Warrenty related question regarding hardrive upgrade

[Crugga]

Basically my sisters friend has a base model 13" late 2013 retina Macbook pro. It only has a 128gb hardrive but she would like to upgrade the hardrive to a larger one without paying a fortune to get it done. Ive looked online and there are several guides on how to do it, infact you can even get an enclosure to put the old one in and use as an external. Looks like a very easy job with the right tools.
The only issue is that it seems this is not a user servicable machine in any way and she is concerned about the warranty. Now my presumption is that it would only affect the warranty if the warranty claim was too do with the hardrive and that the rest of the machine would still be covered.
Is this correct?, ie if the screen or motherboard went bad they would still repair it despite the fact she had replaced the hardrive?
Are there any security seals to break to get at the hardrive?, thinking she could just keep the original drive and replace if she did ever use warranty.

 

[ISKOTB]

No, just pop your old drive back whenever you need to send the laptop to

 

[SarcasticJoe]

All my machines use something other than the standard HDD they came with, but I've only once had a service technician even mention a non-standard HDD. It's never been an issue and unless Apple's own service technicians (no official Apple stores where I come from) are any different, you can freely send it in with the aftermarket SSD.

 

[Crugga]

Thanks, i'll tell her to keep the old one safe.
Is there definately no security seal on the new ones?

 

[maflynn]

Thanks, i'll tell her to keep the old one safe.
Is there definately no security seal on the new ones?

No security seal and its best to put the old drive back in since its not considered a user replaceable component.

 

[niteflyr]

Info on this subject per OWC:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/displayFAQDetails.cfm?ID=690

 

[Weaselboy]

Now my presumption is that it would only affect the warranty if the warranty claim was too do with the hardrive and that the rest of the machine would still be covered.

Is this correct?, ie if the screen or motherboard went bad they would still repair it despite the fact she had replaced the hardrive?

This is correct. The only other issue might be if Apple tried to say you damaged something else while installing the drive. But no, installing your own drive does not invalidate the warranty.

 

[DeltaMac]

The OTHER issue is that there are still no third-party replacement Pci-E flash storage cards available to upgrade a Late 2013 MBPro.
(unless I have missed something announced recently, and that's always possible… )
So, even if the work is possible, there's no parts available - other than Apple's proprietary parts. Some vendors make those available somehow, maybe it's extras produced by the contractor that makes them for Apple - hard to say.

Anyway, the availability of the drive itself is the main limitation on doing the upgrade.

If you need more storage space, then much simpler is external Thunderbolt storage.

 

[Barney63]

Basically my sisters friend has a base model 13" late 2013 retina Macbook pro. It only has a 128gb hardrive but she would like to upgrade the hardrive to a larger one without paying a fortune to get it done. Ive looked online and there are several guides on how to do it, infact you can even get an enclosure to put the old one in and use as an external. Looks like a very easy job with the right tools.

I think you are looking at the wrong model/year of rMBP.
AFAIK there are no external enclosures for the Apple PCI-e SSD.
Bigger drives are available from eBay (I presume these are pulls from damaged laptops), but I think your old 128GB will just have to sit in your desk or flog it on eBay to recoup some of your outlay.


Barney