15" PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz hard drive failures

Mac portable hard drive failure is hardly a new issue, but some models seem to be more prone to drive failure, due to specific hard drives used and possibly production run dates.

In-house both of our 12" PowerBook G4s' hard drives have failed, necessitating a tedious replacement process. Cursory examination of reader reports also reveals this model as one of the most prone to drive failure.

Now MacFixIt reader Jason Westlake reports on widespread failure of 15" PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz hard drives within his organization.

Jason writes:

"I'm having a big problem with hard drive failures in 15" PowerBook G4s, 1.67 GHz models.  In the last year, I've lost 10 of 13 hard drives, one machine has even died twice.  The failures are all the same: if the user is working, they get a kernel panic and upon reboot, nothing... flashing question mark.  If they just boot up from scratch, the same question mark appears.  The hard drives themselves simply make 'ka-chunk ka-chunk' noises. Sometimes I get an error in Apple Hardware Test, sometimes it passes with no problem.  Four of the 10 failures have occurred in the last 2 weeks.  The remainder occurred all during another two or three week timeframe earlier this year.

"All machines were manufactured in 2005 from the same factory (Shanghai, China) as evidenced by the serial numbers W8xxxxxxxxx.  Five of the failures have sequential serial numbers.  These five were all purchased in July 2005.

"I've got an open case with Apple Customer Relations for this issue, and I'm still waiting for some sort of meaningful resolution beyond simply replacing the hard drive.  Apple Engineering believes this to simply be coincidence; somehow I doubt that five sequential serial numbered laptops all just coincidentally had hard drive failures."

If you've experienced hard drive failure with a 15" PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz, please drop us a line, including a information the drive brand. This information can be obtained by opening System Profiler (located in Applications/Utilities) then going to the Serial-ATA or ATA pane under "Hardware." The manufacturer and model of the internal hard drive should appear in the listing.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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