Mac Pro no go

I love my Mac Pro. Bought for not a lot of money last year, it has whizzed along without a hiccup; until this morning.

Turned it on and it started up; but then presented me with a white screen. Bugger. Seemed to be disk related and after some investigation I discovered that my eleven month old SSD boot drive has died. I bought it from the respected OWC on-line store and it has a three year guarantee, so it will be going back; or so I thought until I discovered that the serial number on the SSD bears no relation to the serial number on the invoice; which may make it a little more difficult…

Pulled an old hard drive out of storage and stuck it in the machine. Forty five minutes later I had it up and running with the system restored as at 23:10 last night, courtesy of the quite wonderful Time Machine utility.

But it is soooo slow to boot and load applications compared to using an SSD as a boot drive. So in spite of my bad experience with OWC, I was back on their site and a nice new 120GB SSD should be on the way today. Along with the order, OWC have a nice mail from me requesting a warranty claim; could end up being an interesting correspondence.

Comments 🔗

2012-06-19 | Spanky says

Disk failures suck. If you have an external USB drive dock you might be able to recover any data that wasn’t on the time machine backup. We use them at work when things go pear shaped with a drive. It would also be wise to wipe the drive before sending it back for warranty if its readable so that none of your personal information is on it. The last time I had to deal with a support call to HP I believe it ended with me calling the woman a cunt. Things didn’t go well from there. Not sure why.

2012-06-19 | Spike says

Thanks, but nothing lost. Time Machine backs up every hour so I have everything as at 23:10 last night. Good idea about wiping the drive; but the computer doesn’t even recognise it. I expect when an SSD lets go then it is beyond repair. Have you every considered a role in customer support?

2012-06-19 | TheSon says

That reminds me, I need to buy a NAS.

2012-06-19 | Spanky says

I did my time in customer support back in the dimmer days of my life. I am happily far up the food chain that I rarely deal with that crap anymore. The woman was a cunt because I knew she was lying because I did something before shipping the unit back for repair and then she argued with me it wasn’t true. I won out in the end. To quote Tolkien (sorta), “Do not meddle in the affairs of IT Directors, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

If you can’t get it warrantied; I do suggest using a hammer. It’s fun and therapeutic!

2012-06-20 | MeMock says

Hi Spike, have you had a chance to look at the new Mac Book Pro that has just been released? My current one is over 4 years old and has been great but is starting to slow down and fill up and figure it is time to upgrade. Just wondering what you thought about the new ones?

2012-06-20 | Spike says

Clever engineering but not maintainable; so buy Apple Care if you get one. “Retina” display on 15" will no doubt look good but not sure of the practical advantages. I like a big screen to work on. If I was going for a laptop it would be the Air; but that is probably insufficient for your needs.

2012-06-21 | MeMock says

Thanks for your reply. I am still trying to get my head around no ethernet port as well as no DVD drive.

2012-07-29 | Manolo says

Thanks for posting your reulsts with the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. In your post, you mentioned that the durability was a mixed bag. Did the SSD suffer from the standard degradation in speed after it was full? OWC boasted on the 7% over-provision which was designed to prevent the speed degradation but I’ve haven’t been able to find sufficient reviews if it works properly. There are several reviews on the Mercury Extreme Pro RE edition with the 28% over-provision but I would like to hear how did the non-RE version performed in this area.Thanks Reply

2012-07-29 | Spike says

My previous OWC SSD lasted 11 months; not impressive; but better than failing after 13 months and losing the warranty! I only keep the OS and applications on the SSD so it is not being heavily used and is never full; so I can’t comment on any slowdown (i never experienced any). The Extreme Pro 6G gives no performance improvement on a Mac Pro over the 3G model, unless you bypass the standard controller and I am not that desperate for performance. Sorry I can’t be of more help; maybe Barefeats will cover this at some point.