk - no joy there ;o( all wiped clean.

My boyfriend was using the laptop and heard the death rattle. Next thing we know the dreaded question mark folder appears.

We recently added the full 2GB RAM and wonder if this has anything to do with it?

Needless to say I was gutted enough, but then found out my Applecare ran out 2 weeks ago.

Call me pnoid but I have had 2 ipods die just out of applecare, one imac and a powerbook with a dodgy battery.

Most of these things have happened after downloading software updates from apple...Can I smell rodent?

DABS sending new harddrive £37.00 fingers and toes crossed. Any advice on a good backup system?

I am now a 'mac person' after owning a macbook pro for 9 months. Over this timespan i have had my logic board replaced (trackpad and int keyboad failed) and now need a new optical drive and probably a neww hd because mine is showing early signs of failing. Come on apple.

Just in case this might be of use to somebody, I can also recommend
SuperDuper. After advice from a friend, I got a duplicate disk, and
enclosure (from macsales.com). With the software, which is $28 I think,
you can keep a complete duplicate bootable disk. So if the disk were to
fry again, I can just drop in the duplicate, with no time loss.

I spent hours and hours reloading the disk with the system, the developer stuff,
SDL, etc etc. If I paid myself $20 an hour, I easily would have justified the
$150 or so it cost to get the disk, the enclosure, and the software.

Of course, now that I have a sensible backup strategy, the disk will probably last 15 years!

That's a very nice setup - all you need to do is maintain that strategy...

Does SuperDuper also verify the backup?

I recently had to format one of my file servers and I FTP'd the files over to another machine. The FTP transfer completely successfully (ie without error) however I, stupidly, didn't check the folder size. After formatting the file server I found out that my FTP'd backup had actually only copied half the data (but had maintained the folder structure). Fortunately, I found a backup I randomly made about 9 months ago which contained about 90% of the data so I really only lost about 5-10% of my files, still - its annoying and its taught me to verify backups!

I would recommend Carbon Copy cloner over Super duper -- it is close on a single button interface, very sturdy and it makes bootable copies of your disk.

Which I unfortunately is running OSX from now, my hd problem for now though is related to a drop to the floor and I can actually access most of my data, only not boot.

I am soon on my second logic board replacement/12 months, and both of them was because of what I am quite confident is the problem with your harddrives as well : Heat. Machine got to hot due to not that heavy use really as a 3D workstation, then random sudden shutdown with no log entry or panic screen, battery or no battery, hot or cold machine and with good memory.

I am fairly certain that a macbook pro used normally will push hd temerature beyond the poi