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that sucks. I have a dead ibook G4 in the basement, they arent so easy to replace the hard drive on.
Anyway, with all that I'd just replace the drive myself and not have to worry where my data goes.
Hmm, they asked me the same question with my g3 iBook (a long, long time ago...and the model was known for the ridiculously faulty logic boards that needed replacement). I convinced the genius my problem (the faulty logic board) was irrelevant to anything on my drive. He just left the password field blank on the repair order and everything went fine. Of course this was all like..5 years ago? Times have changed.
Anyway, the main part of my comment is that the hard drive is a user-serviceable part on the MacBook involving the removal of the battery and a couple of screws. Was there no possibility of going to the manufacturer for a warranty replacement?
Lastly, the last time I went to the apple store, I wanted a battery replacement because my MacBook's battery was failing. The genius was actually starting to get pissed off and explicitly made a point of telling me that I seemed to care a LOT about security because of how many times he had to flip my laptop around so I could type in a password to unlock this or that so he could check things in the space of half an hour. When he wasn't complaining about that, we were talking about OS X development tools and why I liked objective-c. He was a very curious genius, seemed to know a lot, probably way underpaid and abused compared to the other jobs he could probably get with that kind of knowledge/experience.
(and on a very tiny sidenote, if Apple's policy on the data on hard drives seems lacking, what about all those times geek squad/best buy techs have been stealing porn from customers' computers? hah.)
You're certainly not alone in your experience and subsequent frustration. Oliver Day went through this as well and has a brief write-up:
http://blogs.law.harvard.ed...
Most computer companies do they same thing. IBM/Lenova ask for passwords as well as do Dell. Thats why whenever I send my laptop in to get repaired, I remove the hard drive before I send it in. Of course, in this case, you kinda have to. :)
@CG yep...I had to replace a HDD on a iBook G4 and it was a pain in the ass. Good thing Apple is making it more easier to do it on your own. Since I have AppleCare, I pretty much paid for a new drive anyway...I'll let them do it. :-)
@Jane Yeah, I would have gone that route but I purchased AppleCare so I didn't want to void the extended warranty that AppleCare provides.
@Zach Thanks for the link. Glad I'm not alone!
Quick update...I received an email from Apple tonight that they have received the MacBook and the repair status page shows "completed"...so far no problems with the wiped drive.
Well, we got the MacBook back from Apple. They swapped the drive out...no questions asked! They did load Tiger (10.4) back on it as well. Blasting the drive before sending it back to Apple worked...they either never booted the MacBook up or didn't care if the drive couldn't be read.
It looks like Apple is waffling again. They once had a DIY page that listed the memory, battery, and drive as user-replaceable items. One can still download the DIY instructions for r/r the drive (manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf) I had a drive fail during the 'bad head' era, and had to point out that this was a DIY part, after which they caved-in and sent the part. I then was able to ensure that the bad drive was REALLY unserviceable before sending it back. They are certainly not the Apple of a decade ago.
If its user serviceable I think I'd bite and buy my own replacement.
But in my macbook I use filevaule.. I suppose I could just create a new user, give them the password for that one and delete my filevault user. Should protect enough.
I am planning on sending my macbook pro in for replacement of the logic board (linear vertical line on screen top to bottom, one to two pixels wide), and my question is, is it sufficient to just turn on file-valut to encrypt my user file in order to protect my data? Will apple need the password for file-vault? Will they need my master password (which of course enables them to get into my encrypted user folder anyway)?
You could turn on file-vault...however, Apple may still wipe your hard drive (they note this in the repair agreement...even with a screen replacement. I suggest you not give your master password to apple and ensure you backup and remove any sensitive data from your Macbook before sending to Apple for repair.
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