To answer your first point. This was not the issue here. The issue was the excessive numbers of these enclosures we had been receiving for recovery. Two drives in such a cramped enclosure with no active cooling results in overheating – simple. However, we wished to test this company’s attitude to customer service – which turned out to be fairly obnoxious – hence our message to them.
It’s not always simply a case of “cloning a working drive.” Sometimes this sort of damage travels to the drive internals – usually the preamplifier chip or the heads themselves – which requires a head transplant. Besides, much of the drive’s firmware is stored on a chip on the PCB, and the data therein is unique to each drive, which involves de-soldering the (usually unaffected) ROM chip and relocating it to a working donor PCB.

What you should also be aware of, especially when you claim to be experts is that the damage to the Western Digital hard drive shown in the picture has absolutely nothing to do with the drive over heating.

I cannot agree. Many of the WD drives we have received that have been subjected to high temperatures have suffered from this problem. Granted, it is normally the motor controller that blows first, but we have noted this particular problem primarily in drives that have been used in external housings – and always with no active cooling.

I also enjoyed your rant about Apple laptop drives, these drives (Seagates) are OEM drives provided to many other OEMs (yes even THAT firmware version!), the fault is with the bad drive and not the Apple hardware, you should be careful that you do not face the wrath of Apple legal.

To date we have not encountered a firmware 7.01 drive from anything other than an Apple computer. If you are able to provide clear evidence to the contrary, I would welcome this information. I feel it more to the point that Apple do not face the wrath of a class action lawsuit.

The fault is with the hard drive – yes. However, Apple continue to supply this hard drive. I have been in touch with a prominent UK journalist who (in early November 2007) received a firmware 7.01 drive as a replacement for her failed 7.01 drive. As such, the buck stops there.

Thanks for your comments.

What you should also be aware of, especially when you claim to be experts is that the damage to the Western Digital hard drive shown in the picture has absolutely nothing to do with the drive over heating.

I also enjoyed your rant about Apple laptop drives, these drives (Seagates) are OEM drives provided to many other OEMs (yes even THAT firmware version!), the fault is with the bad drive and not the Apple hardware, you should be careful that you do not face the wrath of Apple legal.

I’ve read your Important notice for Users of Apple Macbooks. I am shocked. I’ve heard about Macbook hard drives going to hell before.

My system profiler says I have a ST9120822AS in my MacBook. How can I find out the revision of its firmware?

Regards,
Marc