iMac 1TB Disk Went Missing in Action
Monday, December 6, 2010 at 16:21 It's been three weeks exactly (well, almost), and my new iMac i7 27" went to the repair shop.. (*sniff*).
The iMac booted normally this morning, but after a couple of minutes, the fans started kicking in. A new sensation for me. I have never heard a fan in this, or my other (i)Macs. At first I thought that my external drive (Drobo) started making the noise, but the Drobo was silent.
Turned out the fans in my iMac started blowing (hard), and the airflow was relatively warm. Too warm for a Mac which has been switched on for about 10 minutes with no real CPU intensive tasks running.
First I checked the Activity Monitor and 'Top' in the Terminal app to see if there was some program that consumed too many CPU cycles. Nothing there. On average, the CPU was 3% busy.
Next thing to do was resetting the PRAM/NVRAM by holding the Option-Command-R-P combination during a power-on of the iMac. This also made no difference (booting went a bit faster though).
After the desktop appeared, I noticed that my secondary drive (the 1TB SATA) was missing from my Desktop...., and the Disk Utility, and every other tool I could find. The drive was nowhere to be found. Time to call Apple, and ask what they had done with my drive :-)
Apple recommened to boot from the original Application DVD (by pressing 'D' during power on), and run the diagnostics program. Note, checking 16GB of RAM takes a few minutes to pass.
Somewhere during the Logic Board testing the test stopped with a Hardware Failure (forgot to record the exact error id). This meant one thing; the iMac was in desperate need for a repair.
Getting a Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) on the phone on a Monday morning is not easy. Most of them start (picking up the phone) around lunch. After some phone calls I ended with the AASP Leliveld in Utrecht.
I dropped of my iMac and my waited while my iMac was cleared in with a nice cup of coffee. During the wait I got a chance to inspect their work area (they have a large glass wall, so you can see them work on everything Apple). There were several 27"iMacs in for repairs. Something that didn't make too happy. I just hope that my problem is something 27" iMac related, like the display problems on the first batches. Google-ing didn't reveal anything spectacular. Most of the hits are display related.
First impression of this AASP is above average. It must have been the combination of no waiting line, and the customer attention. Downside was that the time to repair was about 1 week, depending on the problem and availability of the parts. So all I can do is wait for the phone to ring, and connect my 24" Dell screen to my MacBook....
Will post a follow-up when the iMac is back from repairs.
Willem
We're over a week into the repair. Result so far; nothing, nada, zip. No mail, no phonecall with the diagnose and/or the estimate time to repair the issue. So I called them myself. All I heard was the diagnose I wrote down myself when I brought the iMac in for repairs (over a week ago), and that they're working on it (they say).
Don't have a good feeling about this AACP department.
Willem
Entering week 3 for what looks like JUST a broken hard disk (or so I'm told). Every computer store in the area has a gazillion 1TB SATA drives on the shelf, but it looks like Apple (or the AASP) needs to import them from Timbuktu....
Still not very amused with the ongoing 'repair'.
Willem
Just called the Apple Authorized Service Provider (AGAIN). Still no hard disk, so I still have to wait. After mentioning that this is week 3 that I'm waiting for a frickin' hard disk replacement they 'moved' me to the priority queue (??). I thought that repairs under warrenty ALWAYS went into the priority queue.
I bet you 50 to 1 that I enter the new year WITHOUT my iMac.
Willem
Oké, the iMac is back. They called yesterday afternoon that the repairs had been completed. Within 20 minuted of their call, I picked it up. I have, for some reason, the feeling that not everything went as planned during the repair. When they called, they offered to bring the iMac to my home. Something I've never experienced before with repairs. Probably to try to fix things. Or maybe it's just their actual service.....
Anyway, the iMac seems to function as it did before.
Reader Comments (1)
You should not use PRAM-reset procedure for intel Macs. Instead of this, please use this reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964