Apple chastised for ignoring two Mac data loss issues

[AppleInsider]

Apple is taking some flak this week for failing to acknowledge and address two separate data loss issues -- one present in Leopard's Finder and another having to do with faulty Seagate hard drives used in the company's MacBook line of notebook computers.

Leopard data loss issue

Tom Karpik explains that Leopard’s Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, which could lead to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action.

Unlike a directory copy action across drives, which duplicates a directory from one volume to the other and leaves the original intact, a directory move action across drives is intended to duplicate the original directory from the source drive to the destination drive, then delete the original from the source drive when the move to the destination drive is complete.

It appears that Leopard's Finder (as well as Finder versions dating back to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther) fails to check the integrity of the directory copied to the destination drive before deleting the source directory from the source drive. Therefor, if a directory move is interrupted partially through the move process, the Finder assumes the move was successful and deletes the original directory from the source drive, leaving a directory with only partial file contents on the destination drive.

The bug occurs regardless of the type of destination drive -- be it a local USB drive, local Firewire drive, or SMB volume. On his website, Karpik has posted step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce glitch as well as a video demonstrating its affect.

Leopard data loss issue

Meanwhile, U.K.-based data-recovery firm Retrodata is warning Apple customers that they risk potential data loss due to a design flaw on certain 2.5-inch Seagate SATA drives, commonly found in notebooks such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

"The read/write heads are detaching from the arm and plowing deep gouges into the magnetic platter," says Retrodata Managing Director Duncan Clarke. "The damage is mostly on the inner tracks, but some scratches are on the outer track -- Track 0 -- and once that happens, the drive is normally beyond repair."

The problem is reportedly prevalent with Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives that are manufactured in China and loaded with firmware Version 7.01. Model numbers affected include ST96812AS and ST98823AS.

Clark advises users to go to their System Profile, and under Serial ATA look for the "revision number."

"If it is firmware Version 7.01, then you have to panic," he said. "Apple is being utterly irresponsible and should launch a product recall."

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Samnuva]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

"Apple is being utterly irresponsible and should launch a product recall."[c][url=http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=3388]

Sure.. Recall an enormous amount of compuers in an inufficent public relations fiaso, or reliase a software update. Hmm, Hmm if i were steve, what would i do

[jpellino]

Yeah, let's assume that Apple is turning its back, whistling thru lunch and doing nothing.

Fer chrissake, there is one demo'd bug in the finder, it's been less than 24 hours in getting this news out, and Apple needs to fix a bug in something as complex as the Finder.

As for the drive, it's not confirmed, if it is it's Seagate's problem, and as soon as they confirm it and get a fix in place, I'm sure Apple will be on board with it.

[bdkennedy1]

I don't know if this is a new problem, but it was potentially dangerous in my case.

I have a lot of log files with a specific extension in a folder mixed with a lot of other files. For examples sake, lets say .storage is the extension.

The folder that all of those files are in is also called Storage.

Well, I did a Finder search in the folder "Storage" for all the files in that folder with the .storage extension that I wanted to delete, and the top level folder "Storage" was mixed in with the search results. When I selected Command + A to selected them and delete them, the folder "Storage" was also deleted. The is dangerous because that also deleted all the other files in that folder.

Fortunately I caught that the folder was missing before I emptied the Trash! I think this needs to be fixed?

[nagromme]

Seagate should definitely have a recall.

And Apple should definitely issue a Leopard patch.

Here's hoping both companies do what is needed!

Meanwhile, I'd like to see some AP articles about how PC laptops are better because "Apple hard drives" are unreliable

[drewb2b]

Same thing happened to me... sort of. When I was installing I chose the "archive and install" option. It was about 90+% done and was in the process of moving my user folder and settings over, when the install failed.

I had to reinstall the OS, and chose to use the 'upgrade' method instead - which worked flawlessly.

On the first boot up, I noticed that it had toasted nearly all of the information in my home directory. My desktop was gone (which contained a number of files, Documents -- gone (containing archived work history for billing, and my Microsoft User Data), and a ton of other stuff.

Luckily, I had moved from Entourage over to Mail a few months ago, so my mail was still intact in the library.

At any rate -- ouch. It was a nasty couple of days recreating what was lost. Made me realize I had gotten sloppy in my weekly backups to the server. :-/

[bdkennedy1]

Actually this news has been out for a week.

I never move files from one place to another. As a matter of fact I think it should be removed from the operating system. I spend the extra 3 seconds and copy the files and manually delete the original files when the copying is done.

Originally Posted by jpellino

Fer chrissake, there is one demo'd bug in the finder, it's been less than 24 hours in getting this news out.

[kresh]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I never move files from one place to another. As a matter of fact I think it should be removed from the operating system. I spend the extra 3 seconds and copy the files and manually delete the original files when the copying is done.

I'm with you. I copy and delete, and only delete after I'm really sure.

[jwdawso]

I believe Windows XP has similar behavior. It can be called a bug, but it can also be called a feature. The default behavior for dragging to another volume is copy, so one has to actively choose move.

How many have had my experience of downloading a large file, and suddenly realizing there is not enough space, so then quickly starting a "move" of files to another volume to immediately free up space?

[bignumbers]

The moving bug is something Apple should address, and I'm sure they will. Although I'm with others that moving is generally a bad thing.

The Seagate bug isn't directly Apple's fault. If it can be fixed by Firmware, Apple should make that available in Software Update for those affected. Otherwise it's really a matter of identifying the true likelihood of failure and doing preventative repairs if needed. There have been many "bad drives" over the years (Maxtor had a big problem years back) and I never remember anyone doing an actual recall. This would be extremely costly for Seagate as they'd have to pay for tens or hundreds of thousands of repairs by authorized repair centers - not just for Macs, but every OEM that's put their drives into laptops. Apple won't do anything unless Seagate is footing the bill.

[pt123]

I use the move all the time. Scary that I was at risk for data loss. I've read the move does not exhibit this problem with OS 10.4 and the "mv" UNIX command does not exhibit this problem either. Seeing that it works with the underlying UNIX file system, how difficult would this be to fix?

[roehlstation]

Originally Posted by drewb2b

Same thing happened to me... sort of. When I was installing I chose the "archive and install" option. It was about 90+% done and was in the process of moving my user folder and settings over, when the install failed.

I had to reinstall the OS, and chose to use the 'upgrade' method instead - which worked flawlessly.

On the first boot up, I noticed that it had toasted nearly all of the information in my home directory. My desktop was gone (which contained a number of files, Documents -- gone (containing archived work history for billing, and my Microsoft User Data), and a ton of other stuff.

Luckily, I had moved from Entourage over to Mail a few months ago, so my mail was still intact in the library.

At any rate -- ouch. It was a nasty couple of days recreating what was lost. Made me realize I had gotten sloppy in my weekly backups to the server. :-/

Backups are important, and Backups on Macs are easy as heck.

[jumpmanair]

I purchased a MacBook in May last year and in September 07 the hard drive just suddenly died a death. (Model no. of the hard drive; ST98823AS. So 1 year 4 months life span!

[lfmorrison]

Originally Posted by Samnuva

Sure.. Recall an enormous amount of compuers in an inufficent public relations fiaso, or reliase a software update. Hmm, Hmm if i were steve, what would i do

Well now, I don't see anything in the article which claims that any firmware update Apple might be in a position to release would be able to fix the hard drive issue.

As I read it, all we have here is one person's observation that every drive he's encountered that has the alleged design flaw, also happens to be running firmware version 7.01. That's a far cry from establishing a cause-effect relationship.

Frankly, if this is true, and it is physically possible for any instructions provided by the HD's firmware to end up causing the read/write heads to detach from the drive armature (something I don't think should be possible unless they're in the "parked" position), then I think that does constitute a hardware design defect.

Alarmist? Maybe. Let's wait and see if any other sources can verify these observations.

[TomP]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I don't know if this is a new problem, but it was potentially dangerous in my case.

I have a lot of log files with a specific extension in a folder mixed with a lot of other files. For examples sake, lets say .storage is the extension.

The folder that all of those files are in is also called Storage.

Well, I did a Finder search in the folder "Storage" for all the files in that folder with the .storage extension that I wanted to delete, and the top level folder "Storage" was mixed in with the search results. When I selected Command + A to selected them and delete them, the folder "Storage" was also deleted. The is dangerous because that also deleted all the other files in that folder.

Fortunately I caught that the folder was missing before I emptied the Trash! I think this needs to be fixed?

The system did exactly what you asked it to do, of course. What is it you think the system /should/ have done? Prevented you from deleting a folder?

[lfmorrison]

Originally Posted by jwdawso

I believe Windows XP has similar behavior. It can be called a bug, but it can also be called a feature. The default behavior for dragging to another volume is copy, so one has to actively choose move.

How many have had my experience of downloading a large file, and suddenly realizing there is not enough space, so then quickly starting a "move" of files to another volume to immediately free up space?

Windows XP confirms that the file has been saved to the target drive before it deletes it from the source drive, at least for SMB shares. Mind you, this happens on a file-by-file basis, so if you're dragging a whole folder from one location to another, you may end up with some of the files moved over to the target drive, but other files still present on the source drive. However no files fill fly off into the ether. (Never tried with disconnecting USB sticks and the like, though.)

Why should we accept any different behaviour?

[acknight]

For what it's worth, the new Macbooks (rev. last Thursday) don't seem to be shipping with the affected drives (my 2.2 white, with the 120gb HD, is a Hitachi drive).

Seagate used to be very reliable - I have Seagate drives from the late 80s that still work on the occasions I use my compact macs - but none of the drive manufacturers are immune to problems. But it's certainly Seagate that should be fixing/recalling the drives, not Apple proper... especially since Seagate (which now includes Maxtor) accounts for at least a third of the consumer hard drive market....

[SpamSandwich]

Based on the number of spelling errors in this article, I can only assume the author had some data loss issues to deal with also.

[bdkennedy1]

I don't think that the folder that I'm searching inside is supposed to be included in the search results. Right? Isn't that reduntant?

Originally Posted by TomP

The system did exactly what you asked it to do, of course. What is it you think the system /should/ have done? Prevented you from deleting a folder?

[nofear1az]

I'm sure Apple will fix this with an update... yes, it is serious and should be fixed but a recall? come on....

[vinney57]

The data loss 'bug' has been around forever. I lost my system drive with a power failure when updating to Tiger.

[crees!]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

Well, I did a Finder search in the folder "Storage" for all the files in that folder with the .storage extension that I wanted to delete, and the top level folder "Storage" was mixed in with the search results. When I selected Command + A to selected them and delete them, the folder "Storage" was also deleted. The is dangerous because that also deleted all the other files in that folder.

Fortunately I caught that the folder was missing before I emptied the Trash! I think this needs to be fixed?

If you delete a folder, everything in it will be deleted. This is not a bug, but rather operator error.

[clickmyface]

Can I be the master of the obvious for a second?

1) The person who "found" the "bug" says it has existed since Mac OS 10.3. So why has it been around for years but nobody has noticed?
2) Because apparently nobody is stupid enough to press COMMAND and then drags things (while losing connectivity to the drive.)
3) When you drag any file to an external drive, without pressing any key combination (the logical way) it copies the files to the external drive and preserves the original. Any other method is illogical, stupid, and reckless.

I guess now we know not to do something we didnt know how to do and would not do to begin with.

[PBG4 Dude]

Originally Posted by jumpmanair

I purchased a MacBook in May last year and in September 07 the hard drive just suddenly died a death. (Model no. of the hard drive; ST98823AS. So 1 year 4 months life span!

Oh man, that's not what I want to read!!! I bought my MacBook in June of last year. I didn't go the AppleCare route so I'm officially out of warranty if anything happens.

[pt123]

Originally Posted by clickmyface

Can I be the master of the obvious for a second?

1) The person who "found" the "bug" says it has existed since Mac OS 10.3. So why has it been around for years but nobody has noticed?
2) Because apparently nobody is stupid enough to press COMMAND and then drags things (while losing connectivity to the drive.)
3) When you drag any file to an external drive, without pressing any key combination (the logical way) it copies the files to the external drive and preserves the original. Any other method is illogical, stupid, and reckless.

I guess now we know not to do something we didnt know how to do and would not do to begin with.

I am sure the Apple engineer that implemented the UNIX "mv" function (move) appreciates you calling him (or her) illogical, stupid, and reckless. But then again, he really is all of that because he implemented something that he tested poorly.

[ajbgmex]

I have had 2 of those HD on my Black Macbook replaced by Apple. Fist one under the 1-year warranty and the second one under Apple Care, they, including the third, have all been the same model. I am sure this one will die too. The third one was replaced last week, so I keep my fingers crossed.

[shanmugam]

i need to check my macbook, geez

http://www.retrodata.co.uk/notice_ap...ate_drives.php

what happened to QC? seagate??

[drow]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

Fortunately I caught that the folder was missing before I emptied the Trash! I think this needs to be fixed?

fortunately, its easy to fix. turn your mac off, and never turn it on again.

[minderbinder]

Originally Posted by jwdawso

I believe Windows XP has similar behavior. It can be called a bug, but it can also be called a feature. The default behavior for dragging to another volume is copy, so one has to actively choose move.

Windows has a move feature, but it doesn't delete the original if the copy fails, does it? What would be buggy about how it works on the windows side?

If anything, windows handles this better since it allows cut/paste of files as well (safely) while osx doesn't.

Originally Posted by clickmyface

2) Because apparently nobody is stupid enough to press COMMAND and then drags things (while losing connectivity to the drive.)
3) When you drag any file to an external drive, without pressing any key combination (the logical way) it copies the files to the external drive and preserves the original. Any other method is illogical, stupid, and reckless.

Command drag is a feature of the OS (windows has an equivalent as well), why is using it "stupid"? Much less "illogical" or "reckless"? So now some features of the OS are OK and some aren't? Don't you think apple intended people to use these features since they, you know, included them?

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by acknight

For what it's worth, the new Macbooks (rev. last Thursday) don't seem to be shipping with the affected drives (my 2.2 white, with the 120gb HD, is a Hitachi drive).

Seagate used to be very reliable - I have Seagate drives from the late 80s that still work on the occasions I use my compact macs - but none of the drive manufacturers are immune to problems. But it's certainly Seagate that should be fixing/recalling the drives, not Apple proper... especially since Seagate (which now includes Maxtor) accounts for at least a third of the consumer hard drive market....

I think the proper channel is for the recall go through Apple, even if it's Seagate's fault. Other than myself, I wouldn't want anyone that isn't an Apple certified tech to do any work on any Mac that I own.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

Well now, I don't see anything in the article which claims that any firmware update Apple might be in a position to release would be able to fix the hard drive issue.

As I read it, all we have here is one person's observation that every drive he's encountered that has the alleged design flaw, also happens to be running firmware version 7.01. That's a far cry from establishing a cause-effect relationship.

Frankly, if this is true, and it is physically possible for any instructions provided by the HD's firmware to end up causing the read/write heads to detach from the drive armature (something I don't think should be possible unless they're in the "parked" position), then I think that does constitute a hardware design defect.

I think it's likely that it's not a firmware issue, but batches that had that firmware happen to be going bad. Maybe a manufacturing defect and not a design defect or errant firmware.

[Daffy_Duck]

Originally Posted by minderbinder

So now some features of the OS are OK and some aren't? Don't you think apple intended people to use these features since they, you know, included them?

Ding ding ding ding! Exactly. I think it's funny how some claim to prefer going through the trouble of copying the files and then going back to the original folder/files and deleting them when a function exists, that should safely do both steps for you in one go. Apple put this feature there. It's no more hidden than opening a new tab in Safari or right clicking on a MacBook (Pro). It's not some unsupported mysterious trick. I personally move files ALL THE TIME between SMB shares, thumb drives, etc. and while I've never run into this issue (that I know of), I concede the fact that one day I could lose data because of this bug and I would like Apple to fix it before that happens. I really don't think it would be difficult for them to fix.

And while they are at it, I'd like to be able to access the files on the destination while the copy/move process is happening. OS X is a multithreaded operating system. Why are the files locked until the whole process is complete?

[shanmugam]

strange coincidence, my roommate's HP Pavilion DV 6000 with seagate momentus - did not boot up, will get to know whether this is the same hard disk failure also in few days once it goes to HP support and returns back.

[normang]

Originally Posted by drewb2b

Same thing happened to me... sort of. When I was installing I chose the "archive and install" option. It was about 90+% done and was in the process of moving my user folder and settings over, when the install failed.

I had to reinstall the OS, and chose to use the 'upgrade' method instead - which worked flawlessly.

On the first boot up, I noticed that it had toasted nearly all of the information in my home directory. My desktop was gone (which contained a number of files, Documents -- gone (containing archived work history for billing, and my Microsoft User Data), and a ton of other stuff.

Luckily, I had moved from Entourage over to Mail a few months ago, so my mail was still intact in the library.

At any rate -- ouch. It was a nasty couple of days recreating what was lost. Made me realize I had gotten sloppy in my weekly backups to the server. :-/

I cannot see how you were in the middle of an install and moving your user folder, when you are in the installer, you cannot be copying, moving data around, it will not let you. And if you didn't have a complete backup before doing an OS upgrade, whose fault is that?

[EruIthildur]

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

Windows XP confirms that the file has been saved to the target drive before it deletes it from the source drive, at least for SMB shares. Mind you, this happens on a file-by-file basis, so if you're dragging a whole folder from one location to another, you may end up with some of the files moved over to the target drive, but other files still present on the source drive. However no files fill fly off into the ether. (Never tried with disconnecting USB sticks and the like, though.)

Why should we accept any different behaviour?

Think different.

[maxcasal]

Originally Posted by ajbgmex

I have had 2 of those HD on my Black Macbook replaced by Apple. Fist one under the 1-year warranty and the second one under Apple Care, they, including the third, have all been the same model. I am sure this one will die too. The third one was replaced last week, so I keep my fingers crossed.

Hello!
Check this:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/data...00.2_120gb.pdf

It seems seagate warranties for 5 years..

Max

[philipm]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I think the proper channel is for the recall go through Apple, even if it's Seagate's fault. Other than myself, I wouldn't want anyone that isn't an Apple certified tech to do any work on any Mac that I own.

There has to be some reason that Apple charges a premium for peripherals over buying them from a parts shop. Make them fix it, for sure.

[roehlstation]

Originally Posted by bignumbers

The moving bug is something Apple should address, and I'm sure they will. Although I'm with others that moving is generally a bad thing.

The Seagate bug isn't directly Apple's fault. If it can be fixed by Firmware, Apple should make that available in Software Update for those affected. Otherwise it's really a matter of identifying the true likelihood of failure and doing preventative repairs if needed. There have been many "bad drives" over the years (Maxtor had a big problem years back) and I never remember anyone doing an actual recall. This would be extremely costly for Seagate as they'd have to pay for tens or hundreds of thousands of repairs by authorized repair centers - not just for Macs, but every OEM that's put their drives into laptops. Apple won't do anything unless Seagate is footing the bill.

The Beige G3s had a lot of issues with Western Digital hard drives, (I replaced nearly 50 of those drives, that was 10 years ago...I'm only now starting to warm up to WD again, I still like Seagate, they are the only ones that offer a 5 year warranty on their drives.

[acknight]

Originally Posted by maxcasal

Hello!
Check this:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/data...00.2_120gb.pdf

It seems seagate warranties for 5 years..

Max

Problem is that Seagate's OEM warranty is whatever the OEM (in this case, Apple) decides. That's their retail warranty :-\

[whimvestor]

Originally Posted by vinney57

The data loss 'bug' has been around forever. I lost my system drive with a power failure when updating to Tiger.

It's small consolation, but I had about 20 GB of music wiped out when I tried to move to an external drive using Tiger. AC/DC through Garcia, Jerry moved fine, but everything after that was toast. I had some of the remaining files backed up on another computer, but still lost a ton of stuff.

Lesson learned. Copy, Verify, Delete for me from now on.