Hard-drive died; how likely is it that other components now start to fail?

The hard drive on my 4.5 year old macbook pro just died, and the battery "needs replacement" according to apple, even though I still get 1 to 2 hours out of it. In light of these damages. If I buy a new hard drive, should I expect that other components will start failing as well? I ask because I am trying to decide whether to replace the hard drive or just buy a new laptop.

Thanks!

tdod said:

The hard drive on my 4.5 year old macbook pro just died, and the battery "needs replacement" according to apple, even though I still get 1 to 2 hours out of it. In light of these damages. If I buy a new hard drive, should I expect that other components will start failing as well? I ask because I am trying to decide whether to replace the hard drive or just buy a new laptop.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

That is really an unknown at this point. There is no way to really tell when the rest of the components may fail. New hard drives are fairly cheap, and may be the best bet for little $$$.

Who knows, it may last another 4 years with a new drive.

imho, 5 yrs is pretty good for a personal computer.

Having said that:
Wife is still using a 6 yr old MB that's had the HD, battery and fan replaced.
I still have a 7 yr old MBP as a back up that's had the HD replaced 3 times (as upgrades, none due to failure) and 2 battery replacements.

Having said all that, a hard drive can be had for under $100 vs the cheapest new Mac is $1,000. Assuming it's still in good shape and doesn't have any other current hardware issues, it's worth a hard drive even if you do get a new one.

And my 1992 LC works great still after replacing the hard drive with a whopping 128MB drive. Is a must for using with OS 7 and Apple camera.

That was a humongous drive back then.

My first x86 box had a 80MB. Took a friend with me that sold commercial hard drives for a living.
Told me I'd "never" fill that up.

Well Tom the original 32MB drive did seem somewhat limited lol! And that 8MB of memory. What an improvement from the original LC with dual floppies and no hard drive. Later purchased a Directors Special 5500 Performa with a mammoth 1GB HDD which of course I would never ever fill!

And for the op - if 1-2 hr battery life is good for you, you could keep waiting on the battery - I don't work much on battery myself, so I'll let mine get down to about 30-45 minutes battery life before I replace. I think the system tells you to replace it when it hits like 50% health.

I put an internal Applied Engineering hard drive in my Apple IIGS. IIRC the beast was 40 MB and cost about $600 skins because it also replaced the PSU. Couldn't really afford it at the time but I was so tired of the floppy disk shuffle.

Lets put some perspective on this.
I'm gonna just stab in the dark - maybe 1990 for that drive.

Say $600 in 1990 dollars is $1,000 today.

That would put the cost of that hard drive at $26.25 per MB.
Today's 2 TB drives at $100, puts them at ~ $0.000048 per MB.

The typical 4 GB HD movie would run you:
$104,720 of drive space in 1990.
$0.20 storage space today.

And to store a small Blu-Ray movie at say 25 GB...
$672,000 for drive space in 1990.
$1.23 today.

Now I'm depressed.

That would be about the right time frame. I'm not complaining about the price (not much anyway). It was worth the cost not having to shuffle floppy disks. I keep that purchase in the back of my mind to remind me just how much the bang for the buck factor has skyrocketed in home computing.

tdod said:

The hard drive on my 4.5 year old macbook pro just died, and the battery "needs replacement" according to apple, even though I still get 1 to 2 hours out of it. In light of these damages. If I buy a new hard drive, should I expect that other components will start failing as well?

Click to expand...

Hard drives "die" mainly because they are mechanical devices. As with any mechanical device...wear & tear occurs due to the mechanical movement. Same thing with optical drives.

Other than hard drives, optical drives, trackpad buttons, keyboard keys, display hinges on laptops...just about everything else is electronic...and not susceptible to mechanical wear & tear.

As far as the battery...this is simply a "consumable" part...just like tires, brakes, or shock absorbers on a car. the more you use your computer (especially on battery power)...the faster the battery will be "used up" (total number of battery cycles).

For the way I use my laptops...getting 1-2 hours of runtime on a single charge from the battery I would consider just fine for me.

So you just need to replace your HD...and you will be fine. And if you need more than 1-2 hours on a single charge from the battery...then you could replace the battery as well.

- Nick