AppleInsider StaffApple 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.
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."
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43 Comments
"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
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.
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?
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
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. :-/