Macbook Failure

[Matt]

For those of you who don't frequent of Jeff's radio show, here's a segment he did about his recent Macbook's Hard Drive failure.

Apparently, the issue isn't all that uncommon!

Main Download:

http://www.besttechie.net/live/radio/macbookhddfail.mp3

Alternate (slower):

http://www.myfreegig.com/uploads/TPGwUFfxH7jYQ.mp3

[hitest]

For those of you who don't frequent of Jeff's radio show, here's a segment he did about his recent Macbook's Hard Drive failure.

Apparently, the issue isn't all that uncommon!

Main Download:

http://www.besttechie.net/live/radio/macbookhddfail.mp3

Alternate (slower):

http://www.myfreegig.com/uploads/TPGwUFfxH7jYQ.mp3

Great show, Jeff! Just downloaded the mp3 stream and played it on my slackware box using Amarok. Oh man, that really sucks about your HD failing, Jeff.

I'm not going to play this for my daughter as I've just bought her a new macbook. It should get here in a few days. The airport base station arrived today:-) Dang. This is not good.

[Honda_Boy]

Ouch that sucks. My motherboard on my old laptop got toasted but luckily my hard drive survived. It's now an external hard drive. I had to service my current my laptop myself. I was not gonna wait for HP to deal with it. Luckily it was just improperly applied thermal paste on the CPU so I just cleaned it and applied some fresh Arctic Silver 5.

I probably voided my warranty with the last one but I ain't tellin them what I did if anything else comes up.

To avoid having my data lost, I keep a lot of my stuff in multiple locations. I have much of my school work (all computer classes) on my laptop, thumb drive, and my network drive at school.

BTW, get a PC laptop

[isteve]

Apple uses Hitachi, Seagate and Toshiba drives all off the shelf drives nothing special. The mac genius is probably just going to change out the drive and install the os and keep your old drive.

My macbook came with a 160 gig drive I just ordered a 320 gig drive to replace it. The macbook drive is user replaceable doing so will not void the warrantee. Also there is a app called super duper that you can use to clone your drive and make it bootable.

There are apps to control the fan many people use them to make the fan run all the time at slow speed so it is less likely to come on full when the cpu is pushed.

[hitest]

BTW, get a PC laptop

I'm a Linux/Unix guy. I'll stick with a macbook, thank you.

[isteve]

Oh yea there is a hardware test utility on the install dvd it won't help now but it's the first thing to run if you have a problem.

[hitest]

Oh yea there is a hardware test utility on the install dvd it won't help now but it's the first thing to run if you have a problem.

Thanks for the tip, isteve.

I'll do that if I run into problems.

[bluesna]

OK .. I was just listening to Jeff's radio broadcast about macbook hard drive failure.

Ilast night my drive failed ... I have been in HEATED conversations with Mac over the past 5 years in regards to an ibook (that never worked that apple said they were going to replace, which was my son's graduation present .. never worked, a G4 867 dual which never worked properly , then my G4 1.25 dual which was my studio (digital audio - ProTools) computer. I lost my biggest account with Warner Brothers on this one. My G4 1.25 dual died in session .. motherboard .. whih was replaced and delivered back to the studio .. not working . I lost my gig . Apple replaced the motherboard again and it never work totally again . super drive glitches and more !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now .. problems with my newest MacBook 1.83 intel core 2 duo.

After much yelling and cursing .. they keep sending out these little gifts to appease me . which as I do appreciate, still does not even get close to my monetary losses or loss in time.

For instance, to completely rebuild my system clean, it takes almost a week of long hours . well , maybe 3 days, but really long hours and i'm still re-installing many many other things for the next week or more.

I just did a full on clean install and re-install of all software within the past couple / few months .. not this .. starting over, right when I have a client coming .. so, I will be canceling that session.

I totally dislike todays technology and throw away attitude .. also the attitude of lost time is acceptable, let alone lost work and finances.

I have been considering a platform change for the past couple years, but, realize that PC are always problematic .. plus a learning curve .. a whole new system and such.

I have been a Mac user since the SE30 .. and .. I told Apple today, I bet if I still had that computer, it would still be running.

Granted, we are in a much higher level of electronics .. but .. a lot of good that does !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[isteve]

I have a Mac Plus that still runs.

In order to avoid reinstall problems in the future get yourself a external hard drive and a copy of super duper. Make a clone of your drive, anything goes wrong, your system, apps and data are on the external drive and if you need to you can boot from the drive until you have time to clone back to the machines drive.

Also if you make your living from a computer you really should still have a desktop as a main computer. Notebooks are great but just due to how they are treated and how delicate the parts are they tend to be less reliable then a desktop.

That said other then hard drives I never had any problems with my ibook, G4 powerbook and my newest Macbook. I do have a clone of my drive that I can swap out in ten minutes if I ever have to.