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MacBook Pro & Applecare advice needed...

K

kk05629

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2007
48
0
Greetings...Happy Independence day!

My 15" MBP is going to be officially off the 1 year AppleCare that came with the unit on 7/9/2008 and I need advice on:

1). I added a 7200 RPM drive the the MBP...Does that void any applecare warranty (either the base or any extended warranty I would purchase)? I don't want to purchase the apple care and then find out it is voided because I added a bigger/faster hard drive.

2). The MBP is only use 2 hours a day on average and is not really moved around alot. I have not had any problems with the unit or any heat problems.

I usually do not purchase extended warranties because I usually go off the premise that "If it does not break in the 1st year...it is probably not going to break".

Since I have not had a lick of problems with my MBP and my Alu iMac...I am questioning the need for AppleCare.

Advice and comments welcome.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

If you replaced the original HD then, yes, technically you have voided your warranty.

Your premise is probably good to follow in my opinion but I have had something break within the extended warranty period and was glad that I had it.

In your case I wouldn't bother since you replaced the HD, but that is if I were in your shoes.
 
I've been searching for a definitive answer to your first question for years. Everyone seems to have a different opinion.

I've heard from some people that it does void your warranty period.

I've also heard that if something unrelated to the hard drive fails, then Apple can't decline the repair.

However, some people claim that Apple refused to even diagnose the problem because there was a 3rd party drive in it, while some people claim to have sent the MBP in with the 3rd party drive without any issues.

Some people claim that if you have an Apple Authorized Service Provider perform the upgrade, then the warranty is not void, but that makes me wonder how you prove to Apple that it was done by a service provider.

Personally, I know a few people who have upgraded their hard drives in their MBP's. If they need warranty repair, they simply re-install the original drive before taking it to the Apple Store.
 
RAM upgrades are about the same then, I guess?

I've heard that putting 3rd party RAM in instead of Apple RAM (although I would think that Apple would use some from Crucial or Corsair anyway...) will void your warranty if you have to take it in. I guess I could just pull my 3rd party RAM and put the Apple RAM back in if I have to take it in for service.

Sorry to OP, I don't mean to be hijacking your thread... Hopefully it won't get totally off topic!

Thanks to everyone for their help!
 
there has been some wrong advice in this thread. your hdd upgrade will only void the warranty on the hdd itself. your applecare is still good on the rest of the computer! ram is user upgradeable so do not worry about that. I highly suggest extending your applecare.
 
thechidz said:
there has been some wrong advice in this thread. your hdd upgrade will only void the warranty on the hdd itself. your applecare is still good on the rest of the computer! ram is user upgradeable so do not worry about that. I highly suggest extending your applecare.
Click to expand...

See, this is what I was talking about. Everyone seems to have different experiences and a different understanding of this issue. I've read in different forums and threads that some service providers won't even touch the computer if it has a 3rd party hard drive in it.

That's why my recommendation is to reinstall your old drive first if you have to get a repair done. Better safe than sorry.
 
The warranty, as it says, "gives you specific legal rights." It is a contract between Apple and the buyer. Of course, nobody ever bothers to read it before giving advice on a forum.

Unless it says, specifically, that it is void if a non-Apple hard disk is installed (and it absolutely does not say any such thing) then it remains valid no matter how often you swap out the HD.

The only exception--and it's an important one--is that damage you cause is not covered. So if you break off a connector, or rip out a cable, or something like that, while you've got the computer opened up, then you're on your own. If Apple determines that you caused the problem, it's your problem. Just like spilling water on it, or dropping it, or any other damage is not covered. The warranty, as it says, covers defects, not owner carelessness.

Also, obviously, the warranty does not cover the new HD, because that would not be an Apple product.
 
I agree that the warranty terms do not specifically say that your warranty is void by installing a hard drive. However, the warranty terms do say that it does not cover any damage caused by performing an upgrade.

The problem with electronics is that it's hard to pinpoint what caused a failure. Obviously if you try to install a hard drive and accidentally break one of the cables near that corner of the unit, Apple isn't going to fix it. However, if your logic board dies, how do I know that Apple won't try to claim that you caused a short circuit during the upgrade or that the failure was due to the fact that the 3rd party hard drive runs at a warmer temperature than the original drive.

Even though Apple can't prove that your upgrade caused the failure, you can't exactly prove that it didn't. I'd just rather not have to deal with it. If Apple denies the repair, I don't want to have to go through the trouble to hire a lawyer.
 
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