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Will Genius bar offer to transfer data to replacement hard drive?

E

EssentialParado

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2005
1,162
48
My iMac's hard drive has been clicking a lot lately and a quick search revealed I've got on the problematic 1TB Seagate drives that Apple started a replacement program for, so I'm planning on taking it to the genius bar next week.

The problem is I don't have an external drive big enough to backup to. Is there any chance the genius bar might offer to transfer my data to the new drive? Has anyone had this happen before, or will it definitely be a fresh and empty drive with just the OS on it?

Small Print: Before anyone asks if I have a backup, I do… but to a cloud backup service. But I recently temporarily moved somewhere with only a 1Mb connection and so a re-download on this connection would take days if not weeks, so avoiding that as a last case scenario.
 
Last edited:
That will be a great question to ask the "genius" when you go to have the drive replaced.
Apple does ask that you have a backup of your drive completed before you go in for repair.
http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/
Consider that the drive replacement likely takes about 10 minutes, and the OS X reinstall/transfer of your files and apps, can often take a couple of hours to finish. The Apple store may offer that service, but don't expect it will be free.
And - they can sell you a drive that WILL have the space you need.
Explain to them about how slow the retrieval process will be for you, and perhaps they will offer other options, as well - maybe even connecting to your cloud service through the store's fast connection. You'll have to ask about that, too.
 
EssentialParado said:
My iMac's hard drive has been clicking a lot lately and a quick search revealed I've got on the problematic 1TB Seagate drives that Apple started a replacement program for, so I'm planning on taking it to the genius bar next week.

The problem is I don't have an external drive big enough to backup to. Is there any chance the genius bar might offer to transfer my data to the new drive? Has anyone had this happen before, or will it definitely be a fresh and empty drive with just the OS on it?
Click to expand...

Seriously, you should have a backup drive. It's not that they cost much money - 2TB external drive is maybe £60; I got 3TB for £80. And if your drive is clicking now, it might even crash before you get it to the store.

I don't think they'd be too happy transferring data from the old drive to the new drive, because that means at least that they need a drive enclosure, and put your old drive into that enclosure. And you should have an appointment early, because it will take a while to copy everything.
 
The biggest point that was mentioned your drive is dying. Depending on what's wrong, moving the Mac could kill off the drive. Don't expect Apple to be able to copy anything over.

And based on what I've seen from cloud services, including the dropbox outage, you want a local backup as well as a cloud backup.
 
gnasher729 said:
If the drive is dying, that doesn't make any difference. It has to be replaced. Only difference is a few dollars or pounds or whatever.
Click to expand...

If it's still covered by warranty, yes of course. But there was a seagate trade-in program for a known production fault for specific seagate hard drives - out of warranty. And that program has come to an end I think.
 
TjeuV said:
I thought the seagate trade-in program was finished?
Click to expand...

Not for iMacs less than 3 years old with the affected drives.

I may have to just buy an external drive for the backup. Based on what I've been able to ascertain across the web is it varies from Apple tech to Apple tech. Some will offer it, some will say their job is just to replace the drive.

It's just a shame… it's such a simple thing to transfer the data, but I'm gonna have to fork out for a drive especially for it! Oh well.
 
They will of course try to migrate the data - however, if the drive is failing, there's no guarantee how successful this will be.

Personally, I'd back it up ASAP.
 
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