OK, my hard drive is fried again!!

[erinlough]

On a 24in imac mid 2007. This is the second time in the first year. Am I out of line to want a new machine rather than another hard drive?
I have a time capsule so I won't lose data and I purchased the protection agreement. But the trip to the nearest Mac store is 88 miles away and it's in Chicago which means it costs me $80.00 by the time I go twice, once to take it and once to pick it up. Parking is very expensive and so is gas and tolls.
I am primarily an internet user on this machine and mostly news sites and shopping. I don't download games or movies or go to questionable sites, I use the machine about 5 hours a day and I turn it off when I'm not home. I just want a machine that works. And I want it to be an apple.
Any ideas on how to approach this with the Apple store would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[moggie]

1. Maybe it's overheating

Get them to check the cooling: drive failures might be a sign that the drive is running too hot, which is a good way to shorten drive life. If you do get the original iMac back, get hold of iStat pro or equivalent, so that you can keep an eye on the temperatures.

[struggle4progress]

2. How do you know your harddrive is fried?

[erinlough]

3. I worked with apple care

and tried all tests and restarts. As we worked on it startup began to produce a blinking folder with a question mark. Finally when we started up from the disk for the last time it did not list a hard drive at all. The machine began acting funny on Saturday but the hard drive did not disapear until Monday.

[struggle4progress]

4. Well, I was going to suggest you might replace the hard drive yourself but

after looking at this description of what's involved, I don't think I would do it myself while the machine was still under warranty: http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/imac/g417hd/

If I were in your position, I'd spend a day or two on the net, trying to determine (1) whether other people are having the same problem (2) whether the problem is likely to be the drive itself or something like a bad fan/fan-controller or whatever; that is, I'd try to get a feel for the range of possible explanations. Next I'd begin some conversation with somebody at apple, trying to get them to guess what the problem was and what they would do to fix it -- and I mean really fix it, because I don't want to drag the thing in every few months -- and I'd try to get a commitment from them about how they's make good if they "fixed" it and the problem recurred soon afterwards. I'd be pleasant, and I'd try to make my statements politely in question form, sounding like I really wanted to use their products but might be headed towards frustration soon. Then I'd make arrangements for them to repair it -- and I'd push hard to find out if there were anywhere more local that I could take the thing, to avoid two 185 mile round-trips.
I would also ask for guidance about how to monitor the health of the hard-drive (they may just tell you to use Disk Utility). And I would try to find out whether it is possible to attach through the USB ports (in addition to the Time Machine drive) a bootable external hard drive to help with my TM data recovery in case this happened again -- and if so, how to boot the machine into that drive

[moggie]

6. That's a different model of iMac

Your link is for an iMac G4. In fact, replacing the disk in those wasn't as hard as it sounds: I've done it (out of warranty), and it was pretty simple. If I'm right about the OP's iMac model (Intel, white plastic), it's the same as my current model, and they're an absolute bitch: I briefly considered upgrading the disk in mine, but gave up when I saw what was involved.

iMac G4: easy-ish, but Apple will know you've been in there
iMac G5, iMac Intel 2006-2007: hard
Mini: easy-ish, with a butter knife
Current iMac: dunno
Mac Pro: trivial

Booting from an external drive: possible, if you clone the internal drive using SuperDuper or equivalent.

[struggle4progress]

7. Thanks for the clarification. I assume that booting from an external

just involves holding down an appropriate key on restart and then choosing the drive. But I don't know how fast it would be: I put OSX on a 16GB stick and found I could boot from it, but it was painfully slow; I haven't tried to find out whether a large external drive would boot and run at reasonable speeds through a USB or whether firewire would be a much better choice

[moggie]

8. Yes, hold down the option key on boot

The 24" white iMac has Firewire 800, Firewire 400 and USB 2.0. The one time I booted from an external drive, I probably used FW800. It's not sparkling.

Booting OS-X from a USB stick sounds amusing; never done that, but I did once set up software RAID on two USB sticks on my MacBook, to persuade Apple tech support they were talking bullshit about a RAID problem (a long story). I still sometimes get amazed that my keyring has more storage capacity than the washing-machine-sized drives I used to work with.

[Adelante]

15. iMac G5 is easy to replace the HD, too

As you say, not the Intel model, but the PowerPC model was a snap once I had a set of tiny screwdrivers. I had never dared something like that before and was really surprised I could do it myself.

[erinlough]

9. Great ideas here and thanks

I Have the aluminum 24 iMac, it is not one year old. I do tactile monitoring of the case and fan and it is warm but never hot. I had in mind the same strategy you suggest and it is true that I want to stay with Apple. I have a ipod touch and syncing with the mac is so much better. I did run disk Utility before calling apple care and it said the disk was fine, it did that the first time also. While I was on the phone with apple care they had me try again and lo and behold the hard drive didn't even show up any more. For what it's worth the machine sat on a table with air all around it, not in a desk or with the back side close to the wall. I am so glad I got the time capsule with the imac, I will not lose data. I do see a problem with mid 2007 machines and I will mention it to them. Thanks for your advice it was just what I asked for.

[moggie]

11. Oh, it's the alu model

Sorry, when you said "mid 2007" I thought you meant that's when your machine was made, not when the model was introduced.

[struggle4progress]

5. When I suggest getting on the net to develop some questions to ask,

here's the kind of thing I have in mind

Take note of a bunch of stuff like this:

http://www.macsimumnews.com.nyud.net:8090/images/uploads/iMac-cooling-solution.jpg
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/imac_g5_overheating_heres_one_solution

Of course, I probably actually wouldn't do anything like that (for the reason stated at the link, namely, fear of voiding the warranty). But it would give me great satisfaction, if the folk started to give me a run-around, to be able to ask (in a slightly perplexed tone) a question like

OK, well, if you don't know what caused this, what should I do? Should I assume the thing is overheating and mount another fan externally to cool the machine?

Of course, they'll tell you no. But asked correctly, the question implies they haven't gotten something right and you'd like them to figure it out instead of leaving that job to you

[erinlough]

10. I will use this idea when I talk to them, but......

I know this is shallow but, how ugly is that!!!! I love the lines and look of this machine which is next to my chair in my living room, I sure would hate to have to resort to this!!! HAHA

[erinlough]

12. Update on service

I went to the store Friday, it was $50.00 to travel with tolls and parking and gas. The guy I worked with really was good, however he denied that two hard drive failures in one year would be consider "major" problems. I innocently asked if he knew what the Illinois Lemon Law, which covers cars and computers, had to say about two repairs like this in one year. At that point he said he wanted to talk to his supervisor, however the supervisor said Apple's policy is more stringent than the states. They did however, agree to send the repaired computer to me and send a technician to my house since it is over 55 miles away, if there was ever another problem. He detailed how they were going to fix and test it and believes there is a power problem in it as well since it turned off when he changed screen position, a problem I did not encounter. Because I have a three year protection plan I am not concerned, but if there is another problem in that time I will go further.

Thank you for the suggestions!

[erinlough]

13. Woo Hoo!! Apple just called

In doing the repairs they found problems in the fans and thee lcd screen, so they are giving me a new one! For some reason I have to wait two weeks, but I don't mind. I feel really relieved about this and I'm thankful for all of your suggestions, which I used. Thanks for the help.

[struggle4progress]

14. glad to hear it!

:)

[erinlough]

16. WOW they replaced it with a new model

2008 with the new ilife installed! I guess if it had to fail at some time it couldn't get better than this. The new machine does run much cooler, but when all I had ever experienced was my old one, I didn't know it was running hot. Love the new ilife, and the screen is noticably brighter. I can not say enough about APPLE protection plan. I will never get another computer without it. Again thanks for your suggestions and help!