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Apple has today announced a ‘MacBook Air Flash Storage Replacement Program‘ for ALL MBA systems purchased between June 2012 and June 2013. The program speaks specifically to flash storage replacement and ONLY affects 64GB and 128GB MBAs containing Toshiba SSDs. The SSDs are being replaced as a result of the potential SSD failing during future use.
The specific models of the SSDs are TS064E and TS128E and MBA owners are advised NOT to install any operating system updates or applications and to backup data on a regular basis until the replacement is received. To determine if your system is affected, go to the Mac App Store, click on updates and choose MacBook Air Flash Storage Update 1.1 which will determine if your SSD is affected.
If your MacBook Air has a defective SSD, contact one of these Apple service providers to arrange for SSD replacement:
- Apple Retail Store – Set up an appointment with a Genius.
- Apple Authorized Service Provider – Find one here.
- Apple Technical Support – Contact us for local service options.
Apple has further detailed that this program will cover affected MBAs for a period of three years, does not extend the warranty of the system and, if you have paid for SSD replacement previously as a result of this issue, contact Apple for a refund.
So, I have a may 2013 MBA with the SSD TS128E. I Installed the firmware update successfully, does that mean my SSD is ok??? I am lost.
if it was not ok then would it have told me?? like a pop up message or something?? please help my PHD is on this computer
To our knowledge, this is not a firmware update, but rather, a recall replacement of the drive where this identifies if your drive is eligible..which the TS drive would be. Your next step is to contact Support and follow the terms and conditions as listed in the link.
Most importantly, don’t panic thinking your syste will die tomorrow, however, be smart and back everything up.
Always have back ups aka Several like 2 or 3 min for anything you want to keep. FIPS Level 3 is nice encription! Read life expectancy, READ WRITE Speed, Reviews like AMazon ect. Tiger Direct are techs. Newegg has newest stuff usally. 1791.com is grate email! Apple had 2 security updates recently for HTTPS loophole for 18 months or so. Microsoft opens a port for them when you do an update. There are anonamus browsers. duckduckgo.com is an encripted search engine that don’t track you. DEEP FREEZE is good software.
We’ve just seen one of these in. Looks like the processor has failed. Full article on Apple MacBook Air SSD failure here
There are issues which can make SSDs unrecoverable; e.g. SandForce processors have encryption built into them meaning that it many cases it is impossible to recover data from a failed SSD.
Lucky I never saw that article prior; the advice to not store important files on a SSD displays the author true knowledge the value solid state holds in todays data world. Poor data recovery is also by no means limited to SandForce as the same theme is valid for all SSDs that use encryption.
I am sorry but we don’t allow self promotion, however, i did want to comment on the article which was titled, “Avoid SSDs for important files, says data recovery firm”.
IMHO, this is the easiest way to discredit oneself and to lose business. I am not sure if the author is aware, but just about everything you do…every character you type…onto the internet will go through an SSD at some point. Flash technology has changed our world and SSDs are seen In every data center worldwide and there isn’t a new data center built without flash technology. I understand if you would like to remain at the consumer level and might suggest the author compare hard drive failure to that of SSDs; he might be surprised. From a personal standpoint EVERY system we have is SSD equipped and every system that I personally use has been SSD equipped since 2007. Anyone who has similar experience can relate to just how much more frequent HDD failure was…
Yes, data is stored on Flash based devices. These fail rather a lot more than people expect them to. On my work bench I can see numerous memory sticks, memory cards and SSD. We’ve already had SSD in from data centres running them in RAID. Then we get the owner telling us, “I thought these weren’t supposed to fail.”
The issue is that in a lot of cases they are significantly more challenging to recover data from than HDDs. Consequently the cost for certain types of Flash based recovery can get quite high.
Non-recovery can be due to a number of issues. Processors that encrypt is one, counterfeit processors/NAND is another. Then there is having to deal with Monolith chips with proprietary pin out configurations. The equipment that we use (AceLabs P3000 SSD & Softcenter) are unable to deal with many of these cases. This equipment is industry standard for Flash memory recovery, so there are some real limits as to what can be achieved.
I bought an affected MacAirbook in an Apple store in LA in October 2012 and lost EVERYTHING – 10 years of business files, 700 photos from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the US – in the first week of use having installed Windows Parallel. Apple never even bothered to contact me about the fault. Can I claim damages?
It is a fundamental tenet of computer science that you should always have backups. All mass-storage is at risk of failure whether HDD or SSD albeit for different and multiple reasons. In that regard one can definitely enjoy the speed and performance benefit of SSD but with the caveat that one should invest in a sufficient capacity backup device like the Apple Time Capsule which is fast and reliable. Unfortunately most people never take into account the added cost of the backup solution but they are all to willing to pay the premium for SSD storage. A competent salesperson would always discuss the matter of backup solutions and backup monitoring with a customer considering SSD storage.