Will Apple Genius Bar be able to repair my Late 2011 Macbook Pro

Mumith wrote:

The fix is to install a new hard drive, which can be bought online and a relatively simple installation I’m told so I will look at one of those. I was shown one on amazon instore:

1 TB 2.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive (7 mm Form Factor, 128 MB Cache SATA 6 GB/s Up to 140 MB/s)

and I think I’ll go ahead with that one unless any recommendations on a better one? SSD is better I’m told but is a fair bit more expensive.

I can retrieve the data on my existing hard drive by bringing it in store and sitting there for 2-3 hours, or buying a hard drive adapter which will allow me to see the contents of my old hard drive, after installing the new one in, and dragging and dropping as need be.

The thing about your machine is that Apple considers it "vintage" and thus not subject to providing repair parts (outside of being in California or Turkey). But of course a SATA hard drive is a universally compatible commodity part that you should have no issue finding. Apple will likely look at it as they still have the diagnostic tools. They may have some of the repair parts that are in common with the oldest machines still supported with repair parts, but it's hard to get an answer whether or not they'll order them for a service.

Vintage and obsolete products - Apple Support

Vintage products are those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago. Apple has discontinued hardware service for vintage products with the following exceptions:

• Mac products purchased in the country of Turkey. Owners of vintage Mac products may obtain service and parts from Apple service providers within the country of Turkey.
• Products purchased in the state of California, United States, as required by statute.

Owners of vintage Mac products may obtain service and parts from Apple service providers within the state of California, United States.

The other thing is that you should think about perhaps getting a solid-state drive. These come in the same "form factor" as hard drives but are considerably faster. Just the raw data speed is considerably higher, but they also don't have issues with "seek time" required with hard drives when they need to access data on different parts of a platter. A lot of users who have upgraded to an SSD will say that it's breathed new life into an old machine that seemed to be struggling with performance. I was about to give up on my mid-2012 MBP until I got an SSD.

The big caveat about an SSD is that the price is higher for a given capacity. However, the performance gains are about the same regardless of the capacity, as long as the operating system and applications are located on the SSD. Bulk storage could be on an external drive where it's not as timing critical. A 240-256 GB SSD might cost around $70. There are dozens of companies selling SSDs. I have a 512 GB SSD myself. It seemed like a good price point. This is the one I have (the 512 GB version is exclusive to Best Buy):

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-ultra-512gb-internal-sata-solid-state-drive -for-laptops/5969506.p?skuId=5969506

"1 TB 2.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive (7 mm Form Factor, 128 MB Cache SATA 6 GB/s Up to 140 MB/s)"

This is a naked disk, I would not buy that one: buy one in a housing.

I also recommend an SSD: you will never be satisfied with the speed otherwise.

Before you do that, download and apply this program. Publish the results here as a reply; it is safe to do so, I assure you.

https://etrecheck.com/

We can then possibly work out what is wrong without you going to Apple.

I agree with Seventy One.

Do this first: restart your mac while holding the Shift key: it will start in the "SafeMode": it starts very slow using only the minumum of software to run, after logging in: does it behave much better?

If yes it is a software issue we may find with the output of the Etrecheck diagnosis.

If no, go to Apple and have them diagnose it, that is free (the repair not).

My colleague Lexipex and me were looking at alternate possibilities and from what you say I am inclined to edge to his side. In any event, it appears you cannot do the Etrecheck program anyway.

As far as costs are concerned An Apple store (as opposed to an Authorised store) will give you a free diagnosis. But whether parts would be available, I can't say. As you will appreciate, computers have moved dramatically in the past 7 years (though I'm still using my 2007 iMac daily). Let's see what Lexipex has to say tomorrow.

The first part of the startup progress bar is the loading of the firmware, the second part is loading the operating system and such from the startup disk.

I am not sure but, it looks like the disk may be damaged: if that is true, it is an easy repair with your mac model, but after that the mac will have no user data, and you need to have a backup of your data to put those data back.

In your mac the disk is separate from the main board and connected via a cable. it must be formatted correctly before you put the new disk in (on another mac for example).

But of course my diagnosis might be wrong, it can also be a defective cable or something else totally.

Let us know the result. We always like to see the threads nicely rounded off.