Important notice » Users of Apple Macbooks
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It has come to our attention from the sheer volume of this particular drive received for recovery that they have a critical manufacturing flaw. The faulty drives are all Seagate 2.5" drives that are manufactured in China, with a Firmware revision of 7.01. They are also all SATA interface. No other drives seem (at this stage) to be affected. UPDATE: 12 December 2007. We are now aware that some of these drives with Firmware 7.01 have been manufactured in Singapore. This means, simply, that regardless of your drive’s provenance, if it has firmware 7.01 it needs to be considered dangerously unreliable and likely to fail. Again, proactive steps should be taken to back up your data and replace the hard drive as a matter of urgency. We believe that Apple, in their silence, and with no hint of a recall, should replace these drives (whether or not they have failed, and whether or not they are in warranty) free of charge with suitable alternatives. How to determine if your drive is one of these mentioned: In System Profiler, look under Serial-ATA for the Revision, which shows the firmware of your hard drive. You will see “Model” and if it begins with letters “ST9” then it is a Seagate drive. If yours is Revision 7.01 (only Seagate drives have this number) you should perhaps consider backing up your data immediately. We are receiving quantities of these drives for recovery, and nearly all display the same cause of failure. The read/write heads appear to fail mechanically, quickly causing deep scratches to the platter surface, and rendering the drives unrecoverable. Should you have one of these drives in your system, we recommend you contact Apple and demand a free and immediate replacement. Be determined in your efforts if you encounter any resistance; Apple are responsible for supplying these defective drives in their systems, and not Seagate, and Apple should be held accountable for their replacement. This issue has now been recognised in the following publications: |
