Western Digital used to be the standard, but in the last decade, they've become as unreliable as Seagate. Seagate oddly enough used to be the standard for SCSI drives while having a bad record with IDE. Apparently that hasn't changed much. I then switched to Hitachi which had a good record, but now they've been bought out. Our choices are rapidly disappearing
Just got notified that my iMac is one of those affected by the flawed drives and I will need to take the machine in to an Apple Store for replacement.
(Serves Apple right for making the HD non-user replaceable!)
I presume others here have done this sort of thing before. I presume best practice is to backup up to two drives (1 Time Machine and 1 bootable with SuperDuper), wipe the HD clean and then take it in, so that after the swap my personal information isn't sitting on an old drive on somebody's shelf.
Can anybody walk me through this? How many passes should I use to erase the 1TB drive, and how long does it take?
Also, do I need to reinstall the original OS, or just erase the HD and take it in?
Any tips for packaging the iMac for safe travel?
Edit: This thread should really be in Current Hardware.
You should definitely wipe your drive. Just boot into your repair partition and delete your OS X system partition.
Just be sure you back up any data before doing so.
As to whether or not to do a secure wipe, that's up to you. The drives are returned to Apple and I would imagine they have protocols to deal with such. It depends on your paranoia level.
You do not need to reinstall anything. Just wipe the drive, and bring it in.
To boot to the repair partition, hold the Option key when you power on your Mac, or you can also try holding Command + R to boot directly into the Recovery partition.
From there, go to the Disk utility, select your system drive, find your System Partition, and either erase it (you can do a secure erase here as well), or just wipe it or repartition it with a new blank partition.
Unbelievable. Spent all of yesterday making multiple backups, Mountain Lion install disks, and wiping my iMac drive.
Went in for my appointment at the Apple Store today (as directed in the Apple email), and was told that hard drive swaps are not done same-day.
I was then told I would have to leave my machine for a minimum of 3 to 5 days. None of this was mentioned in the Apple email.
This is my work machine, and next week is my busiest week of the month. So much for that idea. Asked for a loaner, and was told that couldn't be done either.
So I took my iMac back home, and spent the rest of today getting it back to where it was Friday morning. Apple's wasted two valuable days of work for me, as a result of the implication that the work would be done during the Apple Store appointment. And of course, their stubborn insistence that a routine hard drive replacement require a trip to the Apple Store in the first place.
After next week, I'll have to backup and wipe the hard drive all over again.
So if you are one of the 2009 iMac owners who needs a HD replacement, budget on losing your computer for three days.
I certainly hope that 2013 Mac Pro update is as promising as Cook says, since this is likely the last iMac I'm buying for business use.
To be fair a simple phone call from you would have saved you some pain. The email also listed 3 options and depending on which you chose, it would impact the time taken. You could have always opted for in-home. They quoted me the same 3 days and had it done the next day. I took mine to an authorized service center rather than an Apple store though. I also use mine for work but had an older iMac 24" to fall back on.
Generally with these programs, if the drive fails during the program period they replace it for free. If you had to pay to replace a failed drive from the group in question they will refund the costs.
But they won't just replace working drives. There has to be something that shows failure or imminent failure that isn't due to user damage. And if they find signs of tampering or if parts in the machine were replaced with unauthorized parts, you screwed yourself as always.
And this is likely only about the original drive in the machine. If they already replaced the drive under warranty/AppleCare, your machine is out of the program. Which is why my computer is listed as ineligible, according to AppleCare
Actually they will warranty any drive on a covered model regardless of whether or not it is functional. My 09 iMac had a functional drive and it was replaced. Assuming of course it's the original factory drive
Just be aware, the turnaround time is typically 2-3 days for this. Make sure you plan appropriately.
Comments
Western Digital used to be the standard, but in the last decade, they've become as unreliable as Seagate. Seagate oddly enough used to be the standard for SCSI drives while having a bad record with IDE. Apparently that hasn't changed much. I then switched to Hitachi which had a good record, but now they've been bought out. Our choices are rapidly disappearing
Just got notified that my iMac is one of those affected by the flawed drives and I will need to take the machine in to an Apple Store for replacement.
(Serves Apple right for making the HD non-user replaceable!)
I presume others here have done this sort of thing before. I presume best practice is to backup up to two drives (1 Time Machine and 1 bootable with SuperDuper), wipe the HD clean and then take it in, so that after the swap my personal information isn't sitting on an old drive on somebody's shelf.
Can anybody walk me through this? How many passes should I use to erase the 1TB drive, and how long does it take?
Also, do I need to reinstall the original OS, or just erase the HD and take it in?
Any tips for packaging the iMac for safe travel?
Edit: This thread should really be in Current Hardware.
You should definitely wipe your drive. Just boot into your repair partition and delete your OS X system partition.
Just be sure you back up any data before doing so.
As to whether or not to do a secure wipe, that's up to you. The drives are returned to Apple and I would imagine they have protocols to deal with such. It depends on your paranoia level.
You do not need to reinstall anything. Just wipe the drive, and bring it in.
To boot to the repair partition, hold the Option key when you power on your Mac, or you can also try holding Command + R to boot directly into the Recovery partition.
From there, go to the Disk utility, select your system drive, find your System Partition, and either erase it (you can do a secure erase here as well), or just wipe it or repartition it with a new blank partition.
Unbelievable. Spent all of yesterday making multiple backups, Mountain Lion install disks, and wiping my iMac drive.
Went in for my appointment at the Apple Store today (as directed in the Apple email), and was told that hard drive swaps are not done same-day.
I was then told I would have to leave my machine for a minimum of 3 to 5 days. None of this was mentioned in the Apple email.
This is my work machine, and next week is my busiest week of the month. So much for that idea. Asked for a loaner, and was told that couldn't be done either.
So I took my iMac back home, and spent the rest of today getting it back to where it was Friday morning. Apple's wasted two valuable days of work for me, as a result of the implication that the work would be done during the Apple Store appointment. And of course, their stubborn insistence that a routine hard drive replacement require a trip to the Apple Store in the first place.
After next week, I'll have to backup and wipe the hard drive all over again.
So if you are one of the 2009 iMac owners who needs a HD replacement, budget on losing your computer for three days.
I certainly hope that 2013 Mac Pro update is as promising as Cook says, since this is likely the last iMac I'm buying for business use.
To be fair a simple phone call from you would have saved you some pain. The email also listed 3 options and depending on which you chose, it would impact the time taken. You could have always opted for in-home. They quoted me the same 3 days and had it done the next day. I took mine to an authorized service center rather than an Apple store though. I also use mine for work but had an older iMac 24" to fall back on.
Thanks for the information..
Just be aware, the turnaround time is typically 2-3 days for this. Make sure you plan appropriately.