MacBook

decided to have a Hard Drive fail this am

Oh I was in no doubt - it was clicking , had the spinning beach ball , was totally frozen

Forced it to shut down rebooted and got the grey folder with a black question mark on it

Into Apple time - yes hard drive is defunct and as it's an 80GB not in stock so will be ordered in for me .

Also getting a new battery - mine is running HOT and expanding slightly .

Genius very nice - offered to teach me how to put in a new hard drive so I could go to Maplins and buy a bigger one - Apple won't negotiate over the difference between the 80GB in it and a bigger one

Thank God for Applecare

Now back on my very very very slow indigo G3 iMac till the MacBook comes home.

Just wondering what is going to fail next - have had to replace sooooooo many things this year

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

Thank God for Applecare

Amen When I bought my first Mac, a friend advised to get it.. Glad I did, well worth the small cost when something like a logic board goes pop.

Matt

There is very cheap hardware out there which I only paid about £12 a couple of years ago which has a range of various plugs to suit most drives and plugs into the USB port. If you had the hardware when you get the new drive you could connect the defunct drive and and get the latest version of Disc Warrior to get at it.
I have done this recently with 2 or 3 old and 'clicking' drives and it recovered them fine, which the previous version was unable to do.
Apple like to hang on to your defunct drive in 'order to ensure proper destruction', but I refused and they allowed me to keep it.
If you are interested and need more info, let me know and I am sure there are others on this site who will help too.

Thanks for the offer - but I'm no techie - would really be scared to try anything like that. I have 2 back up drives - so I am actually OK - don't think I've lost anything other than perhaps 1 or 2 emails - but they should still be on Virgin's webmail so they should come in to me when I'm back up and running.

I only wish it was as easy to replace the hard-drive in mine as it is yours, unless you have the unibody one. If I remember correctly it's as easy as adding new RAM and you can get a whopping 320gb one for about £50 new on ebay. Shame yours died anyway but doesn't the Applecare cover the cost of a replacement?

well - the MB was dropped in on the Wednesday morning [ time deliberately chosen :) ] Genius checked it over - agreed Hard Drive was dead , also battery was expanding slightly . Both would be replaced under warranty - thank you Apple care

No 80GB drives in stock but it would be ordered up that day [ orders go in about 1pm - told you I chose the time to take it in :) ]

Genius also pointed out a new crack by the Ventilation thingy at the back - 7 cms long approx . That shook me as I hadn't spotted it.

Phone call on Thursday at 4pm to say it was ready

Collected on Friday and then booted it up - and found that despite the promise they had ot brought everything in from my Time Machine back up - that took another 40 mins .

I was sorry that I couldn't get them to agree terms to upgrade my 80GB drive to a bigger one. I did think seriously for a short time about doing as they suggested - fitting one myself and using the brand new 80GB one as an external Drive. Really a 4th External Drive seems a tad OTT - I already have 3 for this machine and there are yet another 2 Desktop ones in the house .

Now to arrange with Apple to get the crack dealt with .

Tell me - are the HDs on the unibody MBPs not user replaceable ?

Is the Memory user upgradeable ?

Oh it seems the hard drive even on the unibody macbooks is user replaceable, something that is very surprising. Looks like the macbooks are the only models that let you replace the hard drive with ease!

ifixit is a great website if you want to know how to take apart your mac!

And if you have hands that can unscrew things easily [ or a nephew you can call on if you can catch him :-p ]

Taa for the Site

You're welcome. When the warranty expires on my MBP I'm going to upgrade the hard drive but I suspect about 30 screws are involved along with a lot of swearing.

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

Tell me - are the HDs on the unibody MBPs not user replaceable ?

Is the Memory user upgradeable ?

The drives/memory in all Uni body MacBooks/MacBook Pros are user replaceable Even in the new model with the fixed battery.

Matt