MacBook drives prone to self-destruction?

According to a claim from a UK data recovery company, there is a flaw in the hard drives that ship with certain Macbooks. The flaw, they claim, could result in people losing data unexpectedly – and they are urging Apple to recall the drives.

Retrodata is asserting that they have seen many failures in a particular line of Seagate SATA laptop drives, which appear in many apple products such as MacBooks or Mac Minis. The flaw is eerily similar to the IBM Deathstar sagas of years past when the drives heads would crash into the disk itself. They list two models in particular, ST96812AS and ST98823AS, as being affected.

Even if there is a flaw – which isn't all that unusual – should it be Apple the one to offer a recall? They also do not mention the probability of a failure. If only 1 in 100,000 units is likely to flop out, recalling them all wouldn't make sense. Apparently, Seagate has responded and claims they are looking into the issue, whereas Apple is remaining tight-lipped as is their style. More on this as it comes.