[icruise]

I got a call from my sister in college yesterday saying that her Macbook wouldn't start up. I ran her through the usual troubleshooting procedure, but nothing worked, so I told her to take it to the Apple Store (luckily she has one not far away). From what I can gather, the most likely explanation is that it got damaged in an electrical storm. But apparently they are going to repair it under warranty. She had them send it off and they said it would take about a week.

However, the disturbing part is that apparently she has quite a bit of stuff on the computer that isn't backed up in any way. I helped her buy and set up an external hard disk for her iTunes music because she was running out of room, and I thought we had set up a backup schedule for things like her iPhoto pictures, but she acted like she didn't know what I was talking about when I asked if it had been running. (Cue ominous music...)

She did make it clear to the guy at the Apple Store that she had stuff on the hard disk she needed and he apparently said that they wouldn't wipe the drive, but I'm a little skeptical. I had the impression that they installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X as a matter of course. Do you think her data will be OK? Have other people sent Macbooks to Apple and gotten them back with their hard disks unmolested?

[bradbissell]

They have never formatted any of the computers I have sent in for repair. This does not mean they never will, but so far they haven't.

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

if it has to do with kernel panics or other problems with booting they may wipe it

[zenwhen]

Sent my wife's MacBook off twice in the last two months and they did not wipe the drive ether time. Use something like SuperDuper Redirect to back up your data before you send it off though.

[sdilley14]

If there's an admin password on it, they'll prolly have no choice but to wipe it. I took my MacBook in to get repaired a couple weeks ago and made sure to give them my admin password, otherwise they most likely would have reformatted it completely just to be able to log in.

[icruise]

It wasn't password protected, no. Apparently the Apple Store called her and the repair has already been finished. She probably won't be able to go get it until tomorrow, though. I'll keep my fingers crossed (partially because I would feel bad if she lost anything and partially because I know that I will need to help her reinstall everything if the drive was wiped). I did discover that I had a copy of her iPhoto library as of 3 months ago on one of my firewire hard disks (I made it when I was helping her move some files around) so that's good news at least.

In any case, I'm definitely going to have to make sure that she has a good backup regimen in place after this. I had told her a number of times to back things up, but I don't think it really sunk in until now.

[analogika]

If the tech tests the machine using an external disk as the boot volume, and the machine works fine, the first step is to wipe the internal and re-install.

Worrying about saving data is not something a shop tech does. It's not his job - he fixes hardware.

[icruise]

Originally Posted by analogika 

If the tech tests the machine using an external disk as the boot volume, and the machine works fine, the first step is to wipe the internal and re-install.

I don't think that's an issue, since the thing was definitely dead.

Worrying about saving data is not something a shop tech does. It's not his job - he fixes hardware.

I guess, and I definitely think it's the responsibility of the user to back things up, but the reality is that most people probably don't (or at least don't have a complete backup). You'd think it might be possible to make allowances for that if the diagnostic process doesn't actually require wiping the drive.

[mdc]

The last time I sent a computer to Apple they told me that if it needed to be wiped they would do it and if I did not have a backup they would back it up for me for $50 and then restore the backup when they were finishing reinstalling the OS, if it was needed.

They have never needed to wipe my drive.

[icruise]

Charging a fee like that sounds like a reasonable solution to this kind of problem. I also think that since the Macbook now has an easily removable hard disk, they could probably just slip out the user's hard disk and use a "diagnostic" disk in many cases.

[icruise]

My sister got her Macbook back yesterday in good order. They didn't wipe anything as far as she can tell. They replaced the logic board and battery (since it was totally dead). I'm not sure about the cause, though. There was an electrical storm around the time it died, although the machine was plugged into a power strip, and none of the other things plugged in seemed to be affected, and the AC adapter seems to be fine. Seems a little odd.

They also replaced the wrist rest plastics, since hers had started to discolor (they weren't as bad as some of the ones I had seen, but they were yellowing more than they should have been). All in all, I think it was a positive experience, although my sister was apparently a bit put off by how the "genius" at the store treated her. I'm going to be sure to implement a backup routine for her, and I think I'm going to recommend that she buy another cheap external hard disk that she can use to make a clone of her Macbook hard disk. I do this periodically in case of a catastrophic hard disk failure.

[olePigeon]

The official warning I got from an Apple Genius is that they'll wipe a HDD under two conditions:

1. They don't have an admin account to login to the computer
2. A password is set for the screensaver

If her MacBook is set to auto-login or she's provided the password (or guest account with Admin privs) she should be OK.

[jaydon34]

Never wiped mines either but better to be safe than sorry and backup

[chipchen]

Short story is this. They wipe it if they have to. No one wants to do more work. But if they can't get into it, or the software is the problem, they'll wipe it. But if it's a hardware problem and they have access to everything they need, then they won't.