Seagate recall: Just got my iMac back today

[DeadEndAccount]

Hi,

This is a follow up to the Seagate recall and I was wondering whether they would replace it with another Seagate or an entirely new brand. Here is the information prior to taking it in:

ST31000528AS:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)

Model: ST31000528AS

Revision: AP4C

Serial Number: XXXXXXX

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Rotational Rate: 7200

Medium Type: Rotational

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

I ran the 'System Profiler' and found that they replaced the Seagate with a Western Digital:

WDC WD1001FALS-403AA0:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)

Model: WDC WD1001FALS-403AA0

Revision: 06.01D02

Serial Number: WD-XXXXXXXXXX

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Rotational Rate: 7200

Medium Type: Rotational

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Has anyone else noticed that they have switched brands? Not that I'm complaining but I wonder if Seagate is being pushed to one side given that there has been several years of bad batches coming out of Seagate.

[Beyond Godlike]

Interesting, ive found WD's to be much more reliable anyhow but cost a bit more. Not surprised that Apple went with Seagate as they love charging premium for the cheapest parts imaginable.

[BletchleyPark]

well it was always 50/50 if the iMac you bought had an WD or Seagate. it just looks like they have gone all WD now.

[DeadEndAccount]

Interesting, ive found WD's to be much more reliable anyhow but cost a bit more. Not surprised that Apple went with Seagate as they love charging premium for the cheapest parts imaginable.

It's a bit up and down because Atheros IMHO are a lot better than Broadcom and yet we see a mixture of both being used same goes when it comes to hard disks - sometimes they just change things around to keep the various suppliers on their toes. If it were me (personally) I'd establish a good long term relationship with Western Digital if it meant a secure supply of quality drives because the cost of replacing these drives in terms of labour wouldn't be small change given how labourious it is to open up an iMac to begin with.

[Elliott]

It'd be nice if Apple was just switching to all WD, but it might just be luck of the draw. It might be like the MacBook Airs: some come with Toshiba SSDs and some come with faster Samsung SSDs.

[Sranshaft]

I personally refuse to buy any hard drive from Seagate any more because of this exact reason. Of the past 10 drives I've bought, I've had 3 drives fail in the first year all coming from Seagate. And their external hard drives are complete jokes. I only buy Western Digital now.

[Elliott]

And their external hard drives are complete jokes.

Yea, which is a total shame. Their GoFlex idea is awesome but their drives suck.

[Jen Smith]

Hrmm thought it was just my bad luck for a while. Used to have decent results with Seagate drives (older models that lasted forever, a few almost 10 years), but the past few I've put into various servers seemed to crap out relatively quickly. Pity, used to like them.. been using a lot of WD's lately, so far no problems with the past dozen or so, knock on wood.

[metal_dragen Veteran]

Hrmm thought it was just my bad luck for a while. Used to have decent results with Seagate drives (older models that lasted forever, a few almost 10 years), but the past few I've put into various servers seemed to crap out relatively quickly. Pity, used to like them.. been using a lot of WD's lately, so far no problems with the past dozen or so, knock on wood.

Everything after the 7200.8 series has been crap. This was about the time they merged with Maxtor, so there's the problem. I've never had good luck with Maxtor drives and ever since the two merged, Seagate has been driving themselves into the ground. I tend to stick with WD, Hitachi and Samsung drives these days.

[articuno1au]

I'm a pretty big Samsung fan atm. I used to be a WD fan, but the Samsungs seem to outperform them a lot of the time..

Either way, I have all Samsung disks in my server, desktop and laptop. The only issue I have found is with one particular drive family, if a smart status call is made while writing data, it writes the sector off as bad and write speeds go to hell until the queue is emptied.

Other then that, they've been superb >.<

[bpetty]

Model: ST31000528AS

Revision: AP4C

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I don't suppose you have an Apple support case number for this replacement I could reference, do you?

This is exactly the same model *and* firmware revision of a hard drive I have in my 21.5" iMac bought in July 2011, and it has failed (not to worry, I have Time Machine backups), and I'm getting very sick of Apple telling me my hard drive doesn't qualify for this replacement program. The last Sr. Advisor I just talked with told me it didn't because only the AP24, and AP25 firmware revision models qualified, but obviously here you are with the AP4C revision just like mine, and yours qualified.

Hard drives aren't supposed to fail with only 1 and a half years of use. I've owned close to 20 different drives over the course of the last ten years (most of them Seagate drives), and I've only ever had one other drive die within the first 3 years. I've re-sold 6 of them recently that lasted me about 5 years, and every last one still worked. I still have a couple ~100GB drives from 2003/2004 that work perfectly fine, and pretty much every single drive I buy (outside of Apple) comes with at least a 2-year warranty (although most of mine are 3-year to 5-year).

This iMac drive obviously had something wrong with it, and Apple is replacing the exact same model with a recall, and I'm just getting shafted here because I'm no longer under the Apple Care warranty (but this recall is supposed to still cover me).

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)

Model: ST31000528AS

Revision: AP4C

Serial Number: XXXXXXXX

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Rotational Rate: 7200

Medium Type: Rotational

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing

[Kreuger]

I feel like I'm the only person in the world that likes Seagate. I've had better luck with them than WD.

[Mr. Gibs]

I feel like I'm the only person in the world that likes Seagate. I've had better luck with them than WD.

Same here lol. Pretty much all my computers but one have had Seagate drives (the one that didn't had a Samsung one) and they've all worked flawlessly.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I don't suppose you have an Apple support case number for this replacement I could reference, do you?

This is exactly the same model *and* firmware revision of a hard drive I have in my 21.5" iMac bought in July 2011, and it has failed (not to worry, I have Time Machine backups), and I'm getting very sick of Apple telling me my hard drive doesn't qualify for this replacement program. The last Sr. Advisor I just talked with told me it didn't because only the AP24, and AP25 firmware revision models qualified, but obviously here you are with the AP4C revision just like mine, and yours qualified.

Hard drives aren't supposed to fail with only 1 and a half years of use. I've owned close to 20 different drives over the course of the last ten years (most of them Seagate drives), and I've only ever had one other drive die within the first 3 years. I've re-sold 6 of them recently that lasted me about 5 years, and every last one still worked. I still have a couple ~100GB drives from 2003/2004 that work perfectly fine, and pretty much every single drive I buy (outside of Apple) comes with at least a 2-year warranty (although most of mine are 3-year to 5-year).

This iMac drive obviously had something wrong with it, and Apple is replacing the exact same model with a recall, and I'm just getting shafted here because I'm no longer under the Apple Care warranty (but this recall is supposed to still cover me).

AP4C is not covered by the recall. However, due to the way they log parts, it's possible to have a machine with an AP4C drive flagged up as under the recall. Also, if you have previously had the drive swapped for a AP4C they may still detect it as the old model.

Hard drives fail. Your AP4C drive hasn't failed due to the problem the recall was issued for - it has failed due to another problem, and thus you will need to pay for the repair. Every hard drive you buy has a longer warranty, but you don't get that privilege as an OEM.

[DeadEndAccount]

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I don't suppose you have an Apple support case number for this replacement I could reference, do you?

This is exactly the same model *and* firmware revision of a hard drive I have in my 21.5" iMac bought in July 2011, and it has failed (not to worry, I have Time Machine backups), and I'm getting very sick of Apple telling me my hard drive doesn't qualify for this replacement program. The last Sr. Advisor I just talked with told me it didn't because only the AP24, and AP25 firmware revision models qualified, but obviously here you are with the AP4C revision just like mine, and yours qualified.

Hard drives aren't supposed to fail with only 1 and a half years of use. I've owned close to 20 different drives over the course of the last ten years (most of them Seagate drives), and I've only ever had one other drive die within the first 3 years. I've re-sold 6 of them recently that lasted me about 5 years, and every last one still worked. I still have a couple ~100GB drives from 2003/2004 that work perfectly fine, and pretty much every single drive I buy (outside of Apple) comes with at least a 2-year warranty (although most of mine are 3-year to 5-year).

This iMac drive obviously had something wrong with it, and Apple is replacing the exact same model with a recall, and I'm just getting shafted here because I'm no longer under the Apple Care warranty (but this recall is supposed to still cover me).

Hi,

Sorry I don't have my iMac any more - I made a HUGE mistake and moved to the PC world - basically for the next 6 months I'll be going 'hell for leather' to earn money and wait till the Hallswell is released and buy an iMac and MacBook Air.

As for the hard disk - end of the day every vendor has gone through a bad experience, Seagate, Quantum, Western Digital, Samsung, Fujitsu and so on thus there really isn't a 'safe harbour' where you can point to and say, "ah, if I get this brand then everything will be sweet" because unfortunately that isn't going to be the case.

[Matthew S.]

My Late 2009 MacBook came with a Toshiba 250GB HDD :/