Taking the 2011 21in imac in for service.

[3wood]

I'm taking my imac into the Apple store to have the logic board replaced. No other work is being done. What's the best way to protect sensitive files from being examined? Could I set up an account for the store folks to use for the repair and leave my admin account password protected or will they need to get into the admin account? Or should I remove sensitive files and put them back on when repair is finished?

I've had Macs going back to the Plus and SE30 days and have never had one go into the shop. Had to end sometime.

MANY THANKS in advance for help.......

 

[spork183]

Clone your drive to a backup and then wipe it. When it comes back, clone back. Easiest way. You could go off TC or other backup, but the nice part about a cloned backup is you could boot it on another machine if you needed. It is likely to come back wiped anyway, so might as well beat them to the punch.

What do you have on there you are worried they will see?

BTW-Loved my SE30-Awesome machine...

 

[3wood]

Clone your drive to a backup and then wipe it. When it comes back, clone back. Easiest way. You could go off TC or other backup, but the nice part about a cloned backup is you could boot it on another machine if you needed. It is likely to come back wiped anyway, so might as well beat them to the punch.

What do you have on there you are worried they will see?

BTW-Loved my SE30-Awesome machine...

What do you have on there you are worried they will see?........I could tell ya, but then I'd ..........well you know

2 questions. What's TC?

If I clone to an external usb drive (the one I'm currently using for Time Mach.), can I start up from that or can you only start up from a firewire drive? Guess I'm not too well informed. By the way, only problem with my imac is a dead firewire port. Hope they don't scratch my baby.....3wood

 

[blevins321]

You can't boot from Time Machine. You can however boot to the recovery partition, reinstall the OS and follow the prompts to restore the Time Machine content after reinstallation.

 

[Stooby Mcdoobie]

2 questions. What's TC?

If I clone to an external usb drive (the one I'm currently using for Time Mach.), can I start up from that or can you only start up from a firewire drive? Guess I'm not too well informed. By the way, only problem with my imac is a dead firewire port. Hope they don't scratch my baby.....3wood

TC = Time Capsule

I believe he meant Time Machine, though.

Yes, you can boot from an external drive connected through USB 2.0, but it will be incredibly slow.

 

[3wood]

Thanks guys. Be back in the morn.
3w.

 

[3wood]

I am at the moment using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my imac HD on to a new Toshiba 1TB drive. How do I make sure it works after finishing making the clone? Would I -on the imac, select the Toshiba as start up disk and reboot and if it starts up ok using the clone, then that tells me my cloning is successful? If the answer to this is yes my cloning is successful - then my guess is I'd then boot from the System CD that came with the imac. Once that's done I'd format the imac HD and then reinstall just the system software? Then it's ready to go to the Apple store. That right?

I also have a Time Mach backup of the imac hd which I guess would be of help if I somehow goof.

Well you can tell I've either never done this before or it was long ago. THANKS!!!! again for the help.
REED.

 

[blevins321]

Yep that would be exactly what you do.

 

[3wood]

Yep that would be exactly what you do.

It went perfectly. She's at the Apple store for a new logic board. Will get it back in 3-4 days. I'll plan on a week. Thank you everybody. Fine forum.
Reed.

 

[spork183]

I am at the moment using Carbon Copy Cloner ...

Well you can tell I've either never done this before or it was long ago. THANKS!!!! again for the help.
REED.

Yeah, meant Time Machine. Nice thing about this is when you get it back and clone back to the machine, you keep the clone drive and update it about once a week. Out of curiosity, how do you like CCC? I use to use it, then went to SuperDuper. Been so long I don't remember why, but there WAS a reason, once...

 

[3wood]

Thx for replies. Will ck back when iMac returns home from repair.
3W