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Apple cops to defective MacBook drives

Free replacements for the unlucky 'few'

Apple has extended the warranty on certain MacBooks from 2006 and 2007 whose hard drive failed, while offering free replacements for defective drives.

Look out your window and you might observe porcine aerobatics - and that red-tailed gent donning the toasty overcoat might well be Lucifer.

Of course, in a support note announcing the "Repair Extension Program," Cupertino was careful not to concede mass failures. "Apple has determined that a very small percentage of hard drives that were used in MacBook systems, sold between approximately May 2006 and December 2007," the note reads, "may fail under certain conditions."

Still, the admission is a welcome one, as is the free drive replacement - even though the hard drive failures had been discussed as early as 2007 in an Apple discussion thread entitled "MacBook hard drive failure epidemic" and an identically tiled thread on MacRumors.

The MacBooks eligible for drive replacement must display the telltale "Your drive is bleedin' demised" flashing question mark on the startup screen. The potentially infirm MacBooks are of the white and black varieties, with processor speeds of 1.83GHz, 2GHz, or 2.16GHz and hard-drive capacities of 60GB, 80GB, 100GB, 120GB, or 160GB.

Should you be unlucky enough to posses one of these unworthies, take it to an authorized service provider or schedule an appointment with an Apple Store Genius. If you can't find either, ring up the appropriate technical-support hotline and assistance will be granted.

If you've already paid for a replacement of your ailing drive in Apple's out-of-warranty service, the company will contact you with info on the reimbursement process. If you don't hear from them, Apple advises you to call their tech-support folks.

The program will run for three years after you bought your ailing MacBook or until August 15 of this year, whichever is longer. The support docs also notes that Apple will "continue to evaluate the repair data," and extend the repair period if needed.

Better late than never. ®

Latest Comments

original disc drive

2.16Ghz 160Gb disc circa 2007 in use every day and not one problem or issue whatever you wish to call them. It is ridiculously easy to do a restore from time machine providing you use it & a new 320Gb disc dosnt exactly break the bank these days.

@Renato - Don't forget the case cracks - My sons replaced with no 'issue' even though out of warranty.

@Ian Ferguson - Good for you, I did exactly the same with a failed PC disk, after all why should the oem not honour their own warranty?

@Thermal issues - Wasnt there a study by Google which claimed heat wasnt that much of a contributory factor to failure, I appreciate heat isnt a good thing but not as bad as considered, allegedly. It is located a tad close to the battery, which can get warm when busy, laptop stand?

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Short Memories!

The hard drives issue went class action last year. Crap Seagate drives.

See

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/30/apple_seagate_drive_warning/

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/27/apple_looks_at_macbook_hdds/

and http://retrodata.co.uk/apple-seagate-drives.php

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Anonymous Coward

Shock horror

I can see the headlines now ... "Some old laptops break"

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Apple juicy lemonade

Don't forget the case cracks, both the hairline edition(TM) and the crack-on-palmrest(R) caused by closing the lid.

Although apparently Apple is fixing those cracks.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/08/apple_addressing_cracks_on_white_macbooks_casings.html

Well, I might try calling Apple Support and see if they are willing to fix my Macbook.

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Thermal issues?

I wonder whether the drive issue is thermal?

It seems odd that so many drives of different capacities have failed, but only on one particular chassis design.

That suggests to me that the problem isn't necessarily with the drives themselves, but perhaps with something more systemic. Poor drive ventilation could do it. If that's the case, then replacing the drive will fix the instantly visible fault, but not cure the underlying cause of the problem...

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