Mac OS X forum: Hard Drive Failure-iMAC

Thank you so much - I really appreciate your insight. I work on Windows computers, but never Macs, so I have no clue about Apple parts/procedures. I knew that regular SATA drives could be formatted to be used with Macs, and that's about it.

I think this repair place is a joke. They can't tell her who the manufacturer is of the drive they put in, they claim to buy in bulk and therefore can only give a 90-day warranty, they told her the optical drive is working fine, when in fact, it still doesn't keep a disk in.......I don't trust them. I wish I could have just taken care of this for her myself...

Thanks to you all for your responses, especially Jimmy!!

There are only two kinds of hard drives in use today; those that have failed and those that are going to fail. That said, "every" Mac computer owner I have personally known has had a hard drive die on them. Some even two. Quite anecdotal I realize but personally it makes me a little skeptical as to the quality of the drives they are buying. Of course Apples buys their hard drives in bulk. If they only have a 90 day warranty on them it's because Apple negotiated a better price from the manufacturer because short duration they have to account for them.

You do realize that there are only like 4 companies left that actually make HDDs anymore, right? There's Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung, and Toshiba (the latter only makes 2.5" drives). Apple buys their drives from those companies same as Dell, HP, Acer, and everyone else.

And a 90 day warranty is pretty much the standard for "bare" or OEM drives go. You can buy an OEM drive off NewEgg or Amazon and get the same deal. You pay a lower price, and in exchange you don't get as long a warranty or any of the crap software and packaging that comes with retail drives.

You seem to be getting confused by the fact that the OP says their friend took the computer to some (supposedly) Apple authorized repair place which said they bought drives in bulk, as opposed to taking it to Apple themselves. While Apple certainly seems to be trying its absolute best to make it impossible for anyone but their retail stores to make a living repairing Apple computers, and as a side note I'd love to see a number of them file a class action anti-competitive lawsuit against Apple for it, but the OP's friend did not (as far as we know) take the computer to an Apple retail store.

So when you get down to it, your comments seem to be designed more to reinforce your own stereotypical beliefs about Apple products than actually being helpful in any way. Best case scenario you're guilty of not having really read all of the posts before making yours.

I am in no way going to defend Apple the company. They are an absolute nightmare to deal with, and they seem to go out of their way to find the most obnoxious high-maintenance drama queens when hiring people. The people who managed to get grandfathered in before that hiring practice are often hogtied by a bunch of bureaucratic red tape, and I'm sure that if the job market were a bit better, they'd be off for greener pastures already. That being said, it doesn't really do anyone any favors to post rather ill-informed comments like yours, where the entire goal seems to just be to reinforce your own preconceived notions. There are plenty of very legitimate reasons to dislike Apple, like how they randomly come up with rules that you're expected to follow as an AASP, but they will never provide you with a copy of these rules in writing. They won't even verbally describe them in any detail, they'll just tell you you're in violation of some rule, so change this or that about your business or else. Then the next week they'll move the goal post again, maybe deciding that the way you were doing things last week is now the proper way. Personally I'm convinced the whole exercise is designed to make the process as frustrating as possible for both the AASP and customers of that AASP, thus driving more people to Apple's retail stores which get to operate above the law so to speak. They can just throw parts at a problem until they solve it, whereas AASPs get penalized for that in terms of labor reimbursements. AASPs don't get to work on iOS devices, only Apple retail stores can handle those. There are plenty of parts Apple has removed from the channel for AASPs, so now only Apple's outsourced repair depot can obtain them. Just to name a few.

You want to complain about Apple, pick one of the hundreds of legitimate issues to complain about; not some hyperbole that just ends up discrediting you instead of Apple.

Are you sure about that? I've only seen 90 day warranties for refurbished items. I was just at Newegg. Every bare / OEM drive I checked had at least a one year warranty, some had two or three. Most retail drives have at least a three year warranty with many now offering five years. I didn't check every drive, but I did check more than a handful.

I don't buy Apple anything, so I was not aware of the new iPod warranty.....good point! Thanks for the quick response.

the new iPod warranty is 1 year parts and labor and 90 day phone support.

This from the Apple site

Your iPod nano includes a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of telephone support.

P

The 90 day hardware warranty was something long ago and only on the ipod of that day.

It's now 1 year hardware warranty.

As companies can charge this without notice, keep asking.

Parts used in repairs of course is an entirely different matter.
Bob

Thank you - it is an older iMac and I'm sure it uses a regular SATA drive. I told her that they now come with 3-year warranty, and if it were a Windows or Linux PC I could replace it for her, and clone the old one over to the new one. This repair place said they couldn't clone because they couldn't get it to mount. Well, I don't know how much I believe that - they can't even tell her the manufacturer of the HDD they put in! I had the computer booted, running, and was logged in through Teamviewer to verify her Carbonite backup before freezing it so she could take it to the shop.

Another thing that bothers me is the fact that they did NOT give her the old HDD back. I know there are some HDD "failures" (i.e. reallocated sector count) that can be rectified with a format. This tends to make me believe that she got a refurb from them and they'll try to use her old HDD for somebody else. Which leaves the question of, do they run a good wipe on it so nothing can be recovered? I doubt it!

I think you mean different in that instead of a BIOS it has Intel's EFI. However, as I already outlined, the drives shipped with Apple iMacs are slightly different in that they have a custom firmware loaded onto the drive. This allows Apple to get thermal sensor readings from the drive which in turn control the fan responsible for cooling the HDD. You can slap in any drive you want, but it will cause that fan to go into its default mode of full speed at all times. It's more annoying than anything else because that particular fan is located pretty much literally dead center of the unit.

As someone who has repaired hundreds of PCs and Macs, there are a number of differences between the two. Not as many as there used to be, but still enough that you shouldn't go getting too cocky, saying things that make it clear you've never seen the inside of an iMac.