Joe Gramm
Level 5 (6,344 points)
iPhone

Q: iMac 1TB Replacement Program

I just got an email from Apple stating my iMac qualifies for the iMac 1TB Seagate HD Relacement Program. Oh boy, aren't I lucky   I have Time Machine and a CCC bootable clone backup. Is it as simple as cloning back my System onto the new hard drive. The Apple email says I need to start from scratch with the Install DVD that came with the computer. What's the best proceedure.

iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), IOS6, Apple TV2, Airport

Posted on Oct 19, 2012 6:15 PM

by babowa,Solvedanswer
babowa babowa
Level 7 (32,103 points)
iPad
A:

As far as I know, Nvidia makes graphics cards, not hard drives. Are you sure you checked here:

 

Screen Shot 2012-10-19 at 7.02.05 PM.png

 

@ abrody - They usually do not restore or backup your data - but that shouldn't be necessary; most people do have bootable clones or TM backups (or they should).

 

I've restored a clone to an internal; if an OS is installed on the new one, simply use TM to restore or, upon first setup, use Setup Assistant. I will most likely simply boot from my external clone, wipe the new internal drive, and clone my system back. That would be my preferred method.

 

I also received an email; I will call Apple to ask if it can be done in house since I have Applecare and in home service is included. If I have to take in the machine, I don't know that I would trust them with my SL install disks - I'd need to talk to them about it because I don't feel comfortable giving my disks to a repair place.

 

For anyone: remember to wipe the disk before it is replaced; you have no idea where that disk will go and who will have access to it......

 

Edit: I see you posted your HD info and it does say Nvidia - that is strange, especially since your hard drive also starts with ST which is Seagate.

Posted on Oct 19, 2012 7:14 PM

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Joe Gramm

Q: iMac 1TB Replacement Program

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  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Oct 24, 2012 12:29 PM in response to Albert Kinderman
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Oct 24, 2012 12:29 PM in response to Albert Kinderman

    Thanks for the feedback. I now stand corrected, having never dealt with restoring nonsystem files onto the boot volume. Don't know when that was added, but I wasn't familiar with it, since I don't recall it ever coming up during my stint at the forums. I suppose it might be useful if I inadvertently deleted something from the source that I knew existed on the clone, ala using TM, which I have no use for.

     

    The use of setup assistant is the normal way to migrate on first boot of a new machine from an older machine. That's well documented in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide, which isn't the same as restoring to the same machine with a clone made from it. Anyhow, Joe and I are on the same track and he'll let us know how it goes.

  • by Joe Gramm,

    Joe Gramm Joe Gramm Oct 25, 2012 3:47 PM in response to baltwo
    Level 5 (6,344 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 25, 2012 3:47 PM in response to baltwo

    baltwo wrote:

    Anyhow, Joe and I are on the same track and he'll let us know how it goes.

    New HD was put in today. It went almost perfect with the exception of getting the display video connections seated properly. On the first Start, the display was showing some pixelation or noise. The Tech took it apart again and reseated all the connections and that seemed to do the trick. She called Apple to document the issue incase I have problems in the future.

     

    Started the iMac while holding the Option Key, chose the Clone and booted up. Reformatted the new drive and copied the Clone back to the Macintosh HD, including the Recovery HD. Booted into the new HD with no issues. So the whole process worked great.

     

    Thanks as usual for eveyones help 

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Oct 25, 2012 5:00 PM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 7 (32,103 points)
    iPad
    Oct 25, 2012 5:00 PM in response to Joe Gramm

    Absolutely fabulous!

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Oct 25, 2012 5:38 PM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Oct 25, 2012 5:38 PM in response to Joe Gramm

    thumbsup.gif

    Love it when a plan comes together and works.

  • by Joe Gramm,

    Joe Gramm Joe Gramm Oct 26, 2012 5:52 AM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 5 (6,344 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 26, 2012 5:52 AM in response to Joe Gramm

    Since the new HD was installed, I'm trying to figure out if this is my imagination or real. It seems my iMac is considerably faster, especially using the Finder.

     

    I guess when I think of a hard drive failure, the first thought is one day it's working the next it's not. But what I'm wondering is if the HD was on a slow path to failure and the effects were gradual enough to not know the HD was failing.

     

    Another thing I noticed was Time machine. I decided to reformat my TM external HD and start with a new full backup. I did this before about 6 weeks ago and it took TM 6-7 hours to back up about 470 GB of data. This time with a reformatted TM drive and the new internal HD the backup took about 2 hours. Again, was the 6-7 hour backup a result of a slowly failing HD.

  • by GKruse1,

    GKruse1 GKruse1 Oct 26, 2012 9:17 AM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 26, 2012 9:17 AM in response to Joe Gramm

    Which brand HD and version was your replacement?

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Oct 26, 2012 11:10 AM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Oct 26, 2012 11:10 AM in response to Joe Gramm

    Joe Gramm wrote:

    But what I'm wondering is if the HD was on a slow path to failure and the effects were gradual enough to not know the HD was failing.

    IMO, highly unlikely. More a result of not maintaining the computer properly. These should keep it working smoothly:

     

    Mac Maintenance Quick Assist,
    Mac OS X speed FAQ,
    Speeding up Macs,
    How to Speed up Macs, ,
    Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance,
    Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up,
    Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines,
    Maintaining OS X, 
    Five Mac maintenance myths and
    Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X.

  • by Joe Gramm,

    Joe Gramm Joe Gramm Oct 26, 2012 11:40 AM in response to baltwo
    Level 5 (6,344 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 26, 2012 11:40 AM in response to baltwo

    I wasn't expecting that answer, but it makes perfect sense. I already do some of the maintenance from those links you supplied.

     

    I keep a lot of files on the internal drive. I know I should keep these files on a seperate drive, but I have tons of video files, photos and music on the internal drive. So now maybe I'm just seeing the effects of reformating and cloning the new drive. Don't want to use the word, but like a defag effect??? 

     

    Also, keeping files on seperate drives means a more complicated backup scheme. One reason why I don't do it: but I should.

     

    Lastly, I think I've always done upgrade installs on practically every OS X.  So maybe a deep cache cleaning would help. I haven't performed that type maintenance in quite a while. 

     

    Thanks baltwo

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Oct 26, 2012 12:03 PM in response to Joe Gramm
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Oct 26, 2012 12:03 PM in response to Joe Gramm

    Since I routinely clone my three OS boot volumes (I have six on each of three HDs) and reverse the process, that defrags those. Also, I don't do any music, movie, or photo stuff with my machines, so can't address that, but suggest keeping them on separate volumes (partitions) and also cloning them to ext FWHDs. Finally, my current OSs all came from the original OS 9 installation on the G4, through Jaguar to ML. I've never done any clean installs except as a one time test, but then migrated from the previous version. IMO, this is totally a waste of time.

  • by Joe Gramm,

    Joe Gramm Joe Gramm Oct 26, 2012 1:07 PM in response to baltwo
    Level 5 (6,344 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 26, 2012 1:07 PM in response to baltwo

    baltwo wrote:

    my current OSs all came from the original OS 9 installation on the G4, through Jaguar to ML. I've never done any clean installs except as a one time test, but then migrated from the previous version.

     

    Same here

  • by MacSoy,

    MacSoy MacSoy Oct 27, 2012 3:24 PM in response to GKruse1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 27, 2012 3:24 PM in response to GKruse1

    My replacement

    Model:          ST31000528AS                           

    Revision:          AP2E 

  • by Acetone.,

    Acetone. Acetone. Oct 28, 2012 2:37 PM in response to MacSoy
    Level 1 (74 points)
    iTunes
    Oct 28, 2012 2:37 PM in response to MacSoy

    Got my machine back today, and after a nightmare with time machine it looks to be back were I started ( a slight issue with aperture not showing movies )

     

     

    The new drive is:

    Model: APPLE HDD HUA722010CLA330              

    Revision: JP05I54D

     

     

    Which after a web search I believe is a

    Hitachi-HGST Ultrastar A7K2000 24x7 enterprise drive

  • by d-light,

    d-light d-light Oct 29, 2012 2:46 PM in response to baltwo
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Oct 29, 2012 2:46 PM in response to baltwo

    I hope it's o.k. if I chime in here as I am also affected by the replacement programm. I just would like to make sure I didn't get things wrong before I proceed with erasing my Seagate 1TB HD.

     

    I have been using CCC to have a bootable clone of my complete Macintosh HD at hand whenever needed. That said, I supposed that I could boot from that clone, erase and reformat the new HD and restore the clone using CCC.

     

    baltwo wrote:

     

    After the tech pops in the new HD, restart, holding down the OPTION key, select the clone, boot with it, run DU to erase and format the new HD, and then restore the clone.

     

    From what I have learned reading through the posts here, this option would be "fast and smart" as baltwo liked to say. Alternatively, I could restore the whole system (users, settings and apps) from that same CCC clone also by employing the Setup Assistant on first boot of the new HD. That may however take some more time. Please correct me if I am wrong.

     

    With the installation of Lion on my iMac (originally setup with Snow Leopard) a "Recovery HD" was introduced on my system. The Apple Support technician recommended me to boot from this recovery partition to erase the old HD before it gets replaced (of course I do not intend to hand over all my personal data...).

    Now my question: Under which circumstances will the "Recovery HD" also be established on the new HD? As far as I understand this a partition independent from the "regular" boot partition (i.e. the one with my Lion OS X). Will it be included in the clone restored via CCC (I would not expect)? Will it be established when I use the Setup Assistant and restore from the clone?

     

    Maybe it is not too important to have that "Revovery HD" partition at all but I would feel much more comfortable if I knew how things are supposed to evolve when proceeding with the replacement.

     

     

    Thanks a lot for your feedback!

    d-light

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Oct 29, 2012 2:59 PM in response to d-light
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Oct 29, 2012 2:59 PM in response to d-light

    d-light wrote:

    I have been using CCC to have a bootable clone of my complete Macintosh HD at hand whenever needed. That said, I supposed that I could boot from that clone, erase and reformat the new HD and restore the clone using CCC.

    baltwo wrote:

    After the tech pops in the new HD, restart, holding down the OPTION key, select the clone, boot with it, run DU to erase and format the new HD, and then restore the clone.

    From what I have learned reading through the posts here, this option would be "fast and smart" as baltwo liked to say. Alternatively, I could restore the whole system (users, settings and apps) from that same CCC clone also by employing the Setup Assistant on first boot of the new HD. That may however take some more time. Please correct me if I am wrong.

    The issue with this approach is that you won't know which OS, if any, is on the new HD. If not the same as on the clone, then you'll waste time updating it to match. What take time is installing the OS. Once that's finished, then using the Setup Assistant to migrate takes additional time, as does updating. In my testing, restoring the clone is the fastest way to get back to where you were previously. That minimizes having to reinstall anything.

    Now my question: Under which circumstances will the "Recovery HD" also be established on the new HD? As far as I understand this a partition independent from the "regular" boot partition (i.e. the one with my Lion OS X). Will it be included in the clone restored via CCC (I would not expect)? Will it be established when I use the Setup Assistant and restore from the clone?

    If you used CCC to make the clone and took advantage of installing the Recovery HD to that volume, then when you restore, you'll have the opportunity to restore the Recovery HD. Details at http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/will-ccc-clone-the-recovery-hd-partit ion-on-lion

  • by d-light,

    d-light d-light Oct 29, 2012 3:38 PM in response to baltwo
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Oct 29, 2012 3:38 PM in response to baltwo

    baltwo wrote:

     

    If you used CCC to make the clone and took advantage of installing the Recovery HD to that volume, then when you restore, you'll have the opportunity to restore the Recovery HD. Details at http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/will-ccc-clone-the-recovery-hd-partit ion-on-lion

    Thanks a lot for your spontaneous reply! I just read through Bombich's documentation you kindly linked to. I wasn't aware of that feature. Moreover, I just checked my last clone and looked into the related Library/Application Support/com.Bombich.ccc folder which indeed contains a "Recovery HD.dmg" image.

     

    In a kind of spleen I may have misunderstandingly derived from my earlier Linux days (and nights) I use to launch CCC from another (older) bootable external harddrive when I clone my IMac's internal HD. I kind of thought that this would be a prerequisite to be able to clone a partition without any access limitations (e.g. by the running OS). But this is not necessary, is it? I mean I could simply use CCC on my running machine to clone the complete HD, right? I just wasn't sure if the CCC version installed on the external HD (with my last Snow Leopard version running) has that RecoveryHD integration feature already on board (must be obviously already V. 3.4.4)

     

    In any case, the Carbon Copy Cloner is a great piece of software and I am very happy to have bought a licence quiet early after I tried it. Restoring the clone using CCC will be the aproach of my choice!

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