Macintosh Support Done Right
If you’re less than satisfied with your current Macintosh Technical Support person and would really like to find someone with an outstanding track record of solving problems, please give us a call: 513-831-0611
Hard Drive Failures
Over the course of the past year, we have seen a marked increase in the failure rate of 2.5 inch hard drives used in Apple PowerBook G4, Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro models. All of these drives have been in service for 2 to 3 years. Brand names we have seen fail are Toshiba, primarily used in the PowerBook G4; Seagate and Western Digital, used primarily in the Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro.
Most of these drives have failed in the same manner and have exhibited the same symptoms described below while a few have just died immediately. Some have been brought to our attention promptly and complete recovery has been possible. Others have been brought to our attention after the point of complete failure. In the latter case the story has been the same. The owner either kept trying to run a disk repair utility or simply tolerated the symptoms hoping the problem would fix itself.
Bad Capacitors
Nearly every electronic product manufactured today contains Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors. These are used primarily for filtering the various voltages produced by power supplies to furnish clean Direct Current free of noise and switching transients. When these capacitors fail, they allow noise and transients to reach circuits that are susceptible to this form of interference with the result being some form of malfunction.
There have been a number of Apple products affected by bad capacitors: the eMac, iMac G5 (both the internal power supply and the logic board) and the Time Capsule. Other well known products affected include the LaCie external hard drives.
If you suspect that you have an affected product, we can assist in positively identifying bad capacitors and in their replacement. Component level rework is our forte, we use only Panasonic and Nichicon components rated for operation at 105 degrees C. Repair costs are reasonable and in the case of the LaCie power bricks, these are available on an exchange basis.
For an interesting and informative write-up on why the problem of bad capacitors is so prevalent, please read this Wikipedia article.