November 26, 2007 4:22 PM PST

Apple acknowledges some MacBook hard-drive problems

Posted by Tom Krazit

Apple is investigating whether or not faulty Seagate hard drives are to blame for data loss on some MacBooks.

Retrodata, a U.K. data recovery firm, reported earlier this year that certain 2.5-inch Seagate drives used in MacBooks had a manufacturing flaw that causes the drive heads to scratch the surface of the drive and cause major problems. InformationWeek contacted Apple about the problem, and a company representative said, "We've received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard-drive issues, and we're looking into it." An e-mail to the same representative checking on whether or not that meant Apple was looking into the specific issue identified by Retrodata, or just MacBook hard-drive issues in general, was not immediately returned.

Some MacBooks apparently have faulty Seagate hard drives.

(Credit: Apple)

You can figure out if your MacBook has one of the scarlet drives by checking the firmware revision number in System Profiler. If you scored a 7.01, Retrodata advises backing up your data and to consider replacing the drive. It's not clear if Apple owners are the only ones using the Seagate 2.5-inch drives in their laptops, although Retrodata said it hadn't seen similar problems with other drives, and it's also not clear how many varieties of Seagate hard drives Apple is using in its MacBooks.

Originally posted at One More Thing