Let's say I open up my laptop (to upgrade the hard drive). I know this voids the warranty. But let's say something craps out and I put my original hard drive back in and take my MBP to Apple to fix the other thing that crapped out. Would the Apple person know that I opened it (assuming I don't screw anything up when opening it up)? Like is there a seal or something inside?
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Opening up MBP?
- Thread starter Natalia81
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No seals at all. There is yellow thermal tape to keep certain things in place, just make sure you reuse this tape.
Opening your MBP does NOT void your warranty.. you can replace your hdd without voiding your warranty.. however, if you break something while inside your MBP ... your warranty is not void.. it will just not cover what you broke and you will have to pay for the repair.
Actually, only Macbook hard-drives are "user-replaceable" and therefore don't void the warranty. Macbook Pro's, however, aren't designed the same way (it's a lot easier to access MB's HD) so replacing its hard-drive will, in fact, void your warranty.
Both the Apple Retail Store in the UK, Premium Resellers here and Apple Online and AppleCare have all told me that you can replace the RAM, but replacing HDD and other components DOES invalidate your warranty.
Proceed with caution my friend!
From the research that I have done, only an Apple Certified Repair center can change your HD without voiding applecare. If you open it up and for example they see that it's not the stock HD they can void your applecare.
Update: Ok. I went a head and opened it up to change out the hard drive. I bought this , thanks to some posts I came across here about it actually containing the travelstar 200gb 7200rpm drive (if the S/N starts with DTG). It did indeed have the 7200rpm drive in it. So far it works great.
So if you replace your hard drive, then go to Apple with a screen issue, they won't cover it under warranty?
