New MacBook at Apple Store Twelve Oaks, MI for Optical Drive

[MacVault]

I bought a brand new MacBook from Apple's online store back in January. Beautiful machine except that the very first music CD I tried to rip froze up the whole computer. The second CD I tried did the same thing. The third, and so on. I don't think I've successfully ripped a CD on that yet. And DVDs hang in the middle of watching a movie, etc. All these CDs rip and DVDs play without a glitch on my 3+ year old G4 iBook. So, it's at the Twelve Oaks Apple Store in Novi, MI for a new Optical Drive.

A couple questions...
1) Do these guys know what their doing? They look like they do, but just thought I'd ask
2) When I took it there to be diagnosed I figured they could fix it on the spot. Wrong! So I had to leave it there yesterday I was not thinking along those lines so I was not prepared as far as backing up my stuff and deleting all my personal files. I didn't feel like driving another 1.5 hours home and 1.5 hours back. So... Are these guys professional and ethical? Or should I be paranoid and worry about my personal documents, keychain, etc. being stollen or copied?
3) The genius bar tech said it would be 5-7 days. My Repair Status on Apple's website says "Repair in Progress". Does this mean their working on it right now? Or does it mean it's just sitting in their back room waiting for when they have time?

 

[SC68Cal]

I had a screen defect come up on mine, so I saved a few discussion threads on apple as well as a small program that would display white, so assist diagnosis.

Always come prepared, my motto.

Bring the offending disks for the optical drive.

I use filevault, though I was concerned about giving the Apple store an admin account.

I don't trust people, so I would maybe create a encrypted disk image and toss everything in there before you send it out.

 

[kolax]

I work in a department store that sells laptops, and we do recieve a fair amount of laptops back from customer's because they don't want them or whatever.

One thing they forget to do is delete their stuff; so before we resell it we have to format the disc and restore it all. However, can't say I'm proud to have done so, but when your through the back restoring a computer you do find yourself looking through the documents folder, pictures, music etc; was shocked to find gay porn on one person's computer.

Privacy? Pff, they should've deleted anything they didn't want others to see.

Take that as a motto too; when it comes to your personal data on your computer, don't trust anyone with it. Not saying they'll look through your stuff, but who knows, they could be bored and want some amusement.

Cal's advice seems the most sensible.