Multiple Hard Drive Failures in 2 months on 2 MacBook Pros

I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro with a 320GB hard drive. In early Feb. the hard drive failed suddenly and would no longer mount. My Apple Store replaced it and I restored from a Time Machine backup. A week later the hard drive failed again. It was again replaced, and they order a completely new machine. On the second restore I did not restore from Time Machine but rather moved the files I wanted, iTunes, iPhoto, documents, as to not bring along bad system files. The new computer came in and I set it up as a new machine and transferred files from the old Time Machine but did not do a full restore. I then erased Time Machine and ran a fresh backup. Two weeks later the hard drive on the new machine failed. It locked up so I powered down and upon restart got the file folder with a question mark and the hard drive was nowhere to be found. The Apple Store kindly replaced my hard drive for the third time, the second hard drive in a two week old computer. The asked me to not move any files from Time Machine for a couple of weeks.
I now have my fourth hard drive in 2 months and I do not want a fifth. In fact, the first computer may have failed three times. At this point I don't remember. The Geniuses at the Apple Store are stumped so I'd appreciate any input. What the heck is going on here?
My theories
1. Simple bad luck
2. A file in iTunes, iPhoto or an Office, iWork, pdf...... is causing the failures
3. Restoring Office from Time Machine is killing it.
4. I'm doing something to cause physical damage. I've never dropped it and I handle it fairly carefully and in the same way I've handled every other Mac laptop I've had in the past 10 years.
5. Moving the computer immediately after closing the lid to sleep. I've been told that the disk doesn't stop spinning until the sleep light pulses and moving it around too much too soon can cause damage. I've been doing this every laptop I've had and in the past much more aggressively as a grad student hurrying out of class rooms.
6. My most recent idea, not having the Put hard disk(s) to sleep when possible button checked in System Prefs. I unchecked it for better performance but maybe this is causing the hard drive to never lock when sleeping so when I move it around the heads bang on the disks.?
7. Something environmental. Using it on my lap? Setting it on the couch or ottoman while running? A power surge?
Please help. Thanks a lot.

Dunno about your hard drive issue.
However, everything you list in number seven are definite no-no's. All of them, except power surge, will cause heat related problems.
Have a nice day.
Boyd
Message was edited by: Boyd Porter

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Multiple Hard Drive Failures

I purchased a MacBook Pro just before last Christmas and in late January or early February the hard drive failed and had to be replaced. I was told then that it was a fluke and not to worry about it that the chances of it happening again were very slim. Well, yesterday it happened once again.
That is now 2 hard drive failures within 4 months of each other, and within 6 months of being purchased new. This is simply unacceptable for a computer that costs nearly $3,000 with an extended warranty.
Until Macintosh figures out this problem, I would advise everyone to stay away from the MacBook Pro. From what I was told by the "Genius" at the Apple Store yesterday when I was having the hard drive replaced once again, "Apple knows about this problem". Well, they may know about it, but apparently they are not doing anything about it because the problem still exists.
I guess they assume its cheaper to just keep replacing hard drives every 2 or 3 months than to fix the problem and have a satisfied customer.
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Even with a backup, that does not reinstall all of the software onto the new hard drive, only the personal files and data. I have over $15,000 worth of software that I have to painstakingly reinstall each time this happens.
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Over the past 2 months I've had three hard drives fail on three different macbook pro computers.
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columbus new boy wrote:
How crap is that?
It's not crap at all.
It's not that simple. For example, I've 3500 songs on my MacBook but don't want them all on my phone, so I have to manually select each song again???
There has to be a solution.
Why not simply make a playlist with the songs you want on the iPhone?
and maintain a current backup of your computer.

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And if they replace it do you have any options in what you get. Do you get an identical model or a newer core 2 duo model. I would be willing to pay a difference to get the core 2 duo 15" version if the option were given to me. Just curious how applecare handles these situations.
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You're right in that Apple should treat everything it sells with the same weight. However, given the information provided one could hardly conclude that there was a pattern of drive destruction. For all we know the drive failures could well have happened over 12 months apart and that would hardly suggest a serious issue with the MBP as a whole.
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A drive can be so badly corrupted that it doesn't work, but be resurrected through repartitioning and reformatting etc, TravisPaul.
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Hard Drive failure after 5 months what can i do?

the laptop is 5 months old and the hdd has died on me i was able to recover some of the files on it but everything else including the windows 7 restore image were lost. what can i do about this? do i contact the hdd manufacturer? i tried callin lenovo and was told id be called back by the tech support and 2 weeks later ive still no call so lenovo clearly dont care about it but i still have a laptop without a hdd now. i know i can get a new 1 but i shouldnt really have to because a hdd shouldnt fail after 5 months.
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ive rang a load of different numbers that ive found on the site for support half of them dont work and when i finally got through to someone they said i had the wrong number they gave me a new number to call which also didnt work. when i say didnt work i get a voice which i thing is from the phone providor that i have telling me this number is not in service. i have also left an online query thing which i got called back about and was told i would be called back later its now 2 weeks later and ive no reply.
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I just got the clicking noise, spinning beach ball, won't-boot-up crash of doom on my white MacBook for the third time. I bought it in December 2007. It crashed once in July 2007, replaced the hard drive. Crashed again in October of 2007, replaced the hard drive again. It was fine all year until just now.
I disabled Safe Sleep after the last time this happened and I never put the machine down when the white light is still on. My boyfriend makes fun of me for treating the thing with kid gloves. This time it died while sitting quietly on the counter.
I have Applecare and Time Machine backups and an appointment at 8:45 tomorrow at the Genius Bar, so that's not the issue. I hate to pull the old "lemon" card, but does three hard drive crashes on the same machine mean lemon? Ugh!

mschlock wrote:
Dropped the machine off at the Apple store jail this morning -- surprisingly they have the new drive in stock and will probably be able to install it today or tomorrow.
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That explantion and the suggestion to "upgrade" to the new aluminum model is extremely poor customer srvice. If you read this forum much the new alu-macbook has it's own set of issues. I will say this, OSX is drive intensive, depending on what you have open it's either writing swap files, journaling or Spotlight is indexing.
She also said the more you use the drive the more likely it is to die. Um. >Yeah.
Lordy, this was someone you stopped on the sreet, right?
Oh well, good luck with the new drive.
pancenter-

Multiple Hard Drive Failures in 2 months on 2 MacBook Pros

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