Apple Inc. is acknowledging that some of its MacBook notebooks shipped with hard disk drives plagued by a manufacturing flaw that can result in permanent data loss even when used under routine operating conditions.

The issue, reported earlier this month by U.K.-based data-recovery firm Retrodata and subsequently covered by AppleInsider, is confined to Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives that are manufactured in China and loaded with firmware Version 7.01.

The affected drives -- model numbers ST96812AS and ST98823AS -- are commonly found in notebooks such as Apple's MacBook or MacBook Pro, the firm says. To determine whether a MacBook has one of the affected drives, it's suggested that owners go to their Mac's System Profiler application and check the revision number under the Serial ATA listing.

If the System Profiler indicates that the computer is using a Seagate hard drive with firmware Version 7.01, Retrodata recommends backing up all data and then having the drive replaced.

Tags: Seagate, Hard drive, Failure, MacBook, MacBook Pro