I’ve had a black 2nd gen MacBook since late 2007. When it was new it was a nice machine and I used it as primary machine for months. Soon after it went to being second machine. Later on i found out that a person i know had the hard drive die on his  I was slightly worried since mine was from same batch/era.

Well… it happened the stock included drive died to a painful clicking sound. It turns out both of our machines were part of a bad batch of hard drives and this failure was bound to happen… Thanks Apple for making me have to rebuild machine from scratch. The drive sat around for a few months before I actually did the AppleCare on it (I Used my own 250gb drive and that one is still going strong) and it was sure BS. I had to be driven to another city two times because Apple doesn’t do mail in repair in Canada…. how lame is that? As soon as i got the machine back i pulled the apple drive and put mine back in.

Anyway here is a picture and video of the dead drive.

Tags: click, Death, Failure, Hard Drive, Macbook

RSS Digest for Thursay, June 18th, 2009:

OEMs, partners can’t brand Windows 7 Starter either
Panasonic releases 85-inch plasma display
Safa rolls out accelerometer-equipped G3 PMP
Google invests $2.6M in startup tied to Brin
Pre-order Halo 3: ODST and get Sgt. Johnson later
Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million penalty
What’s the Best Hard Drive Enclosure to Buy?
Bluetooth enabled dress lights-up for incoming calls
A facelift for Facebook in-boxes, but is it enough?
Smaller reactor design for fusion may work in a “pinch”
Wired on the Race for Netflix’s Million-Dollar Prize
Super Talent’s MasterDrive SX SSDs would go great with an old MacBook Pro
Google revs up smart charging for plug-ins
Big Opportunities for Semiconductors in LED Lighting: Report
GPS Device + Web Access = Never Get Lost Again
People are still using Bing.com a few weeks later
LG-NComputing promise: 11 users, 1 PC
Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Application ID
new firefox logos
TweetDeck Update Adds Multi-Column iPhone Client, Account Sync
Rock-on with some concrete speakers
The Young Entrepreneur Stereotype Bites the Dust
Motorola’s Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth headset packs ‘true’ bone conduction technology, modicum of style
Trick for enabling MMS on the iPhone – UPDATE
Tenenbaum P2P circus: judge’s “indulgence is at an end”
How to Play Chess on Twitter
Microsoft beating Mozilla…in open-source licensing
Windows 7 licensing situation a “disaster” for businesses?
StarForce DRM making a comeback?
Opera Unite Web Server Benchmarked

-Matt A. Tobin of Binary Outcast

Tags: Apple, Bluetooth, Concrete, Dress, DRM, Enclosure, Facebook, Firefox, Fusion, G3, Google, GPS, Halo, Hard Drive, iPhone, LED, Microsoft, MMS, Motorola, Mozilla, Netflix, OEM, Open Source, Opera, p2p, Panasonic, plasma, RIAA, Science, Speakers, Twitter, Windows 7

The RSS Digest for Friday, June 12th, 2009:

Father of the cell phone
Why Smart Grids Could Be Slow to Beat Web 2.0
Gaming hardware, software sees slump in May
Atom N270 / N280-based netbooks may be stuck at Windows XP
Windows 7 to push up netbook prices
Windows 7 UAC code-injection vulnerability: video demonstration, source code released
Why Mozilla could beat IE in a European ground war
Twitter profile hack pwns Mormons
Palm Pixie is real, but may never materialize
Lenovo G530 for $379
Opera to ‘reinvent the web’ in four days
Apple readies new retail store design in Arizona
An end to the endless cycle?
How To Seize a Laptop And Make It Stick
Casio Exilim EX-H10 shoots 1,000 images on single charge
Blu-ray Managed Copy Full-Res Backups Are Only Good in Theory [Blu-Ray]
Safari 4: 11 Million Downloads in 3 Days
When the Cell Phone Is the Office Phone, Taxing It Is Wrong
Dell and Samsung placing orders for 11.6-inch netbook screens?
The World’s Smallest DV Camera Could Reveal World’s Largest Scandal [Video]
Major UK ISP: video streaming’s “free ride” is over
iPhone owners are superior beings, says survey
Let’s Play… Spot The MacBook Pro!
US hardware sales collapse in May
DriveSavers offers hard drive failure simulator for iPhone
SDXC set to blow your mind next year, with 64GB capacity out of the gate
Psystar: We’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for 581 copies of Leopard today
Recreating Tesla’s Wireless Power Experiments [Tesla]
Bring Back MST3K!
Twitpocalypse Not Now: Crisis Averted
Running Custom Firmware on the Palm Pre Is Rather Easy [Palm Pre]
Bio-ammonia Plans Proceeding

-Matt A. Tobin of Binary Outcast

Tags: Apple, Atom, Backup, Biotech, Blu-ray, camera, Casio, cell, Dell, DV, firmware, flash, Hard Drive, Hardware, IBM, IE, Intel, iPhone, ISP, Laptop, LCD, Lenovo, Leopard, Macbook, MacBook Pro, memory, Mormons, Mozilla, MST3k, Netbook, Opera, Palm, Phone, police, pre, Psystar, Safari, Samsung, Scandal, SD, Simulator, Smart Grids, Streaming, tax, Tesla, Twitter, UAC, Vaporware, video, Web 2.0, Windows 7, Windows XP, Wireless Power

Another late set of posts..

Here are the links for:

Tuesday, February 24th 2009
The Omni Group Releases Four Apps, Including OmniWeb, as Freeware
Apple starts ‘iTunes Pass’
Google Apologises to Millions of Users Left without Email
iTunes Launches Indie Store
Kindle 2 dissected, found to contain space for a SIM card
The Kindle 2 Gets Disassembled [Kindle 2]
The Hard Upgrade Path From XP To Vista To Win 7
Hidden Preference Tweaks in Safari 4 [Safari 4]
Can’t Get 1password to Work With the Safari 4 Beta? Here’s the Fix.
Google pays for e-mail outage with 15-day credit
DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist device-management software enters public beta
Firefox 3.1 Won’t Ship This Quarter
What’s next for netbooks?
Apple’s PR for Safari 4
Microsoft: new flaw affects all supported versions of Excel
Kindle 2 unboxing and hands-on
Google App Engine Announces Pricing
Jam an extra internal hard drive in your MacBook via OptiBay
Hands on: Safari 4 beta fast, mixes polish, rough UI edges
Intel rips into NVIDIA’s Ion platform
How to run Safari 4 beta and Safari 3 on the same mac
A micro microSD card reader
Leaked Snow Leopard Grabs Reveal Slimmer, Faster Mac OS X
Safari 4: Finally a reason to come back UPDATE
A few new rumors point to two new NVIDIA-packing iMacs
Mac OS X trends Compared to Windows
Blu-ray sales to top 100 million next year, says analyst firm

Monday, February 23rd 2009
Red ‘Resident Evil 5′ Xbox 360 unveiled!
Hack an extra core into your Phenom II
Google.org: Full steam ahead!
Snow Leopard shots reveal few changes but QT pro included
Chipmakers Hope Widgets Bring the Web to TV
“I Am Rich” clone comes to Android – at last!
Desktops on cell phones: X-Windows comes to Android
Brando USB Internet Sharing Dongle is About Nine Years Too Late [Internet]
CBS may fight to get Hulu videos back
Amazon ships Kindle 2 a day earlier than planned
Academy Award Winning Films Distributed For Free At “Kopime” Stations [Piracy]
Concept video shows iPhone App sorting done right
The 30 best features of Windows 7
Beambox launches Evolution R-1 pico projector
Vista Capable Lawsuit Loses Class-Action Status
Two more X-Slim notebooks coming from MSI
Want to Clean Up After Your Applications? Check Out AppZapper!
Dell’s Mini 10 comes with any amount of RAM you want, so long as it’s 1GB
Apple, Psystar Case Gears Up For the Long Haul
Video claims to offer more evidence of a Mac mini revision
News: iTunes Norway leaks album weeks before release
ASUS Eee PC T91 sits down for photo shoot, early critique
Stolen WinMo 6.5 device wiped remotely
Yahoo! boss warns of reorg ahead
Staccato CEO says UWB still has more to give

Sunday, February 22th 2009
Apple Disk ][ enclosure used to house Mac mini, enhance lives
Gnome, KDE, LXDE, IceWM All Working On Android
Satellite Collision May Have Endangered All Future Space Launches [Space]
Vizio moves to second place in HDTV sales
Online Cable Debate Heats Up As Execs Embrace Streaming Tech, Bicker About Programming Model [Cable]
Google Earth 5.0
Cool computer networking architecture graphic from 1988
Otters Making Home Videos Of Passing Photojournalists In Monterey Bay [Man Versus Nature]
iriver’s gorgeous P7 gets itself a web address
Microsoft wants refund from some laid off employees
Is P2P the new music marketing arm?
How Intel’s battle with NVIDIA over Core i7 impacts Apple
How a Router’s Missed Range Check Nearly Crashed the Internet
Researcher demonstrates SSL attack
An HP Mini 2140 Mini Post
Forget iClones, Everybody’s Copying the Iriver Spinn These Days [Copycats]
iPhone game saves a family’s home
Exclusive: Windows 7 RC set for April 10, 2009
Trimble rolls out rugged Yuma UMPC
Sun Slips Firefox Extension Into Java Update
TealOS brings Pre experience pre-Pre
The Future of Netflix is All About Streaming
Windows 7 Beta Users to Get Updates That Aren’t Updates

Tags: 1988, 1gb, 1password, 3.0, 3.1, 360, Academy, Album, Android, App, Apple, AppZapper, architecture, arm, Asus, attack, award, Beambox, best, Beta, Blu-ray, brings, Cable, Capable, Card, case, CBS, cell, Clean, Collision, computer, Concept, Core, Core i7, Crash, debate, Dell, demostrates, Desktop, Disassembled, disk, DoubleTwist, e-mail, Earlier, Earth, eee, embrrace, employees, engine, evidence, Excel, Extension, Extra, family, Firefox, firm, Fix, flaw, Freeware, give, Gmail, Gnome, Google, Group, Hard Drive, HDTV, hidden, Home, HP, Hulu, IceWM, iClones, iMac, Indie, Intel, Internet, Ion, iPhone, iRiver, iTunes, Java, Kde, Kindle 2, laet, launches, lawsuit, Leak, Leopard, long, LXDE, Mac, Macbook, marketing, micro, MicroSD, Microsoft, Mini, Missed, more, Move, MSI, Music, Netbook, netfilx, Networking, Norway, notebook, Nvidia, Omni, OmniWeb, Online, OS, Otters, Outate, p2p, Palm, Pass, Path, pays, pc, Phone, photo, pico, Piracy, place, pre, pricing, pro, projector, Psystar, Public, QT, range, RC, reader, Reasearcher, RED, Release, reorg, Right, Router, Safari 3, Safari 4, sales, Satellite, save, second, Sharing, slimmer, Snow, Sort, space, Spinn, SSL, Steam, Store, Streaming, Sun, TealOS, trends, TV, Tweaks, UMPC, unboxing, Up, Update, updates, Upgrade, usb, UWB, video, Vista, VIziol, Web, weeks, widgets, Windows 7, x-slim, x-windows, Xbox, XP, yahoo

Hard drive failure is a common thing is these modern years due to: outsourcing,  high density storage, and many other reasons. Some people make a big deal out of the failures… sure it can be expensive if you must recover you data but its not the end of the world.  The biggest issue is that the fan boys of certain brands will attack another brand when it has failures typically evolving into a fight between brands.

Take for example the newer Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive failure… Some people are using that as a excuse to bash them and promote other brands.  Tho there is a forum thread started on a forum that is collecting info on working/dead drives from that series…. I feel that is a better way to handle it.

Basically expect more drive failures in the years to come due to larger and larger drives.

Links included in this post:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing
Seagate 7200.11 fail & fine dataset, Upload your 7200.11 drive history data over here

Tags: density, Failure, fanboy, Hard Drive, High, Segate