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I have a 3 year old macbook pro. Unfortunately, I can't back it up using time machine. I have an external hard drive, I get the process started, but it never goes anywhere. I'd like to bring it down to have someone at the genius bar help me out with it, but I'm not sure whether I'd have to pay for that help. Is there a cost?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
Welcome to Apple Support Communities
It is free to take your Mac to the Genius Bar and get it diagnosed. However, you will have to pay if your Mac needs to be repaired
Welcome to Apple Support Communities
It is free to take your Mac to the Genius Bar and get it diagnosed. However, you will have to pay if your Mac needs to be repaired
that's correct. in fact you may get lucky. my friend had a 3 year old macbook and had the same problem, she couldn't back it up to a time machine and the cd drive already failed. when she brought it in, they replaced the hard drive and cd drive - no charge!
If you are not having any other problems other than not being able to do a Time Machine backup to the extrnal drive you have I suspect it is the external drive that is either formatted incorrectly for a Mac computer and for Time Machine to work properly or it is the drive itself is faulty.
With the drive connected to your mac Open Disk Utility. You'll find it in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Highlught that drive name and look at the botton righ of the Disk Utility window. It must say GUID Partition Table next he Partition Map Scheme and be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If it says MBR and is formatted NTFS that drive is formatted for Window. You can reformat it to the Mac format in Disk Utility.
how much does it cost to get genius bar help?
