Repairing a company MacBook Pro at the Apple Store -- remove hard drive first?

[macrumorsuser10]

I have my company's 2011 MacBook Pro that has apparently failed due to the faulty GPU issue. It is out of warranty, and from my understanding, the only repair is to replace the motherboard with Apple. I don't want to replace it.

Since it is a company laptop, I definitely want to remove the hard drive. Will Apple be able to repair the laptop if we take it out first?

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I have my company's 2011 MacBook Pro that has apparently failed due to the faulty GPU issue. It is out of warranty, and from my understanding, the only repair is to replace the motherboard with Apple. I don't want to replace it.

Since it is a company laptop, I definitely want to remove the hard drive. Will Apple be able to repair the laptop if we take it out first?

You would need to ask a Genius. My guess is that they won't be able to run the diagnostics without it.

I'd suggest making a backup to an external drive and then reformatting the internal drive. I imagine a factory reset Mac should be able to have diagnostics run and reproduce the graphics failure. Then when you get it back you can restore from the external drive.

 

[romills]

Yes, they can diagnose gnu without hard drive

If it's a consistent problem, they can diagnose it. They boot off their own drive in the store. I had the same issue with my 2011 15" MBP.. once in warranty, then the second time out of warranty by a week.. I had to contact apple, and they finally agreed to fix it, but I had to deal with a lot of letters to applecare. The store wouldn't do it. They did diagnose it for free.

 

[TheIguana]

Assuming you work in a larger company, perhaps it would be best to see what your corporate IT department would like you to do before taking it in...

 

[N3ILA]

Your best option would be to take out the hard drive, install another hd than install os x. It doesn't have to be new and Im sure the IT department will have some spare hard drives around. This way your data stays with you and when the computer comes back you just have to reinstall your hard drive which already has all your data on it. Just a simple swap of the drives.

If my computer is going to be serviced I always backup and do a fresh install of os x.