As cool as your MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac mini might be, there might be some problems down the road. According to Techworld, UK firm Retrodata has encountered "many dozens" of failures involving Seagate Technology's 2.5" notebook drives.

In test cases, "The read/write heads are detaching from the arm and plowing deep gouges into the magnetic platter," said Retrodata Managing Director Duncan Clarke. "The damage is mostly on the inner tracks, but some scratches are on the outer track -- Track 0 -- and once that happens, the drive is normally beyond repair."

So far, the problem has arisen in models loaded with firmware version 7.01 and tagged with model numbers including ST96812AS and ST98823AS. Users can locate the firmware revision for their hard drives by going to Mac OS X's System Profiler program, looking under Serial ATA and checking for the revision number.

Sources close to the story have warned that they would need to see several hundred or even several thousand drives with this problem to validate whether this is a design flaw. A seagate spokesperson interviewed commented that "This matter has only just come to our attention, and Seagate is looking into it."

Apple has refused to comment at this time.

If you've seen this problem on your end or have two cents to throw in on the issue, let us know in the comments or forums.