iMac late 2009 hard drive replacement
Hi,
A little late to the party. My iMac drive finally "died" (invalid node structure) when I tried to upgrade from Lion to Mavericks. Applecare ran out in Feb 2013 😟. When I got the notice last year and even early this year about the recall, I punched in my serial number and it says it is not part of the recall, though I was having issues with the drive, which Disk Util has manage to fix each and every time. I don't know why my drive is not part of the recall. According to this blog:
http://keeleysam.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/apple-imac-1tb-seagate-drive-recall/
it should be this particular Seagate 1TB drive: ST31000528ASQ revision AP24. I just got off the phone with Apple Technical Support and the senior support advisor said it is not related to the model or revision, but rather just strictly based on the iMac serial number. Perhaps it is just a coincidence the folks who posted about hard drive replacement, their drives just happened to be the STxxx and AP24 or AP25.
I manage to use firewire target disk from another Mac to the iMac and use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable image of the drive. CCC did complained about a handful of files that could not be copied. iMac manage to boot up from the external drive and everthing looks to be in place.
Have an appt at the Genius Bar tomorrow to have them quote me on a replacement drive. Few questions:
1. Is it true it is strictly based on serial number and not the particular ST model and AP revision?
2. Anyone who has a drive replaced by Apple due to it failing that whose serial number wasn't part of the recall?
3. General ballpark on replacement drive including labor? Is it a $200, $300 or more?? Problem is no one wants to tell me how much it will cost until I actually lug the computer in
Thanks.
iMac 27" i5, Mac OS X (10.6.2)