My thoughts confirmed

by si - 5/2/12 6:57 PM

In Reply to: Unfortunately the iMac now uses a proprietary hard drive by mrmacfixit Moderator

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!