Apple replacing faulty hard drives in 2006, mid-2007 MacBooks

Apple replacing faulty hard drives in 2006, mid-2007 MacBooks

Mea culpa. If you bought a MacBook between 2006 and 2007 and your hard drive sounds like an unoiled rock tumbler trying to work its way through a belly full of rusty bolts, you could be eligible for a free replacement, courtesy of Apple.

Admitting that a “very small percentage” of plastic MacBooks (namely, the original 2006 model and the mid-2007 model) “may fail under certain conditions,” Apple is inviting owners with a failed hard drive to hit up their local Genius Bar and see about a replacement.

If you’re one of the unluckily lucky eligible, Gizmodo has some helpful advice from a Mac Genius on how to make sure your computer gets the replacement: “If you really want to freak out a genius bar employee, just sidle up and mention you have a CS-matrix-eligible macbook hard drive replacement. or don’t because we’ll hate you for being douchey.”

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Sounds like a good plan… although an Apple Genius calling a customer douchey? Why, hello, Mr. Pot… this is Kettle.

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Hardware, Macbook, News |

  • Sam

    I lost 2 hard drives on my early-model Macbook, before I upgraded it to a 3rd-party drive for the sake of more space anyway. They were both replaced under AppleCare, but it’s nice to see Apple acknowledging that there were issues with that series.

  • Greg

    Hum… the Apple store replaced my HD free of charge 2 months ago when it died. I thought it was generous at the time since it was Christmas. A 500gig HD could be had for less a $100. Now, I’m not so sure. I have the original white MacBook.

  • Papadelta

    My wife has one. Last week I bought a mini for her, as I didn’t know how long her MacBook was going to last. The racket the drive made was truly frightening. I’m glad to hear there is a fix for it.

  • spice

    my mac falls in this range. my drive sounds like it’s about to die. scheduled an appointment with genius bar tomorrow. wondering what will happen to all my applications and files. i bought mac with tiger. since then i’ve upgrade to snow leopard. I’ve backed up my HD contents. not sure if its Snow Leopard or Tiger. It is bootable though. I’m just wondering if I need to take “extra precautions” to protect my software, files, etc.. Any help appreciated.

  • http://www.kentsievers.com Kent

    I think my daughter’s macbook is eligible for the recall but I replaced the drive myself a year or so ago. Am I out of luck?

  • nerg

    @ spice

    boot from your back up and check out ‘about this Mac’ under the Apple menu (top left hand corner). If it’s a Leopard back up, it’ll say 10.5.x

    Simply if you’ve backed up since the upgrade, it’s Leopard

    Just to be safe, back up again before hitting the genius bar, unless of course your HDD picks that moment to die

  • Shane

    My did the “?” and said the drive was unreadable. So I paid out of my own pocket and replaced. So will Apple reimburse me?

  • spice

    @Nerg

    Will definitely backup before I go. I know it’s not a Leopard backup since I never had Leopard install. Went straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard. Definitely think it’s a Tiger backup. The Snow Leopard installed right over my Tiger so I didn’t have to reinstall anything. Wonder if it’s possible for me to have fit a Snow Leopard backup on same external HD? Might decide to postpone Genius apt. until I have this straightened out. Or go down and tell them not to wipe it clean until I back up again. We shall see. Wish me luck