Acknowledging that "a very small number of Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems, may fail under certain conditions," Apple has initiated a replacement program for the problematic drives.
The company will replace "affected" Seagate hard drives, free of charge, for about a year, until July 23, 2012.
Some iMac owners have complained for at least two years of a problem with the hard drives, mostly noise that one commenter on the Apple Support Communities forum compared to "your stomach rumbling — it really is most disconcerting and intrusive. I cannot imagine Apple designed such a wonderful piece of kit with such silent fans only for the HDD to obnoxiously announce it's presence constantly."
That observation was made in November 2009.
In June 2011, on that same thread, another commenter had a very similar complaint:
Last May I decided to get an iMac27 i7 over a mac pro, it arrived with a Seagate hard drive 1T. I have to say I wasn't aware of the noise until early this year the noise was so obviously and extremely annoying, around March this year the general performance became very sluggish, even when only safari's on, the computer freeze all the time, of course all associated with the hateful grumbling noise, oh, the ridiculous thing was when it’s on sleep, the noise didn't stop at all, we could even hear it in the bedroom! (well, to be fair two rooms are pretty close).
Those who think they have Seagate hard drives with this or other problems need to get the ball rolling with a visit to an authorized Apple tech support person and make sure to back up any data they consider valuable before handing it over. (Duh.)
More information about the program can be found here.
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