A while ago, my MacBook Pro started making a really loud whirring noise, the Genius Bar confirmed it was probably a Hard drive problem and essentially told me that it will just stop working one day but to keep using it until then. I think it must've been caused either by pushing it to its limits by playing stronghold 3 on high settings, or by watching a film on it during a car journey (not while driving!) as it was a bumpy ride and I've heard sudden movements to an in-use laptop is a bad idea. But then it seemed to fix itself, and it didn't happen for ages. I hadn't played stronghold again until recently, and of course, it recently started happening again. So my question is - will playing this game cause the HDD to die, and I should therefore probably stop playing it, or is it not possible for this to have an effect and its a coincidence? On a side note, it seemed to stop the problem before when I repaired disk permissions? Not sure how or if this can have an effect but it did have a correlation. (I haven't tried this again yet - I'm posting this from my phone at work)
The correlation between HDD failures and high use is not as clear cut as one would think: BBC NEWS | Technology | Hard disk test 'surprises' Google Loud whirring noises usually indicates a mechanical problem.My personal experience (and I speak from years of work as a sysadmin earlier in my life) is that any disk that exhibits problems like those you report will fail sooner or later no matter what. So do your backup! In general, I have experienced very little correlation between use and failure. But perhaps pushing a disk with some sort of fault to it's limit might reduce the lifetime of the disk. So it is hard to say with certainty if playing Stronghold 3 will kill your disk. But it is likely that the disk will fail no matter what.
Sounds like a manufacturing defect to me. HDDs usually outlast the motherboard. I can count on one hand the number of drives i've had fail on me and one of which was my own damn fault. I am surprised apple told you to "deal with it". Back up ALL your data ASAFP and take it back to apple and tell them you want the drive replaced and the data copied over. Else when that harddrive does fail you'll lose everything and have to start from square 1.
Nope the game didn't kill it. Hard drives are mechanical devices and they break sometimes. My MacBook Pro did that a while back. I took it in and they replaced the drive while I waited. So I would do a backup now and take it back and insist they replace the drive. No need to wait until it fails.
Wow sorry I took so long to reply guys, thank you if you actually read this post too! It's all backed up already so there's no problem there, but it's not under warranty anymore so doesn't have AppleCare, hence their unhelpfulness.
