Mac Hints & Tips

Several months ago it was reported that early MacBooks (with Core Duo rather than Core 2 Duo processors) were quite likely to suffer premature failure of their hard disks. Recently I’ve seen a couple of these failures, so if you have one of the suspect drives it may be a good idea to replace it while the going is good.

The hard disks concerned were manufactured in China by or for Seagate. To check yours, go to the Apple menu and choose “About This Mac;” then click the “More Info” button.

In the left hand column, under the subheading Hardware, click “Serial-ATA.” In the panel to the right, under Serial ATA Bus, click the drive model number starting with “ST,” and look below for the Revision number. If this is 7.01 you have one of the suspect drives.

Although the firmware revision number is useful in defining “at risk” drives, there is no firmware update that can be applied to avoid the risk, which is in fact the result of a mechanical defect in the drive which results in damage to the platter surfaces, rendering the drive essentially unreadable.

Fortunately, replacing the drive need not be a very expensive process, and can be a do-ityourself job. Suitable drives are cheap (around $55 for a 120GB unit from “warehouse”-type suppliers) and fitting takes just a few minutes. The instructions are in your MacBook handbook.

After being fitted, the new disk has to be formatted by using Disk Utility, erasing it with the format Mac OS Extended Gournaled) and choosing the Advanced option GUm Partition Map. This must be done by starting from your Mac OS X Installation disk and using Disk Utility before you copy any data to the new disk by any method.

Remember that you’ll have to copy your programs and data from the old disk to the new one, the simplest way being to borrow an external disk to act as a “halfway house,” and to use a cloning utility like CarbonCopyCloner (freeware) to render the new drive bootable. (If you make just a “normal” copy from old drive to new, you’ll need to subsequently reinstall and reupdate the Mac OS, using the “Archive & Install” process to preserve all your data.)