PB HDD died - Will Applecare recover data?

marz

marz

Master of my Universe
I have a TiBook G4 that's still under it's original 1-year warranty, but also has Applecare, the thing won't boot, the drive just makes a clicking noise. I've talked to Apple support, and they said I need to take it in to my Apple Store and they'll ship it out for repair.

Does anyone have any experiences with this type of problem they could share? Specifically, will Apple do anything to recover the data on the drive?
 
Check your Apple Care guide. When you take it in ask if they will recover data. Actually - you should request it under the warranty.
 
Nope, they won't recover data. They'll stick a new hard drive in it with a default image as if you had just purchased it. They specifically state that they are no responsible for any data. You do have backups of your data don't you? :)

Brian
 
Nope. I heard from a friend that when she sent her computer to AppleCare, if they were going to recover her data, they would sent it to these people FOR her... so you better talk to these people....

http://www.drivesaver.com
 
Yeah, DriveSavers is one of many places that do data recovery, but it's expensive. They charge around $200 just to attempt to restore your data. The average recovery that they do is around $1000, but can be up to $2-3k. They send you your data on a CD/DVD/Tape/etc, what ever media you'd like.

Oh, and DriveSavers is one of the cheaper options available :)

Brian
 
You can also connect your machine to another one via a firewire cable and boot in target disk mode to mount it remotely.... Then you can run things like Disk Warrior on it...

Definately try repairing it yourself first...
 
Thanks everyone for your input, we tried everything, even took the drive out and put it in an external firewire enclosure, but no go, just clicks ... it's on it's way to Apple now for repair (likely only hdd replacement) and they're going to send the dead drive back for us to send for data recovery with a 30 day grace period to return it to Apple or get charged for the part. The Apple Genius bar guy said prices start around $500.00 ... it's a 40GB drive, and probably only need less than 1GB of the actual data, but that's probably not how they work ... anyone have any real live experience with any data recovery places?
 
I have use OnTrack Data Recovery (http://www.ontrack.com) numerous times over the years, and have had excellent service and results from them, but they are expensive. They sent us the data on multiple CDROMs. We also used the 2 day service as we needed the data ASAP. The companies will only due a total recovery, not just the files you care about, which may or may not be part of a total recovery. Ontrack does have an online form to get a quote. I've always been partial to OnTrack because they are a local company for me, their headquarters are about 10 minutes away from my office.

Brian
 
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