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I have a MBP 13" from 2009 (5,5).

I use it a lot, it's on most of the time (but not all the time).

An apple care employee told me he hasn't seen many hard-disk failures, but isn't it the first piece of hardware which is supposed to fail ?

I did a hard-disk verify, told me I should do a disk repair (red error message), disk repair told me all is fine, and now it doesn't boot, or take ages to do so.

I have been taking great care of it, all in all my MBP fell once, from a small height. Isn't the hard disk the first thing to suffer from falling ? How resilient a laptop motherboard is against shock versus a hard-disk ?

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Nothing is "supposed" to fail. Heat is the #1 likely cause of all failures (aside from manufacturer defects) and the dust is the most likely cause of too much heat. – cksum Jun 5 at 20:33
You're asking a lot of things here, some of which might be good questions and some of which are really not. Above all, though, I don't see what problem you're trying to solve. This post seems more likely to lead to speculation and discussion than any one definitive answer. – Daniel Lawson♦ Jun 6 at 0:53
I got answers already, thank you anyway. seems that the harddisk was the cause after a shock. I put some dry air sometimes, so no dust. I always take care it's not heating for nothing. – jokoon Jun 6 at 23:21

closed as not a real question by Daniel Lawson♦ Jun 6 at 0:52

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

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If one doesn't have a SSD drive we could assume that the hard drive is most likely the "weakest" hardware part. It is mechanical and used all the time. My hard discs break about every three years (this is not a general value, just my experience). It is well-knwon that older hard drives are sensitive to "disk repairs" (like you experienced) or defragmentation. The hard drive may already have failures which haven't been recognized by now, because the broken segments were never touched. But if one decides to defrag the HDD, every sector on the drive will be touched, hence also the "broken" ones.

Another weak part is the fan. It is a mechanical part as well and due to its function it is "destined to" gather dust. One should clean it from time to time (I do it every 1-1.5 years) to make sure that the processor will not overheat due to an blocked fan.

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up vote 0 down vote

2009-2010 are prone to hdd cables failing, this can cause the hard-drive to break. I don't understand why the Apple Care guy told you he hasn't seen many (In both of my Computers, I have had Hard-drive failings and cabling failings in the past few months).

In the case of my Macbook Pro, my CD drive started going crazy and got very hot, upon inspection (After my hard-drive failed) I inspected it and found the hdd cable to run directly over the CD-drive so this could have caused the lead to break.

I don't understand your question here, are you saying that your hard-drive has failed? If so, what can/can't you do with the Macbook (i.e. can you see the drive mounted?).

UPDATE:

now it doesn't boot, or take ages to do so.

This sounds to me like the Hard-drive itself has failed, but, it could be the lead. Have you backed-up? This happened to me, in some cases the hard-drive would boot and then would be incredibly slow. There was no flashing folder with the "?" I don't know if this is the same with you.

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