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Question about Apple Store vs authorized center for repair

Soulflower

Soulflower

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2011
186
29
My Macbook has one month left of Apple Care. Today I did a Verify Disk and got the message to repair my disk. I booted into the utility and clicked Repair Disk. I got a message that the Disk could not be repaired, to back everything up, blah, blah, blah....

I called Apple Care and they told me to take it in to the store and get a new hard drive installed for free. I live 1 1/2 hours from an actual Apple store but have an computer shop that is an authorized service center 30 miles away.

I'd like to have the entire computer checked out before the Apple Care runs out in a month.

My question is this: Is there any advantage to taking it to an actual Apple store over the authorized service center? If I take it to the Apple store, do I have to make an appt? Any tips and suggestions from experience that might help me?

Thanks so much.
 
Soulflower said:
My question is this: Is there any advantage to taking it to an actual Apple store over the authorized service center?
Click to expand...
I would would elect to make the trip to the Apple store, but the ASC may be fine. Call in advance and tell them your situation and what the Apple store told you. See if they'll do the same and if they have the drive in stock.
Soulflower said:
If I take it to the Apple store, do I have to make an appt?
Click to expand...
You don't have to, but it helps if there's a long line.
Soulflower said:
Any tips and suggestions from experience that might help me?
Click to expand...
Back up your drive. Carbon Copy Cloner can make a bootable backup. Also, don't wait until the last days of your AppleCare coverage. You can verify when your coverage ends by entering your serial number here.
 
Thank you. I'm considering just taking it to the Apple store tomorrow instead of the ASC to go ahead and get this done. If I do take it to Apple, how long should this take? I'm assuming I'll have to make another trip back later to pick it up.

I'm going to check out the Carbon Copy Cloner now. I have it backed up to Time Machine.

Thank you.
 
Soulflower said:
If I do take it to Apple, how long should this take? I'm assuming I'll have to make another trip back later to pick it up.
Click to expand...
Swapping the drive, assuming you've already backed it up, shouldn't take more than an hour, I'd guess. I'd call the store and ask them how much time they estimate, and if you can wait for it or if you'd have to come back another day.
 
I decided to make an appt. at the Apple Store for tomorrow afternoon. My husband will be working in that town on Wednesday so hopefully he can pick it back up then.

I downloaded the Carbon Copy Cloner and am backing it up now. I didn't do a lot of reading but I just used the default settings (without customizing it) for backing the HD up to an external drive. Is that OK?

Should I take that with me or will the Apple Store do anything to set it back up after they have installed the new HD?

I'm sorta new to Mac with this Macbook (3 years ago) and this is my first experience at warranty repairs, especially something like a hard drive.

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One more question - I had Time Machine back up to this same external HD plus I put a few other files there and I don't see them listed now.

CCC is still running but will it write over those files or should they still be there?
 
UPDATE: I took the Macbook to the Apple store and they shipped it off to be repaired which included a new hard drive and two new sticks of RAM.

I backed it up to Time Machine. How do I go about restoring it?

Even if I don't restore everything, how would I go about finding & restoring the bookmarks since the Library file is a hidden file now?
 
Soulflower said:
UPDATE: I took the Macbook to the Apple store and they shipped it off to be repaired which included a new hard drive and two new sticks of RAM.

I backed it up to Time Machine. How do I go about restoring it?

Even if I don't restore everything, how would I go about finding & restoring the bookmarks since the Library file is a hidden file now?
Click to expand...

You can easily restore from Time Machine, either everything or selected files/folders. The fact that the Library folder is hidden is not a hindrance. You can always access it in Finder by clicking Go > Go to Folder and type /Library or /Users/yourusername/Library (or ~/Library)
 
Thanks. Could you please give me step by step instructions for restoring everything? This is my first time to attempt this.
 
Thanks. I had already been to that same link and when I went to the section about restoring your entire system from a backup and clicked that link, I got - Document not found.

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and I got lost on starting up from your installation disk. Is that necessary and if so, I'm coming from a pc, so I'm not sure how to go about that.
 
Soulflower said:
Thanks. I had already been to that same link and when I went to the section about restoring your entire system from a backup and clicked that link, I got - Document not found.

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and I got lost on starting up from your installation disk. Is that necessary and if so, I'm coming from a pc, so I'm not sure how to go about that.
Click to expand...
See if this helps. Read the "Restore Your Mac Using A Time Machine Backup (Erase and Install Mac OS X method)" section of this: http://www.macstrategy.com/article.php?42
 
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