Macbook Pro died – 1 month out of warranty

[Deacon]

I’ve had my 15” Unibody MBP 2.4ghz since last Christmas, its a month out of warranty and has just packed up. I just get the white screen when turning it on. I have tried booting from disc and reinstalling the osx but this doesn’t work either. I have been into my local Apple store and they said the hard drive has failed and it will cost £300 for for a new HD installing and data recovery. This is disgusting. I have always looked after it, keep it clean and make sure it never gets so much as a knock. I’d just bought an external drive to back up all my work and files which have apparently now been lost.

Anyone with any tips on anything else I can do that might work?

Cheers.

 

[bobtomay]

Unfortunately hard drives fail.

Buy your own hard drive and put it in yourself. Don't really know UK prices, but pretty sure this can be done for 1/3 of what they quoted you and then restore from your backup. You did have a backup, right?

 

[chas_m]

Welcome!

I'm not sure why you call it "disgusting."

Hard drives are mechanical devices that spin at high speed. They can fail AT ANY TIME. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apple -- they don't even make the drive. You had the option of buying AppleCare to protect against this problem and chose not to get it. Not looking so expensive now, is it?

Luckily, replacing the drive is trivially cheap and if you're at all handy with a screwdriver you can probably do it yourself.

The big problem here is your data. Why didn't you make backups? Why didn't you use Time Machine (included with the software you got with the machine)?

I'm surprised they only want £300 to do data recovery for you, I'd jump all over that deal if I could get it. In the states data recovery usually runs around $1200-2500, here in Canada it's a bit cheaper but nothing like ~$500 for a large laptop drive. And they're including the cost of the drive and installing it?? Amazing.

Sorry I don't have any tips, but really the people at the Apple Store (who have actually examined your machine) would know more about it than any of us.