Macbook Bootcamp Problem With HDDs

Hi all,

I currently play FFXI via bootcamp on a 2010 MacBook Pro, and I've had the macbook for 4 years now. I have only played FFXI on it for a little over one year. Today, my third hard drive in the last 9 months crashed. I was under warranty for the previous hard drives, but this time around, I'm not. My laptop would get hot while playing FFXI, but never to the point that the system would shut down. Could this still be an overheating issue? Is running FFXI destroying my hard drives, or do I simply have an older laptop that is a dud?

I was wondering what Macs have successfully ran FFXI via bootcamp windows 7. Does the MacBook Air have any issues? Should I bother getting another hard drive for my 2010 MacBook Pro or is it worthwhile to upgrade to a more recent Mac? All help and feedback would be greatly appreciated

If you had 3 HD failures in 9 months, then you likely have something else wrong with your laptop.

The system should be designed such that it cannot cause a destructive fault under normal operation (when running software). Only if you do something like obstruct airflow, or run it outside the allowable ambient temperatures.

You might argue that the failure occurred during the warranty period, but you may have difficulties with that.

You can also get a third party program that lets you adjust your cooling fans on the Macbook pro. I found that helped with the overheating and destroying the hard drive.

Thanks for the responses. I was under a 4 year warranty when i bought the mac back in 2010, so the warranty recently expired, and then my harddrive crashed. So, I'm afraid to start replacing the hard drives now that I have to pay out of pocket for each one if the trend of "hard drive lasts 3-4 months" continues. I guess I'm leading towards finding a Mac laptop that players testify runs FFXI smoothly.


Nixak, which program is this exactly? Could be a huge help for the future.

I think it was smc or scm fan control or something very close to that name.

I used it to manually turn the fans to max and keep them there when I played in it. My macbook cooked so hard that it warped the the case.

my MacBook Pro is roughly 2 years old and runs FFXI and FFXIV in Boot Camp just fine. Windows drains battery hardcore, but that is regardless of running a game or just using Chrome, so I tend to just use the BootCamp partition for gaming and use OSX for everything else. if you have been chewing through hard drives, are they literally burning out, or some other issue?

lolmacs

Just throw a hard drive in it, will be much cheaper then replacing the stupid thing.

Most laptops have a decent warranty of their own.

Speaking of which, if you're replacing hard drives at that rate, they're either ridiculously overheating, or you're tossing the thing around when it's reading/writing data to the platters like a goon.

I play on a 2008 MacBook Pro, and never had any real problems. I have a little lap fan, and also have the same program Nixak had to control fans. It gets hot, but it plays the game well enough.

See, I had the Macbook Pro from 2010-2013 and never had an issue with the hard drive. Then when I started playing FFXI in 2013 again, I've burned through 3 hard drives in about a year and a month. I also had wires burn out, and I apologize for not being able to be more specific, I would go to the IT store and they would take my laptop, tell me what happened, but never would say the reasoning for it happening when I asked. So i didn't know if my laptop was getting old and that's why it was malfunctioning, or if it was Heat related. From your guys feedback, it seems that it's heat related.




I had a 4 year warranty which recently expired. My laptop does get hot on the bottom part when I played. However, a couple of my friends have said that the laptop isn't overheating unless it turns itself off. This could be completely wrong advice. Best solution to replace hard drive again, install fan application? Is there another part I might want to replace to try and prevent my hard drive from frying?

I use to play 11 on Late 09 iMac bootcamp windows 7 and it would get SUPER HOT (Granted I was almost always 3boxing...) But yeah don't put your laptop on a bed on top of blankets and play that won't help your overheating could also get a program called SpeedFan that lets you adjust your fans, Or point a fan at it lol OR get a cheap PC cause 11 really doesn't require much to play it...

Thanks for the responses everyone!

I am going to go ahead and replace the hard drive with a cheaper one off of Amazon rather than go the expensive route through Amazon. I will also install the fan application to adjust fan speed and temperature, and I will get a laptop cooling pad (for $5, mind as well). I'll also clean out the dust inside. My original thought process was that computers get old, and start to malfunction because they are old - I definitely seem to be wrong on that line of thinking, and I'll make the adjustments to keep the temperature and hard drive in better shape.

You can get a hard drive for like $60 from amazon, 2 day free shipping with prime;

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_1?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A!493964%2Cn%3A541966%2Cn%3A1292110011%2Cn%3A1254762011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990425011%2Cp_85%3A2470955011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A6799355011|6899490011|6899491011%2Cp_89%3AWestern+Digital&bbn=1254762011&ie=UTF8&qid=1411529788&rnid=2528832011

looks like you came with default a 320GB sata drive (going from the year, going to assume 3.0gb/s transfer rates, but it's possible for a 6.0gb/s (basically what's called Sata II vs Sata III/3.

Sata 3 will work in 2 just fine, so will one, but you'll be bottlenecked by whichever is lower, the drive or the computer itself.

Considering it's not that much more to just get a sata 3 (if not the same or cheaper) it's up to you. Now I'm sure I could determine for certain, but I'd have to look further into it, silly macs don't do so well at documenting that type of thing right out, so I'd have to dig deeper than Apple's support page for mid 2010.

You could throw a SSD in there if you have the $, you'll pay more per gigabyte, but you won't be killing it by moving it around when on.

As for the heat thing goes: not only can the laptop produce heat in certain sections to where it probably surpasses normal guidelines without shutting off, sometimes it will, your best bet would be to look at what the temp readings are, but I still doubt that it's heat that's killing it.

As for the shop you go to, I'd say find anther shop, as they should be able to ascertain a cause, not to mention I'm going to call total *** on any "wires" burning out, the only "wires" in your case would be to the wifi antenna, the rest are at best ribbon cables and the only one really drawing that much power would be for the screen, and you would notice it really quick if the screen went out. I mean there's other instances, but You're shooting into the severely rare category here, unless they really make macs that shitty, I avoid them on purpose.

But personally it sounds to me like your "shop" is charging you extra for nothing, and it's quite possible they never replaced your drive in the first place but just kept wiping it and putting it back in.

Going to add this separately: if you do buy another computer, don't get a mac, you're better off with a regular computer, and if you really want the osx loaded on it then you can download that separately and load it (not technically in compliance with their license agreements) but there are lists of known compatible hardware.

My friend built his PC via a hackintosh list, and multiboots, he'll rarely go into osx though, it's more of there for his ego.

Also: if you have another problem, we can tell you how to test it if you have another computer you can use to either burn a cd or make a bootable flash drive from, there's a thing called hirens bootcd that I enjoy, but some others use different toolkits, like ultimate bootcd and such.

Thanks Jetackuu, that's a great point. Yeah, if I keep having problems with the Mac, I will definitely consider getting a PC to run FFXI on. When I had a macbook pro and considered returning to FFXI (played from 2005-2008, still miss those days), I saw a bunch of people post on how they run FFXI via bootcamp on their Macs, so I just went ahead and did bootcamp as well. Looking back at it, I should have done some further research on problems I might encounter, etc.

Fundamentally it's not really a matter of issues more so than the cost, a Mac costs more than a comparable "PC" (they're technically both PC).

Honestly if you don't mind a desktop, you could throw something together for $400 easily to run XI on, grab a kit off tiger direct and then grab a video card and pirate the OS and bam.

(I'd stick with windows 7 64 bit personally).

But there's most likely still life left in your current machine, and on the cheap too, if you want to run some diagnosis just download this:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

It should work, it boots on my system which has eufi and the like.