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late 2012 27 inch iMac 3TB Fusion Drive died should i be paying for it?

R

rosie53

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 31, 2015
19
1
Took my iMac into apple after having big issues the past 2 days and my 3tb Fusion Drive died its 6 months out of warranty, 1 year apple warranty and 1 year Australian consumer law, so basically its 2 years 6 months old.


I expected this computer to last me years as i built it in with every possible add on and upgrade when i first bought it.


My friends laptop hd also died recently she was going to have to pay 800 and she was able to get it done for free even though she was out of warranty.

I go to pick it up tomorrow and I'm wondering if i should try question why I'm paying $ 446.60 for something that i thought should have lasted longer?

Is this normal and i should have to pay or should i be questioning them more?

The item being replaced on the invoice is "Hard Drive, 3 TB, 7200" if that helps.

Thanks
 
Apple has a great customer service, so you'll never know. You can ask politely if the local Apple store is willing to fix it free of charge, but you can't demand it. By the way, the regular HD you're getting will be noticably slower than your previous fusion drive.

Again, this goes to show that people should choose SSD (at least if you can afford it), as it is a much safer technology. The hard drive is the most temperature vulnerable component in your machine, and iMacs tend to get very hot, especially with the latest generation with AMD GPUs and even hotter CPUs. SSDs also run considerably cooler than a hard drive.
I've had SSDs in multiple machines for about 6 years now, and never a single incident, no crashes, no data corruption, nothing. On the other hand, I've had multiple (external) hard drives that failed in the same time period.
 
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rosie53 said:
Took my iMac into apple after having big issues the past 2 days and my 3tb Fusion Drive died its 6 months out of warranty, 1 year apple warranty and 1 year Australian consumer law, so basically its 2 years 6 months old.


I expected this computer to last me years as i built it in with every possible add on and upgrade when i first bought it.


My friends laptop hd also died recently she was going to have to pay 800 and she was able to get it done for free even though she was out of warranty.

I go to pick it up tomorrow and I'm wondering if i should try question why I'm paying $ 446.60 for something that i thought should have lasted longer?

Is this normal and i should have to pay or should i be questioning them more?

The item being replaced on the invoice is "Hard Drive, 3 TB, 7200" if that helps.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Well if you had specced it with a pure SSD instead this wouldn't have happened. Drives die, and spinning drives die even faster.

In your case, the spinning portion failed, and Apple only replaced the spinning portion. The SSD portion remains there and unchanged.

This is why none of my desktop Macs have a Fusion Drive - they're all pure SSD to avoid such a situation.
 
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Yes, you should be paying for it. You purchased the item knowing how long the warranty period is, you also made a decision to take the base warranty and not upgrade with Apple Care. If you had planned to use the system for 3 years with zero cost to you if/when something goes wrong then you should have upgraded the warranty.

That decision to not extend the warranty is entirely down to you and what you consider acceptable risk, at the time you decided if anything breaks beyond 2 years it would be at your expense.
 
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Mac32 said:
By the way, the regular HD you're getting will be noticably slower than your previous fusion drive.
Click to expand...


wait so are u saying they are putting something different in that wasnt in the original machine??
 
Isn't it a standard seagate drive?
Replace it yourself.
Ifixit for tools

The seagate warranty should be longer.

I have seen instructions online for making any 2 drives fusion.
Fusion is just 2 drives one HD and one SSD.

Since you're out of warranty, just open it yourself and replace the drive.

I do agree with you. Apple should warrant longer. I mean they claim their stuff is better and it sure carries the commensurate price...
 
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ZipZap said:
Isn't it a standard seagate drive?
Replace it yourself.
Ifixit for tools
Click to expand...

For the love of God do NOT consider doing this if you have any doubts in your ability to repair an iMac. Repairing these things is not for the faint of heart. Believe me, I'm experienced with these things, and even I get shaky every time I work with an iMac.

The display assembly is glued to the chassis, and requires a heat gun and guitar pick to loosen and remove. You have to replace the adhesive yourself once you're done, which is another pain. God forbid you snap the display cable, because if you do, you're left with a fancy paperweight unless you buy another expensive display assembly.

You're better off biting the bullet and having the pros do it. I'd follow the advice these guys have and get an SSD. AiOs generate a lot more heat than a traditional fan-cooled desktop due to everything being in such close proximity to each other, and HDDs are going to be a lot more vulnerable.

Not to mention you'll love how much snappier everything is.
 
KNPaige said:
For the love of God do NOT consider doing this if you have any doubts in your ability to repair an iMac. Repairing these things is not for the faint of heart. Believe me, I'm experienced with these things, and even I get shaky every time I work with an iMac.

The display assembly is glued to the chassis, and requires a heat gun and guitar pick to loosen and remove. You have to replace the adhesive yourself once you're done, which is another pain. God forbid you snap the display cable, because if you do, you're left with a fancy paperweight unless you buy another expensive display assembly.

You're better off biting the bullet and having the pros do it. I'd follow the advice these guys have and get an SSD. AiOs generate a lot more heat than a traditional fan-cooled desktop due to everything being in such close proximity to each other, and HDDs are going to be a lot more vulnerable.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. I used to build PC's for fun, but some of the components (notably the various connectors) inside Macs are particularly small and delicate and quite easy to destroy. Dismantling a £1,000+ device and hoping you don't strip a header off the mainboard whilst pulling a cable out, for example, is certainly not for the faint of heart.
 
Unfortunately you're liable for that. I will never get another computer with a mechanical hard drive with spinning parts. SSD's are unbelievable. It can't hurt to ask at a local Apple store or if you don't have one nearby you can call Apple support and be polite as you can.
 
Hey guys thanks so much for your help. Yea there is no way in hell Im replacing it myself i know nothing about any of that stuff and would never even attempt.

I did get it fixed today i haven't had a chance to power it up yet but apple did say because of the work i do (graphic designer) and because i have a lot of important client files, that i should look at going to an apple certified repair store like my mac or something like that and for them to add in something extra like a solid state hard drive or something? or just replace it the HD all together with something more reliable.


Now i am no expert in all this stuff i literally know nothing about what happens on the inside of a computer. But do you guys have any recommendations on what i should be looking at. What is considered the best of the best for iMacs. Im happy with the drive i have now and its speed and performance but obviously i have learnt its not as reliable as i thought.
 
rosie53 said:
Hey guys thanks so much for your help. Yea there is no way in hell Im replacing it myself i know nothing about any of that stuff and would never even attempt.

I did get it fixed today i haven't had a chance to power it up yet but apple did say because of the work i do (graphic designer) and because i have a lot of important client files, that i should look at going to an apple certified repair store like my mac or something like that and for them to add in something extra like a solid state hard drive or something? or just replace it the HD all together with something more reliable.


Now i am no expert in all this stuff i literally know nothing about what happens on the inside of a computer. But do you guys have any recommendations on what i should be looking at. What is considered the best of the best for iMacs. Im happy with the drive i have now and its speed and performance but obviously i have learnt its not as reliable as i thought.
Click to expand...
You already have an SSD inside, because your Fusion Drive is basically a 128GB SSD and a 3TB HDD fused together and appears as a single drive to OS X.

If you want pure reliability, a spinning HDD cannot be allowed to exist inside the computer. You can buy a mSATA SSD (like the Transcend 960GB JetDrive) for your iMac, but Apple will not install it for you. You'll have to send it off to a third party authorized Apple service center to do it.
 
thanks that does make sense and im pretty sure thats what they recommended me do.

This mSATA SSD is that the best you can buy in terms of performance and can i get it in 3tb?
 
I opted for the 250 GB SSD only solution (same price than 1 Tb fusion) and added an external Thunderbolt mSATA case with two slots, which gives you 2 TB SSD storage (e.g. with two Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB mSATA SSDs). I would never buy an iMac again with internal spinning HDs. Its old tech, slow and they are dying too fast in this hot iMac case which is not user serviceable...
 
AlexJoda said:
Its old tech, slow and they are dying too fast in this hot iMac case which is not user serviceable...
Click to expand...

This. Flash storage is the way of the future, and when SATA SSDs come down even further in price, I have no doubt that it'll offset the common practice of having a small SSD for the OS and applications and a big hard drive for user data.

If you really have to have external storage, a USB3/Thunderbolt external hard drive is a very cheap method of storing user data. But if you hate the idea of having an extra cable and clutter on your desk, a NAS hard drive might be the way to go.
 
Couldn't she just decouple the drives, reinstall the OS on the 128 GB portion and hook up an external drive for her files?
 
KNPaige said:
For the love of God do NOT consider doing this if you have any doubts in your ability to repair an iMac. Repairing these things is not for the faint of heart. Believe me, I'm experienced with these things, and even I get shaky every time I work with an iMac.

The display assembly is glued to the chassis, and requires a heat gun and guitar pick to loosen and remove. You have to replace the adhesive yourself once you're done, which is another pain. God forbid you snap the display cable, because if you do, you're left with a fancy paperweight unless you buy another expensive display assembly.

You're better off biting the bullet and having the pros do it. I'd follow the advice these guys have and get an SSD. AiOs generate a lot more heat than a traditional fan-cooled desktop due to everything being in such close proximity to each other, and HDDs are going to be a lot more vulnerable.

Not to mention you'll love how much snappier everything is.
Click to expand...

I agree its not easy. There are newer tools out there that make the process easier and eliminate the need for a heat gun.
 
ZipZap said:
I agree its not easy. There are newer tools out there that make the process easier and eliminate the need for a heat gun.
Click to expand...

I think getting the screen off is reasonably straightforward - a bit fiddly, but relatively safe and your are unlikely to break anything. The bit that scares the **** out of me is pulling cables from the mainboard. For some weird reason, the connectors on Apple mainboards often are not soldered on that well and will simply fall off when you try to pull the cable out, leaving you with a £500+ repair bill.
 
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