Repeated hard drive failure in a few months

Hello everyone, I own a 15.4" macbook pro, bought in october 2009 directly from an apple operator by phone; on february, after just 4 months, I wake from sleep mode my mbp and I see the "beach ball" spinning cursor, and the system freezed. After a few minutes of freeze, I am forced to shut it down by keeping the power key pressed. I reboot, and the only thing appearing is the folder with a question mark on it.. I manage to recover a lot of my data ONLY using Disk Warrior, which warns me that my hard drive is severely compromised. I didn't notice any problem
in the previous days, it just happened from one day to another. I'm out of luck.. but still it's something that can happen. Apple changed my hard drive immediately.
Today, after less than other 4 months, the same problem. I open my laptop, it wakes from sleep and it remains freezed.. I fear the worst. At reboot, at first it showed the folder+question mark, now only the "deny" sign (circle with a bar). The hard drive doesn't make any weird noise nor click, but restarting with a Ubuntu I just manage to recover a few files before getting a lot of input/output errors. Now I can't see my hard drive anymore listed among peripherals, neither using Disk Warrior which recognize it, but It cannot communicate with the hard drive.
I'm still under warranty, so Apple will change my hard drive but..
a) is it possible that a hard drive fails from one day to another without any symptom in the previous days? It worked like a charm, and suddenly it broke. In both cases.
b) in your opinion, is it possible that I'm just out of luck or it cannot be a coincidence? Could it be a power supply problem, or a sata controller failure? In this case, how does Apple behave? Just substituting the hard drive for the second time wouldn't be enough, I think..

LorenzoMarcon wrote:
a) is it possible that a hard drive fails from one day to another without any symptom in the previous days? It worked like a charm, and suddenly it broke. In both cases.
b) in your opinion, is it possible that I'm just out of luck or it cannot be a coincidence? Could it be a power supply problem, or a sata controller failure? In this case, how does Apple behave? Just substituting the hard drive for the second time wouldn't be enough, I think..
Hello LorenzoMarcon
a) Apple is usually very good about picking the hardware that goes into their machines. But yes it is possible you had two defective drives. The trouble with hard drives is, they are really not designed to be moved around. The tolerances inside a laptop drive are so tight than almost any defect will cause the drive to fail.
b) From the description of the failure and the fix I think it is just your drives failing not a problem with your machine. If you had a power supply issue you would notice other issues with your mac; flickering screen display, odd shutdowns, charging issues, or excessive heat. A SATA controller failure would cause your drives to just not show up since you recovered the first drive with disk warrior the controller is working.
That covers the hardware side of the problem there is another component here that might be affecting it, the environment around the mac. A sudden jar or impact can cause drive failure. There is also a brief window when you have put the mac to sleep but the drive has not finished spinning down where a sudden change in orientation could cause the heads to crash into the drive platter.
I hope this helps.
Mike

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