Hard disk recall

[gangof4]

Hi Everyone!

I posted this on the Apple forum but received no replies. I have an early May 2011 iMac (the first build with the Thunderbolt) and a month after I received it I got the recall from Apple about the possibility of a hard drive failure in the future. I had a year to exchange the internal drive at Apple's expense.

I have not done so yet, thinking I'd "sweat it out" and the year will be up soon. I was wondering if there were others who received this recall and declined to replace the drive, only to experience hard drive failure failure. Know that there were others whose drives failed might make more inclined to replace my drive.

 

[shiekh]

Why would anyone wait? They are being recalled for a reason. What advantage is there to 'sweating out a year'?

 

[rocknblogger]

I agree with sheikh, why would you wait? Get it replaced ASAP before you end up losing valuable data.

 

[Dweez]

Agreed - get your unit serviced.

 

[Bear]

...
I have not done so yet, thinking I'd "sweat it out" and the year will be up soon. I was wondering if there were others who received this recall and declined to replace the drive, only to experience hard drive failure failure. Know that there were others whose drives failed might make more inclined to replace my drive.

When a disk model is identified to have a problem like this, it's like playing with a time bomb*. Get it replaced asap.

(*Except what it "blows up" is your data.)

 

[gangof4]

Hard disk recall

The recall didn't say it would fail, only that some in the lot were subject to failure. If I do replace the hard drive . . .

(1) Will I be able to keep Snow Leopard? I have the disks that came with the machine. In that case,

(2) What about all the updates to 10.6.8 I've downloaded during the last nine months? Will they be on the new drive? The apps I've purchased?

(3) I back up via Time Machine each hour. Would I return to my "status quo" by restoring from TIme Machine or would I be better off with a Carbon Copy Cloner restore?

 

[AcesHigh87]

The recall didn't say it would fail, only that some in the lot were subject to failure. If I do replace the hard drive . . .

(1) Will I be able to keep Snow Leopard? I have the disks that came with the machine. In that case,

(2) What about all the updates to 10.6.8 I've downloaded during the last nine months? Will they be on the new drive? The apps I've purchased?

(3) I back up via Time Machine each hour. Would I return to my "status quo" by restoring from TIme Machine or would I be better off with a Carbon Copy Cloner restore?

1) They would likely put back on whatever OS you send it in with but you'd have to ask them specifically. If all else fails, since you have the disks, you could just clean install SL.

2) I doubt they install everything for you but if you have a backup before you send it in then you can just restore from that.

3) Both would do the same thing essentially. Time Machine would do the job the easiest I imagine because I doubt apple will give you the old drive back to Copy from.

 

[sjinsjca]

If my own experience is any guide, your machine will be returned to you running the same version of the OS that it had when it went it. But alllll your data and programs will be gone. You can, of course, get those back via Time Machine.

Back it up. Ideally, back it up twice to two separate backup disks. (I've had a backup drive fail at the worst possible time!)

Get it serviced straightaway. Things like this have a tendency to fail at inconvenient moments.

 

[aComicBookFan]

Why would you lose anything during the hard drive exchange? I imagine Apple backs up the entire drive using their own custom back up system first. Some sort of image file is created. Then they swap the hardware, connect the iMac to the back up system, and perform some technician-only-knows secret move to reimage the new drive. I can't imagine Apple hasn't thought of something like this, even for internal use only.

Just curious...

-- Boris

 

[MacOG728893]

..because I doubt apple will give you the old drive back to Copy from.

This is usually true, but I brought in my iMac in to an Apple store under Applecare and they decided I needed a new HDD because it was reporting back errors. I told them I didn't have everything backed up that I needed, so the genius dude got an okay from the manager to give me my old HDD back too!

I did a repair on the old HDD and everything works fine on it. Even wrote zeros to it and the drive isn't failing at all. Now I am thinking about selling it, but who knows!

Like I said, it doesn't always happen, but I pushed my case and got mine back plus a brand spanking new one!

 

[Chriscz]

I'm in the same situation, and I'll probably will take it to get replaced. I just worry that as they have to take the screen off to get to the innards, that their might be dust trapped in there afterwards, or am I just being silly?

On a side note, what do you think the chances are of them installing a second SSD if I brought one and asked nicely? haha