Quick Applecare Question

[TBR]

My Harddrive has failed this morning, I turn on the Macbook and get 4 clunking noises from the drive then it does nothing. Booting from the install disk shows that it can't even see the drive.

Lucky for me I purchased Applecare as I thought it likely my notebook would have problems. (It travels everywhere with me)

Anyway before I get on the phone with them (I'm in UK nowhere near an applestore) I was wondering,

a) Are they going to want me to send in the whole machine?
b) Do they want my broken harddrive returned to them?
c) Will they simply ship me out a new drive?

I only ask as I have some data on the drive (not in file vault) that I would rather people not look at, if they got my dodgy drive working.

Anyone have the answers?

 

[rdowns]

I've never heard of them shipping a drive to someone for a laptop. They will likely want the whole machine. Do not tell them if you have opened up your laptop.

 

[TBR]

I've never heard of them shipping a drive to someone for a laptop. They will likely want the whole machine. Do not tell them if you have opened up your laptop.

The macbooks harddrive is a user serviceable part so opening it is not a problem

 

[feelthefire]

The macbooks harddrive is a user serviceable part so opening it is not a problem

Why not just replace the drive yourself? If someone not seeing that data and having your computer up and working in a couple hours is worth $90ish to you, just do it yourself. It's not like it's HARD.

 

[robbieduncan]

At the very least they will want the broken drive. Otherwise what it is to stop you getting a new drive for free when you have a fully functioning drive? They need to confirm it's broken and perhaps return it to the manufacturer to help them make better drives in future...

 

[TBR]

Why not just replace the drive yourself? If someone not seeing that data and having your computer up and working in a couple hours is worth $90ish to you, just do it yourself. It's not like it's HARD.

I know replaceing it myself isn't a problem, but i'm on a budget now. At the time I bought the machine I had a decent amount of cash, but now I'm broke and as I already shelled out the cash for applecare I wanted to use it.

 

[mainomega]

Why not just replace the drive yourself? If someone not seeing that data and having your computer up and working in a couple hours is worth $90ish to you, just do it yourself. It's not like it's HARD.

Why spend any money when you have already shelled out 100s for AppleCare ? If you want to upgrade the HD, get a new one from AppleCare. Sell that one on ebay and they purchase the HD you want to get.

BTW, I've had a couple of HDs that crashed and refused to boot... I was able to connect them to my PC with a little adapter and after a whole bunch of whining and clicking I have been able to transfer the data. (PC laptops and desktops tho... never a OS X partitioned HD)