75% failure rate on 24" iMac hard drives?
Yes, the title sounds a bit inflammatory, but it in my case, it's true. I have four 24" form factor iMacs ranging from the 2.4 to the 3.06GHz core 2 duo models that I've bought over the last 3 years, and have had hard drive failures in 3 of them. Fortunately I had Applecare plans on all of them but still, 3 out of 4? And why? Apparently, Apple prevents the Mac Geniuses at the stores from commenting or speculating about it at all. They said they simply couldn't talk about it. What the ****?
I'm no Mac newbie. I've had about 15 different Macs since '88 and only once have I had a hard drive fail on me, and that was a Mac Quadra 700 with a twitchy Seagate drive from the time Apple was lost in the wilderness. And yet now I have I have 3 out of 4 of the same form factor poop out on me in as little as 3 years? Something is rotten in Denmark.
This is not a rant against Apple, OS X or Macs in general. I love my Macs. What I want to know is this: is this a design flaw with this form factor or were the Western Digital drives they came with just crappy to begin with? I've used stand-alone WD drives for Time Machine installations, and yes, I've discovered that those are crap. Of the 4 I bought, 2 of them failed within the 1st year, so I'm leaning toward the WD theory. But if its a design flaw, such as the HD (regardless of the manufacturer) isn't being properly cooled due to to the design, I would like to know that. I need to know that. If I didn't have Applecare, I certainly would like to know if I had to factor in $350 every year for a new HD replacement.
So what I would like to find out is if anyone else out there has been having a similar experience with the 24" iMacs. Did you need to have your HD replaced as well? Did they replace it with a WD drive or a non-WD drive, like a Hitachi? How did that go? Has anyone had failures with the Hitachi drives? I'm really curious to see how prevalent this has been.
I'm no Mac newbie. I've had about 15 different Macs since '88 and only once have I had a hard drive fail on me, and that was a Mac Quadra 700 with a twitchy Seagate drive from the time Apple was lost in the wilderness. And yet now I have I have 3 out of 4 of the same form factor poop out on me in as little as 3 years? Something is rotten in Denmark.
This is not a rant against Apple, OS X or Macs in general. I love my Macs. What I want to know is this: is this a design flaw with this form factor or were the Western Digital drives they came with just crappy to begin with? I've used stand-alone WD drives for Time Machine installations, and yes, I've discovered that those are crap. Of the 4 I bought, 2 of them failed within the 1st year, so I'm leaning toward the WD theory. But if its a design flaw, such as the HD (regardless of the manufacturer) isn't being properly cooled due to to the design, I would like to know that. I need to know that. If I didn't have Applecare, I certainly would like to know if I had to factor in $350 every year for a new HD replacement.
So what I would like to find out is if anyone else out there has been having a similar experience with the 24" iMacs. Did you need to have your HD replaced as well? Did they replace it with a WD drive or a non-WD drive, like a Hitachi? How did that go? Has anyone had failures with the Hitachi drives? I'm really curious to see how prevalent this has been.
24 in. Imac, Mac OS X (10.6.3)
