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MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

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Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#81

Post by saryant »

javis wrote: post #21

I think this may have happened to my MacBook Air 62 GB (Summer 2012). One day I booted up and nothing happened, just had a blank screen that never went away. I tried to use the internet restore and it couldn't find a drive. I then USB booted to Ubuntu and looked for the drive, but no drives were there. Does this sound like the drive failure they're talking about? It happened a month ago and I haven't touched it since…

Same thing happened to me in September. Fortunately I had backups so no data was lost but I was out a computer for a week and had to shell out $300 for the repair.

I spoke to Apple this morning and they issued a full refund.

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#82

Post by bhaile »

javis wrote: post #21

I think this may have happened to my MacBook Air 62 GB (Summer 2012). One day I booted up and nothing happened, just had a blank screen that never went away. I tried to use the internet restore and it couldn't find a drive. I then USB booted to Ubuntu and looked for the drive, but no drives were there. Does this sound like the drive failure they're talking about? It happened a month ago and I haven't touched it since…

Happened to me a couple of months ago. MacBook Air Summer 2012. One day, it would no longer turn on. Took it to Apple Store and was unable to find the disk. They replaced the drive and put the OS on it for me.

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#83

Post by enthuzer »

Great, My drive suffered a catastrophic crash 2 weeks ago and was replaced by Apple with one week left under warranty. After following these instructions and installing new firmware Chrome reopened to the Replacement Program page which I already had open prior to update! How can determine if If my new drive is affected?

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#84

Post by legulere »

javis wrote: post #21

I think this may have happened to my MacBook Air 62 GB (Summer 2012). One day I booted up and nothing happened, just had a blank screen that never went away. I tried to use the internet restore and it couldn't find a drive. I then USB booted to Ubuntu and looked for the drive, but no drives were there. Does this sound like the drive failure they're talking about? It happened a month ago and I haven't touched it since…

There were reports about failing toshiba ssds in macbook airs before. My SSD too died. Got it replaced in 1 day (EU 2 year warranty) by an apple reseller

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#85

Post by mikestew »

glhaynes wrote: post #67
mikestew wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time Machine will regularly (as in once a month or two for my household of Macs, sometimes in as little as a week) complain "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you." Apple says don't backup to a NAS. Plenty of folks have reported problems. Thankfully it's easy to fix: http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machin...

"Easy to fix" for a pretty small segment of their customers. This is about as far from the "Apple experience" as you can get. Anybody have any idea about if this is any better in Mavericks?

Getting it set up in the first place [0] keeps the selection of customers significantly smaller than those that are better off just buying a Time Capsule, or even sticking a USB drive onto an Airport Extreme (which I recall seemed to work fine). And Apple did say it's not supported. I wish they'd just fix it. IIRC, it worked reliably pre-Lion. EDIT: or for that matter, why not just bundle up the page I referenced into a nice app bundle with a pretty icon?

A more significant problem is that Synology (which is what I use) is out there saying, "Time Machine: works great with a Synology NAS!". And it does work great...until it doesn't, and last I checked Synology has no docs on how to fix it.

As for Mavericks, I'm pretty sure I've seen the problem on the one machine I have running the dev preview. Or maybe not, maybe it was before I put Mavericks on (I realize that's not terribly helpful information). The problem with saying whether it's better or not is that on my machines it may be a month or more before it rears its head. So it would take me six months or so before I could personally say that it's better for me.

[0] http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2007102817364274...

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#86

Post by mahyarm »

rsync wrote: post #74
tedivm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, be extremely careful with Backblaze. I got bit on the ass by them. It turns out their dashboard is just caching it's results, and there are instances where the dashboards will say they have data when they really don't. I learned this the hard way when we brought my girlfriend's computer in for repair. We gave them permission to replace the drive, went to restore the data from Backblaze, and got a nasty surprise…

I'll just leave this right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700 All accounts guaranteed to have no dashboard or gui of any kind.

I would be paying $50/month to just back up my photo & video collection at that rate unfortunately.

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#87

Post by mahyarm »

hrktb wrote: post #39
quarterto wrote: post #3

We also recommend backing up your data on a regular basis until you receive a replacement drive. Why stop there? With tools and services like Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner and Crashplan, there's no excuse not to maintain a backup. As evidenced by this page, shit happens .

Just as heads up: - Time machine: is not reliable for network backups (yes, really) - CCC: needs a USB connected drive for a MBA - Crashplan: recurring payment service based in the US All of the above solution are useful, but none are reasonable and no brainer backup solutions for everyone, especially for MBA owners. As for now, bittorent sync with a mirror on the same network feels like the best solution IMO.

CrashPlan's java based software just basically died on me after a while, so I switched to backblaze, which had much better performance. But people are now talking about bad experiences when they actually try to restore from backblaze. You can't win with these things it seems.

Currently I do Laptop + Time Machine HDD at work & a backup file server at home which syncs with my laptop with bittorrent sync and the file server is backed up by backblaze.

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#88

Post by azov »

I have one of those 128G MacBook Airs, and the SSD failed on me literally a few days after the warranty expired. I took it to the Apple store to see if they would repair it under warranty (Apple used to be lax about warranty dates), but they told me no. I ended up ordering 256G SSD from OWC and repairing it myself (which was cheaper and faster then what Apple store clerk quoted me for a new 128G SSD).

Called them today about a refund - they told me I might not be eligible because I did the repair myself and not through an authorized repair center, but they will try to get it approved. We'll see how it works :)

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#89

Post by r00fus »

jedberg wrote: post #80

The fact that they are not helping people move their data is very un-apple of them. Apple used to be a customer focused company but they seem to have lost that in the last few years. Telling my mother in law to "back up her computer" and then giving her a new, blank drive that she has to install her own OS on and then restore from backup is completely useless -- she'd have no clue where to even begin. So now Apple ha…

Not sure where you're getting that from the Apple page. They say that a backup should be done before migration, but nowhere does it say that Apple won't assist those who have no clue of what a backup is.

Re: MacBook Air Flash Storage Drive Replacement Program

#90

Post by r00fus »

glhaynes wrote: post #67
mikestew wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time Machine will regularly (as in once a month or two for my household of Macs, sometimes in as little as a week) complain "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you." Apple says don't backup to a NAS. Plenty of folks have reported problems. Thankfully it's easy to fix: http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machin...

"Easy to fix" for a pretty small segment of their customers. This is about as far from the "Apple experience" as you can get. Anybody have any idea about if this is any better in Mavericks?

Buy a Time Capsule if you want the Apple experience. It will cost you, but then it's Apple's solution.

Apple Time Machine has never been friendly to NAS other than Time Capsule. You have to do some hackery to get it setup, so the above fix steps are suitable for that crowd.

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