Some Mac drives may be plagued by data loss

Seagate SATA hard drives used in the MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac mini may be subject to a flaw that can result in massive data loss. TechWorld reports that Retrodata has come across a number of failures involving Seagate Technology's LLC 2.5-in. drives. "The read/write heads are detaching from the arm and plowing deep gouges into the magnetic platter," said Retrodata Managing Director Duncan Clarke. "The damage is mostly on the inner tracks, but some scratches are on the outer track -- Track 0 -- and once that happens, the drive is normally beyond repair."

These drives are made in China, and the afflicted models are loaded with firmware Version 7.01. Model numbers include ST96812AS and ST98823AS. Users can check what firmware revision their drives have by going to System Profiler and looking under Serial ATA look for the revision number.

Some experts, meanwhile, are warning that you would need to see several hundred or several thousand drives with this problem to know for sure whether there is a design flaw. A Seagate spokesperson told TechWorld "This matter has only just come to our attention, and Seagate is looking into it." Apple refused to comment.

Filed under: Apple