Apple has admitted it is examining claims that a number of its MacBook laptops include poorly manufactured hard drives that expose users to data loss.

Data recovery firm Retrodata said the faulty drives are all Seagate 2.5″ drives that are manufactured in China, with a Firmware revision of 7.01. They are also all SATA interface. No other drives seem to be affected.

The problem is in the read/write heads which appear to fail mechanically, quickly causing deep scratches to the platter surface, and rendering the drives practically unrecoverable.

Seagate was not available for comment.