Apple will address MacBook Pro hard drive issue

I just called applecare for the 3rd time. They claimed that they have never heard of this issue. They offered to send me a new machine. I'll post back if this machine has the same issues.

gar - are you sure that simply rebooting into safe mode and then rebooting again to normal mode eliminates the problem?

Et tu Apple ?

I've got the 500GB 7200rpm drive and I see this issue a few times a week...

I have the new MBP 13" and it happens to me too. The machine will freeze for about 30 seconds and then return to normal. I hope Apple will release a fix for all MBP, not just the 15".

I have been getting this problem also, talk to apple tech support running through creating a new user and using that and finally they said lets reboot and go into safe mode (holding down the shift key when booting and hearing the chime 4 times before letting go). It took a while to boot up to safe mode. Then rebooting back into regular mode it fixed the problem. That spinning marble of doom doesnt come up no more at random times for 20-30 second stretches and everything works ok. You guys might want to give that a try.

The problem seems to be focused on MacBooks with 7,200RPM hard drives.

If you delve a little further, however, and go into places such as non-Apple Apple product forums. where you can read from people such as Mac Mini modders, the clicking issue enters their domain as soon as they put a 7,200RPM drive into their Mini.

Then you can delve a little further and read that, yes, 5,400RPM drives experience this parking issue, too, only the majority of those drives are apparently so quiet that nobody can tell it's happening. That is, they can't tell until they run a SMART hard drive utility and see that their head parks are WAY out of line with the amount of time that their hard drive has been powered, sometimes MILLIONS of times vs. a couple thousand hours, and you realize something bigger is up.

http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22797&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=b063c7deca1a2cad1463a0c9a4a83644

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21566852-WD2500BEVE-in-PPC-Mini-High-Load-Cycle-Count

Then, as you're sitting there, cogitating all this, listening to the hard drive in your PowerMac G4 MDD making little clicking noises (noises you think are normal, since you hear them all the time) and you realize, "HF, this thing's doing too."

This problem, IMHO, is rooted in OS X's Power Management system, and is affecting ALL systems running Leopard. But Vista user's can't rejoice about this, though, since Vista's doing the same thing - Although, from what I can tell, not as badly.

any chance this firmware fix will help the MBP models that have a degrading heat sensor? : ) i love my MBP, but it's painful to watch the heat sensor problem get worse and worse over time. of course, it didn't start happening until it was well past its warranty date...

I can tell you that it also affects the 5400 RPM drives. My wife's machine will suddenly, and without reason, go into spinning ball. Also when playing songs on iTunes, it will suddenly pause, and then start right back up where it left off. I have tried multiple different things, to no avail. This definitely seems like a Firmware issue.

At one point, it did not even fully boot at all; just got to the login and that was it. Had to go into Safe Mode, then rebooted it. Oddly, this seemed to clear up the boot issue, but it still every now-and-then freezes up the machine.

My first-gen 15" MBP with the 7200rpm drive does not click or beep. It just works. Of course being a 100gb drive, it is sort of full.

But I know how annoying a beep can be so I am willing to step up and take one for the team and sacrifice my MBP in exchange for someone's unibody model with the beeping issue. It will be tough but I think I can cope.

j/k