Just had to replace HD on almost 2 year old MacBook

[aaronj2005]

My HD on my less than two year old MB completely died the other day out of no where. I received the flashing folder with the question mark and took it to the Apple store for the tech to tell me that the HD died & this is normal and can happen anytime.

Is this normal? I have had a Dell Laptop (600$) for 4 1/2 years and never had this happen. Please advise.
Thanks

 

[6string]

Welcome to Mac Forums.
Unfortunately, yes... hard drives can fail anytime!
I have had really good luck, and never had a hard drive fail on me, but the fact is that they do fail, and there is no time limit!
HD manufacturer's warranties generally range from 1-3yrs, but this doesnt mean they they won't last that long or will outlast that time period.
It's just the way it is....... it has nothing to do with Apple.

 

[DaFlake]

Yes, it can happen and is not specific to brand. It probably should have lasted longer but it has moving parts which can fail. You can pick up a 500Gb for about 100 USD now.

 

[Nethfel]

Hard drives in general are rated in MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) which is calculated on the average amount of time before the given part will fail. Hard drives tend to have huge numbers on their MTBF ratings, but that is just an average (and if you read this article, it discusses a Carnegie Mellon research project on accuracy of those numbers here: DailyTech - Study: Hard Drive MTBF Ratings Highly Exaggerated ) Hard drives, as mentioned have moving parts and are one of the several most likely to fail first parts in an average computer (other parts most likely to fail early include CD/DVD drive, fans, power supply)

Hard drives can fail within days after install or last decades (or longer) - I still have a few hard drives from the late 80s that work fine - and I've had brand new hard drives fail in a week. It can happen.

Now, if you bought Applecare, then it should be a covered repair and you should already be able to get it fixed for little to no cost (assuming you have an apple store somewhere and don't need to ship it)!

If you didn't buy Applecare, then at least laptop hard drives are fairly inexpensive these days and you could pick up a 500 or 640GB drive for <$100 (just looking at a list of laptop hard drives at tiger direct, the only one >$100 is a poorly rated seagate)

 

[aaronj2005]

Thanks!! I got it replaced @ Apple for a total of 142$. (Do not have Apple Care.) I believe its the same HD as previous. Didn't charge me for labor.. not sure if the techs charge labor or not.

 

[chas_m]

aaronj2005:

I have a lightbulb in my house that blew out after only 6 months. And yet I have another light bulb in my house that is still working after 5 YEARS!! HOW CAN THIS BE????

 

[cygni]

Flashing Question MArk / Freezing Macbook Air

Not sure if problem with my Macbook Air is related. Would appreciate some advice.

I have a Macbook Air, its 2 years old, its been doing the flashing question mark thing on an off since I first got it, but I just kept rebooting, reinstalled the OS a few times, figured it wasn't a major problem so didn't take it back within the warranty. Foolish.

The machine has suddenly stepped this bad behaviour up a gear and simply cannot find the disk to mount for days at a time. It works from time to time, fairly randomly, when its been left untouched for a couple of days, bless it. I tried running the disk repair utility and it doesn't detect any problems. The rare occasions where the Mac does start up, it freezes after a few minutes and I can't force quit or anything else - I simply get that spinning coloured wheel thing.

My gut tells me there is some issue with the connections hence why hard disk can't be detected/mounted for days at a time. But can anyone tell me if this is a known issue? Likely to be a poblem with the hard disk, or with the fan or somethign else? what are the common faults on these machines? And how easy it is to replace hardware on the Macbook Airs?

Many thanks.