We reported on some MacBook flaws earlier and if the scratching, dents, cracking and screen flickering flaws weren’t bad enough, this new one has to take the cake.  Some MacBooks ship with faulty hard drives which can cause you to lose the operating system, all your data and make restoration impossible.

The MacBook affected reportedly ship with revision 7.0.1 Seagate hard drives which are (surprise) made in China and have defective read/write heads which can malfunction during operation.  The heads have the possibility of becoming detached from the arm and slide across the surface of the hard drive which would make recovery of anything on the hard drive impossible.

UK firm, Retrodata told Information Week that Apple should issue a recall but since only “a few reports” of the problem have been seen by Apple, it probably won’t do that just yet.

MacBook owners are strongly advised to visit the Apple System Profiler and check the hard drive in the Serial-ATA section and if it is one of the affected drives, backup data immediately.  Then, call up AppleCare or visit your local Genius Bar and hit them up for repairs.

Another option is to just replace the hard drive yourself (which is a little involved on a MacBook) say with something more reliable like a Western Digital or nice Toshiba hard drive.  Seriously, Apple, who uses Seagate?

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 5:30 am under Apple, MacBook.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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