Western Digital hard drive "quality alert" recall

A Western Digital web page states:

"During extensive quality testing procedures, Western Digital has identified a hardware issue that affects a very specific group of WD Caviar 5400 RPM EIDE hard drives. This issue could cause the hard drives to fail to power-up after six to 12 months of full-time use. The affected drives were manufactured between August 27, 1999 and September 24, 1999 and range in capacity from 6.4 GB to 20.5 GB. None of Western Digital's WD Expert, WD Enterprise, and WD Performer hard drives are affected.

As part of our ongoing commitment to quality, we are providing a drive utility that identifies the affected WD Caviar hard drives. Even though this issue affects a small number of WD Caviar drives, we highly recommend that you test your drive using this utility. "

However, the utility only works with Windows. While this may imply that Macs don't use these drives, reader David Honda asks: "Doesn't Apple use WD Caviar 10 GB drives in the new G4/400? (Our G4's 10 GB HD shows up in Apple's System Profiler utility as WD102AA, which is one of the model numbers on Western Digital's list.)"

A press release provides some more background.

Update: We stand corrected. There is a test utility for the Macintosh. It's on this web page. (Thanks, Leonard Hermen.) [Western Digital subsequently removed this page.]