Hard drive failure??

I would get on to them and point out its a common problem and that even though its out of service warranty it wouldnt harm their reputation to fix it for free.

Mine died yesterday, 2.2 Late 07. I've had it a little over a week.
Sold a 4 year old iBook/G3 that was in like new condition-- wish I still had it as a backup.
Anyways, after looking insode to see where it's mounted, has it occurred to anyone that the plastic case around the hard drive may not offer enough physical protection to the drive itself? Think about what would happen if you leaned on the keypad e.g. while standing up, while the drive was working? I think there needs to be more reinforcement around the drive, or maybe it's just not that great an idea to make the case so thin after all.

OK, here's a little update.
I got the suspect drive out and hooked it up to a USB device, and it's durned quiet (couldn't hear it at all when in the macbook-- maybe because my aquarium water is low and it sounds like a waterfall) but it does in fact have the click of death. It wouldn't show up in any utilities on my MDD either. Unwrapped the Western Digital 320 GB drive I bought last night, and tried it on the same device-- nice noises, showed up with no problem.
Installed the 320 GB in the macbook, cloned a system I set up on another external last night to t, and I'm booted from the internal 320 GB drive now, no problem.
The dead drive is an apple-logo 160 GB Fujitsu.
I wonder if Apple will swap out the dead drive for me even though it's not installed presently? The tab broke off the sled and I'd rather not have to go in via upper case again to swap out the drive.

Count me in too. Macbook with Seagate model # st9120822as. Dos not even show up in disk utility when I boot from CD.

I joined the club two weeks ago, exactly one day before the end of the semester in graduate school. I lost two semesters worth of data, but was lucky enough to have my most recent work - not all turned in yet - on flash drives.

Same story: I was working away and heard a clicking sound. I got the spinning beach ball, had to shut it down with the power switch, turned it back on and got the blinking ? and folder. The clicking sound persisted. I tried a few more times, and same happened.

My MB was only 8 months old, and I'm pretty ******. I've been using Macs for nearly 15 years and never a problem, but this MB has been nothing but trouble. The wireless never worked properly despite having had the airport card replaced within a month of buying it in Sept 07. Now I have to report to my PC-user friends that my Mac just got fried! Unacceptable!

The genius bar in SF didn't have a good answer other than "hard drives fail." Duh, I can tell THAT much.

I took it to a data recovery place that tried all the software recovery methods but to no avail. They were awfully nice and didn't charge me since they couldn't recover my data (plug for them here: Peter's PC Repair in SF). My next option is the hardcore take-drive-apart that costs $1000s, but I'm not going to do it. I'm living off of student loans and can't afford this right now.

I have an external hard drive on the way and will certainly be backing up my data from now on, but after reading post after post with the same story I'm more ticked off than before. My laptop hardly ever left the house, and it failed at the tender age of 8 months! Totally bogus. Since it never worked properly, I'm going to play the lemon card and try to get Apple to exchange this for a new one. This is ridiculous.

My hard drive is a Seagate 120 GB Momentus 5400.3 made in China, SN 5RM037MQ.

I guess i'm the...what? 10,000th member of this club now? My hard drive completely crashed after a year and 4 months. Knowing apples previous mishaps with ipods i've owned, i should have bought the extended warranty, but didnt. My family has had desktops and laptops for more than 10 years that have yet to crash or had problems with hard drives. i looked at apple as a company to be the top of the line, but after a year and a half...thats pathetic. as much as i love apple products when they work...the very short lifetime of their products makes me never want to buy from apple again. we all deserve a little help here from apple if i do say so myself. but thats not gonna happen.

If my macbook is not under warranty anymore, is there ANY chance in he ll that Apple will replace my hard drive? It has all the same symptoms as the ones listed, and the tech support place at my university just said the hard drive is useless and crashed...after only a year and a few months. This all sounds like some manufacturing problem that needs to be recalled and fixed immediately. But i have a feeling Apple isnt going to help me out at all since i'm not under warranty.

Glad I found this thread my Macbook just died 1/2 hour ago and has all the same symptoms as others here. I'll tell you this Macbook is a flimsy piece of junk, only 15 months old and first where you rest your palms broke the edge of the unit and now a hard drive, they have a lot of nerve charging 2K for these things. Extremely disappointed. Whats is a suggested replacement other than Hitachi? The drive is a Hitachi 160GB 5400RPM.

Message was edited by: Darryl M

Message was edited by: Darryl M

I'm another unhappy member of this club. Purchased Macbook in July 2006, three days ago it exhibited the same symptoms: sudden failure, followed by question mark on reboot, and no recognition of the hard drive when I'm able to boot with the startup disk. What are the chances that Apple is going to address this epidemic?

Drive is a Seagate 2.5" model ST98823AS, Firmware 7.01.

Message was edited by: jasbart

This is absolutely ridiculous that so many people are having the exact same problem and Apple is doing nothing about it. I purchased a Macbook for law school because of the perception that Macs always function great and I would have no problem. Well I have had it for under a year and it started having the same symptoms as everyoneon this post. Apple will give me a new hard drive (because I have the warranty) but all of my law school notes are now lost and they say they are not willing to do anything to help me except for give me a business card of a company that quoted me $1000 plus. I realize I should have backed up the information, but the computer was less than a year old and I did not use it for anything besides note taking and internet browsing. I am going to try to work my way up the chain complaining, but does anybody know of a company that can get my information for a lower price? Thanks!

Well its back and running, installed a WD Scorpio 320GB drive. Couldn't recover any of the data on the original drive ( so we are taking it out to the gun range and using it to test out some new 223 shells) and considering the laptop is only 14 months old, I'll most likely never purchase another Macbook, just too cheaply made. Getto laptop.

I use to think Apple was a bit more expensive due to reliability but thats wearing off now but knock on wood I've never had a problem with my original Quicksilver.

Add another to the list.... 1.83Mhz Macbook, in a school environment, teacher had just finished the class reports, wheel went into a spin, no hard drive on restart! Lots of class work/photos etc gone.
Crazy stuff... nearly as bad as failing logic boards on the iBooks.

Add yet another. Just over 2 years old MB. Computer froze. Had to force shut down by holding the power key down. Turned it back on and got the grey screen with the folder/question mark flashing. Went through all procedures the manual presented. Disk Utility does not show HD option. Unable to reinstall. It's just dead.

Will call apple support tomorrow. There are no apple stores near me to bring it to. A friend of mine was just talking about buying herself a MB. I'll be sure to call her tomorrow and stop her.

This was my first Mac. I thought investing in one good computer (MB) I wouldn't have to worry about the constant replacements of PC's. Boy was I wrong.

Can anyone suggest a mac computer that actually is worth the investment?

Thanks and gl to everyone.

Long story short: FOUR replacement hard drives into my MacBook (purchased in June 06, had the heatsink, logic board replaced due to random shutdowns) are not recognized by the machine. I had swapped out the original 60GB Seagate with a WD 160GB last June (07); last month it died, or stopped being recognized, by the system. No clicking noises, just a frozen finder. WD sent me another. Not recognized. A second replacement 160GB. Not recognized. I took the machine to my local shop and they stuffed their drive in the machine, it booted fine. They said it was the drive. I was skeptical, but okay: phone WD, they sent me a 250GB replacement for my trouble. Not recognized. I spoke with WD's tech support, they were also skeptical but there's not that many tests one can perform on a hard drive with OS X. So they sent me a 320GB drive. Not recognized. Grrr.
I went out yesterday and bought a Firewire enclosure, stuffed the 320GB in there, of course it was recognized. Installed on OS on it, stuffed it into my machine. Flashing question mark.

It's not my hard drive.

BTW, I have resorted to using my very full orginal 60GB drive for now, cuz I have to keep working, can't afford to lose a week with my machine in the shop.

I've been having the same problem. My macbook gets hot on the bottom left corner. It also froze a lot and would require me to hold the power button down to reset it etc... It was initially sent into apple for repair after the genius bar thought they fixed the problem.. It came back in worse shape with it not being able to load. The apple store just replaced the hard drive yesterday and I picked it up today.

It initially was working, but has now crashed three times.

Any thoughts?