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Submitting MBP for mainboard replacement. What happens if I take out the HD first?

N

nomenclature123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 22, 2010
7
0
I'm submitting my MBP for mainboard replacement (MBP keeps freezing and the running the hardware test even locks up about 40% of the time). I'm wondering what will happen if I submit the MBP in w/ the hard drive removed. Apple doesn't need the hard drive to replace the mainboard but will they balk anyway and not do the mainboard replacement? I asked this question when I called Apple Care to report the problem but the guy didn't know the answer.

(Apologies if this has been covered before. All the searches I ran returned results regarding repairs for faulty hard drives.)
 
I wouldn't do it. You should have a backup anyway and if you don't, now would be a good time to start making one. I completely removed my stock 250 gb drive (replaced with x25-m), threw a fresh leopard install on it and threw it in the closet, so when I need to do repairs, I just swap the drive out and bring it in. I could certianly use that space for something but it's much more convenient then having to backup and nuke then restore my drive every time I have to bring it in.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
I wouldn't do it. You should have a backup anyway and if you don't, now would be a good time to start making one. I completely removed my stock 250 gb drive (replaced with x25-m), threw a fresh leopard install on it and threw it in the closet, so when I need to do repairs, I just swap the drive out and bring it in. I could certianly use that space for something but it's much more convenient then having to backup and nuke then restore my drive every time I have to bring it in.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Eddyisgreat!

I'm afraid that if I swap the HD w/ another one they'll blame the freezes/crashes on the HD and say either 1) it's the non-original HD causing the crashes or 2) they need the original HD to do the repair. Are my fears warranted?
 
No they are not. It's ok to send in your computer without HD. You do not know what the problem it may not need mainboard replacement so let them run the tests and do the needed work. Many people could be fired from work and probably sued by their employer for sending in their HD chock full of sensitive data to a repair facility.

To back up my claim of it being ok, my friend sent in his MacBook with no ram and no HD. It came back with both items from AppleCare no charge. Don't count on it but don't worry about removing the HD.
 
farmermac said:
No they are not. It's ok to send in your computer without HD. You do not know what the problem it may not need mainboard replacement so let them run the tests and do the needed work. Many people could be fired from work and probably sued by their employer for sending in their HD chock full of sensitive data to a repair facility.

To back up my claim of it being ok, my friend sent in his MacBook with no ram and no HD. It came back with both items from AppleCare no charge. Don't count on it but don't worry about removing the HD.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply farmermac! I think I'll take the HD out to avoid the hours of work of taking the data off and then putting it back on. Hopefully they'll still do the mainboard replacement and if they throw in a new HD I certainly wouldn't complain! Thanks again!
 
thanks!

Thanks for the help everyone!

I ended up removing the hard drive before submitting my MBP for repairs and they still repaired it and put in a low-capacity HD as well. I guess the free HD is the least they could do for all the trouble this MBP has been causing me.

Thanks again all!
 
nomenclature123 said:
Thanks for the help everyone!

I ended up removing the hard drive before submitting my MBP for repairs and they still repaired it and put in a low-capacity HD as well. I guess the free HD is the least they could do for all the trouble this MBP has been causing me.

Thanks again all!
Click to expand...

Wow that's crazy (and good for you). I should do that from now on. Besides I only have two repairs left before I hit that magical "replace my machine please" number, so they'll give me 2 HD's and eventually a new computer lol.
 
Have you taken it to a Genius? If not, you probably should, with your HD in it, and get one of them to look at it. Then they can verify that it isn't working properly with the original HD, and you'll be there to make sure they don't look at anything they aren't supposed to. You should then be able to tell the Genius you're dealing with that you have sensitive material on your HD, and you would like to take it home and remove it. Then you should be able to go back in with an appointment with the same guy, and hand in your MBP for repairs sans HD.

Oh, right. You've already done it. Never mind.
 
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How" low capacity" is it?

Because it'd be nice to have a 40GB or smaller external harddrive for my multimedia library to be backed up...
 
ouimetnick said:
What was wrong with your MBP?
Click to expand...

It was freezing periodically. When I ran the hardware test (reboot while holding down "d") the MBP would freeze up about 50% of the time while doing the extended test. They tried replacing the RAM first but the symptoms persisted so I had to turn it in to get the mainboard replaced.
 
Erasmus said:
Have you taken it to a Genius? If not, you probably should, with your HD in it, and get one of them to look at it. Then they can verify that it isn't working properly with the original HD, and you'll be there to make sure they don't look at anything they aren't supposed to. You should then be able to tell the Genius you're dealing with that you have sensitive material on your HD, and you would like to take it home and remove it. Then you should be able to go back in with an appointment with the same guy, and hand in your MBP for repairs sans HD.

Oh, right. You've already done it. Never mind.
Click to expand...

I actually asked about this and officially (she showed me the the procedure documentation) they need the HD installed when submitting the computer for repair so even if the Genius knew that the computer had problems w/ the original HD installed he/she isn't supposed to knowingly take computers w/ the HD removed.

Thanks for the reply though!
 
Eddyisgreat & jawa12083 - I don't encourage you to take advantage of this to get free HDs and certainly not to get a new MBP for free by hitting a magic number!

I hope that sharing my experience is primarily useful for people who don't want to go through the risk and hassle of removing and replacing all personal data as well as installing and setting up their programs.

Again, please don't abuse this guys! :)
 
Haha, nothing to worry about from this poster. Anything less than 500 GB and i'm uninterested. I just initialized my server which has online storage of about 4.2 TB and I'm about to purchase an external 8 bay raid box w/ a rocketraid eSATA card ;)
 
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