Short story, not very exciting, but buying Applecare paid off for me. My 2010 27" iMac always worked until didn't. It started running slow, then really slow. Apps would take a minutes to open. Data transfers were moving in kilobytes per second.
Called Applecare, no hard drive errors, no funny sounds, they had me reinstall ML which took 3 hours. It was good for three days then started slowing down again. Decided to take it into the Apple Store. Made appointment, in and out within 20 minutes.
Apple replaced both the hard drive and the motherboard. They had to order the motherboard which added a week to the repair, two week total turnaround. Came back to me with just ML installed, connected it to my network, pointed to my Time Machine backup on a Synology NAS. Two and half hours later everything is back the way it was, and the only thing I had to do was re-enter the MS Office key.
Pleased with the service and hassle free experience. YMMV
Called Applecare, no hard drive errors, no funny sounds, they had me reinstall ML which took 3 hours. It was good for three days then started slowing down again. Decided to take it into the Apple Store. Made appointment, in and out within 20 minutes.
Apple replaced both the hard drive and the motherboard. They had to order the motherboard which added a week to the repair, two week total turnaround. Came back to me with just ML installed, connected it to my network, pointed to my Time Machine backup on a Synology NAS. Two and half hours later everything is back the way it was, and the only thing I had to do was re-enter the MS Office key.
Pleased with the service and hassle free experience. YMMV