Preparation for warranty repair

[MarvinHC]

Hello, I would need some advise. I was today for my first time ever at the Genius bar to have my Macbook Air checked (11” mid 2013 256/4GB i5). Reason is that the warranty period is over in 2 weeks plus I found that it has a tendency to get warm/hot.

The genius run the hardware tests which didn’t show anything and then also a special ‘cooler test’ which failed (strangely, the message was that a file could not be loaded, so it sounded more like an issue with their testing system to me… But in any case, she said the logic board would have to be changed - under warranty. She was also so friendly to clean my screen and there I noticed for the first time that there seems to be some dust under the glass in the almost top right corner. Not a big deal but when she and I saw it she immediately said she would exchange the screen.

So there we go, I thought I had it quickly checked out and now they want to change both logic board and screen. I don’t mind, getting new parts should only be beneficial in the long term. They didn’t have a logic board in stock so I will bring it in later this week.

Now I have two questions:

1. How do you prepare your machine before handing it over? Do you wipe all data off it (after putting it on a time machine backup of course)? I have in addition to the Mac OS partition also a Windows partition - in case I have to set up everything again afterwards, what is the best way? Carboncopy?
   How to best delete my data: New admin account and deleting the old one?
2. How long is the warranty on the repair: The genius lady said three months but that sounded very short. And as said my warranty is up in 2 weeks time, so the warranty on the new parts is important to me since I don’t plan on buying Apple Care (just too expensive in comparison with the macbook price itself)

Anything else I should think of?

Many thanks in advance for all pieces of advice!

 

[Gav2k]

Clone the drive and then create them an admin account with a basic password. If you don't trust them wipe the drive.

 

[MarvinHC]

Clone the drive and then create them an admin account with a basic password. If you don't trust them wipe the drive.

Thanks, do you know of any software that can clone the entire drive with all partitions etc. as is? Carbon Copy let's you only do partition by partition and I am wondering if I can put this back together in a new drive with boot sectors etc.

And no, I don't trust them, I am in China

 

[iConnected]

...

1. How long is the warranty on the repair: The genius lady said three months but that sounded very short. And as said my warranty is up in 2 weeks time, so the warranty on the new parts is important to me since I don’t plan on buying Apple Care (just too expensive in comparison with the macbook price itself) ...

She's correct - Apple repairs come with a 90 day warranty.

 

[MarvinHC]

She's correct - Apple repairs come with a 90 day warranty.

Thanks, for some reason I had 6 months in my mind. But I guess normally a logic board either quits in the first couple of weeks or keeps on going for the long term anyway.

 

[iConnected]

Thanks, for some reason I had 6 months in my mind. But I guess normally a logic board either quits in the first couple of weeks or keeps on going for the long term anyway.

Np. Just for your reference in case of need, the 90 day period is specified here in section 5 (Chinese terms for retail store repairs):

http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/terms/repair/Retail_Repair_China_Terms_Conditions.html​

US equivalent clause (which reads better than a Google translation of the above):

"Apple warrants for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of service (1) that service will be performed in a competent and workmanlike manner and (2) that all parts used to service your product will be free from defects in materials and workmanship, unless otherwise specified by Apple"​

 

[iConnected]

Apple also offers some advice on securing data:

Keeping your confidential data secure during hardware repair

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201857

 

[Gav2k]

Thanks, do you know of any software that can clone the entire drive with all partitions etc. as is? Carbon Copy let's you only do partition by partition and I am wondering if I can put this back together in a new drive with boot sectors etc.

And no, I don't trust them, I am in China

You can use disk utility to clone the whole drive

 

[MarvinHC]

You can use disk utility to clone the whole drive

Thanks, unfortunately did not work for me. I follow the instructions in the link below but get the error message:
'Restore Failure - Could not validate source - error 254'

http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...ner-how-to-clone-your-drive-with-apples-built

 

[iConnected]

Have you tried Apple's own instructions?

Disk Utility (Yosemite): Create a disk image

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20574?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Disk Utility (Yosemite): Restore a disk

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20568?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[motrek]

Thanks, do you know of any software that can clone the entire drive with all partitions etc. as is? Carbon Copy let's you only do partition by partition and I am wondering if I can put this back together in a new drive with boot sectors etc.

And no, I don't trust them, I am in China

I don't think I've ever seen software that can clone all partitions and restore partition data as you're asking.

SuperDuper! is a good shareware program to clone a Mac drive. I don't know what to use for the Windows drive.

To clear your data, I think creating a new account is a good idea. Log into that account and delete your own account. Don't bother with securely erasing your data--I'm not convinced that works right for SSDs and it will just wear out the SSD unnecessarily.

 

[charlyham]

Thanks, do you know of any software that can clone the entire drive with all partitions etc. as is? Carbon Copy let's you only do partition by partition and I am wondering if I can put this back together in a new drive with boot sectors etc.

And no, I don't trust them, I am in China

The latest Acronis for Mac says it will get an exact copy of your drive, including the bootcamp partition.

 

[MarvinHC]

Thanks all for your help. Got my Macbook back today with a new logic board and display. In the end prior to handing it in for repair I made time machines backups on separate external drives plus an image of the Mac OS partition and a carbon copy clone of the Bootcamp partition (better safe than sorry).

Then I created a new admin user and deleted my account safely.

Restoring today was a piece of cake from the time machine backup, and since the SSD was not effected by the repair, the bootcamp partition was still there.

So happy to have my baby back

New display is again LG by the way, same as the old, but I was not unhappy with the old one either.
Very impressed with the turnaround from Apple: They called me when they had the parts in stock (3 days after I first went to the Apple store), I handed it in at 10:30am and the called me at 7pm that it was ready for pickup!