A Sea Of Red

Today I experienced a first for me... I think a power outage blew up my 4 year old MacBook Pro. After the power outage, the cursor moved very slowly, some restarts were aborted (it died while booting). I got it up and running for a few minutes with slow cursor, but now it won't even boot.

I sent an email to my insurance agent, but my guess is that the deductible + depreciation = little to nothing. I will likely be without a laptop for a couple of months at best... We are in the middle of (hopefully) buying a home.

My question to y'all.... any suggestions for what I should do with it? Any place you've had experience with which buys junk? Any great repair options? An acquaintance once mentioned a place which would, for a small fee, take a look at these. The fee would roll over to repair costs if you chose to do so.

Any other ideas? (Be nice sly, I'm in mourning) lol

There is actually a regular poster on here who may be able to give you legitimate help. Sadly I am not that poster. But I feel for you, brother.

alabama24 wrote:Today I experienced a first for me... I think a power outage blew up my 4 year old MacBook Pro. After the power outage, the cursor moved very slowly, some restarts were aborted (it died while booting). I got it up and running for a few minutes with slow cursor, but now it won't even boot.

I sent an email to my insurance agent, but my guess is that the deductible + depreciation = little to nothing. I will likely be without a laptop for a couple of months at best... We are in the middle of (hopefully) buying a home.

My question to y'all.... any suggestions for what I should do with it? Any place you've had experience with which buys junk? Any great repair options? An acquaintance once mentioned a place which would, for a small fee, take a look at these. The fee would roll over to repair costs if you chose to do so.

Any other ideas? (Be nice sly, I'm in mourning) I chortle audibly.

Lynchburg Computer Systems did some work on my wife's Macbook Pro that wouldn't boot. In her case, a cup of coffee was spilled on it Christmas morning. At the time it was 3 years old. We took it to LCS and paid a small amount of money for them to run some diagnostic testing and determine that the issue was that the HD had shorted out. We bought the new HD, paid for the reinstall and they even tried to recover data for her... overall it was a good experience.

http://lynchburgcomputers.com/

Humble_Opinion wrote:Lynchburg Computer Systems did some work on my wife's Macbook Pro that wouldn't boot.

Thanks. I may end up doing that. A friend recommended taking it to an Apple Store, despite not being under warranty... I may try that first. I will be "fasting" from my daily laptop usage until then.

alabama24 wrote:

Humble_Opinion wrote:Lynchburg Computer Systems did some work on my wife's Macbook Pro that wouldn't boot.

Thanks. I may end up doing that. A friend recommended taking it to an Apple Store, despite not being under warranty... I may try that first. I will be "fasting" from my daily laptop usage until then.

If your location in your profile is right you'll be driving a long way for nothing to be honest. Apple will mail your computer off somewhere else and you'll have to pay for shipping, plus the cost of the diagnostic, which will be at least double what you'll pay at LCS, or any other local shop. At least that's what they told my wife when she called the support line.

LCS was recommended to me from several LU helpdesk agents. Dealing with an Apple product, you only need to make sure that the place you take it is Apple/Mac certified.

I ended up taking it to an acquaintances shop in the burg. It turned out that the cable from the hard drive to the motherboard shorted out. Total cost to fix: $200 ($100 for "Data Rescue" software; $100 for diagnostic, part, service). I think taking it to an Apple Store would have been a good idea, but I have no plans to travel near one for more than a month. I hope I get a couple more years out of this one. I REALLY want a new one, but hopefully we are closing on a house in a month or so.

Thanks to everyone... and thanks to someone who helped me a great deal offline. You know who you are.

alabama24 wrote:I ended up taking it to an acquaintances shop in the burg. It turned out that the cable from the hard drive to the motherboard shorted out. Total cost to fix: $200 ($100 for "Data Rescue" software; $100 for diagnostic, part, service). I think taking it to an Apple Store would have been a good idea, but I have no plans to travel near one for more than a month. I hope I get a couple more years out of this one. I REALLY want a new one, but hopefully we are closing on a house in a month or so.

Thanks to everyone... and thanks to someone who helped me a great deal offline. You know who you are.

Pretty sure they scammed you on that Data Rescue software, but taking it to an Apple Store likely would have cost more than $200 and have taken longer since I doubt that's something they can fix in store.

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Pretty sure they scammed you on that Data Rescue software

They didn't charge me for Data Rescue... that was all me. The hard drive would not mount. Data Rescue restores files in two categories: If it can find files and knows the correct path, it puts those files into that folder structure. If it can reconstruct files, but doesn't know the file structure, it puts them into folders based on file type. I found files I needed in both categories. I don't <think> I got cheated, but I am not sure. If there was a cheaper option, I am unaware of it. Since the drive wouldn't mount, I have no idea what else I could have done. Do you have suggestions?

lynchburgwildcats wrote:taking it to an Apple Store likely would have cost more than $200 and have taken longer since I doubt that's something they can fix in store.

My experience with Apple Stores has been very different. They have always exceeded my expectations, and I am fairly certain this would have been able to be handled "in house" on the spot. Once I got home, I put my SSD back in the computer (I had put the original drive back in when I sent it out) and took a look at the SATA cable. I would feel comfortable doing that work... but I had no idea the fix was that simple.

Sounds like to me it was more than just a shorted out cable then from past experience with hardware. Although I must admit it was never with Macs, but it's not like Apple uses completely different hard drives as far as I'm aware.

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Sounds like to me it was more than just a shorted out cable then from past experience with hardware. Although I must admit it was never with Macs, but it's not like Apple uses completely different hard drives as far as I'm aware.

I am back up and running with only the following:

1. A local shop replacing the hard drive SATA cable.
2. Reformatting the non-factory installed SSD drive which was scrambled after the power outage.

What more do you think it was?

alabama24 wrote:

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Sounds like to me it was more than just a shorted out cable then from past experience with hardware. Although I must admit it was never with Macs, but it's not like Apple uses completely different hard drives as far as I'm aware.

I am back up and running with only the following:

1. A local shop replacing the hard drive SATA cable.
2. Reformatting the non-factory installed SSD drive which was scrambled after the power outage.

What more do you think it was?

Faulty SATA cables don't necessitate "data rescue" software unless when the cable shorted out it messed up the hard drive. So either you let them talk you into wasting $100 that was never needed, or whatever happened when the cable shorted messed up your hard drive and they didn't bother to tell you that. It's like when you take your car in for the annual inspection and they tell you that you need to get your headlights cleaned. Sure, it would look nicer, but it's completely unnecessary for the car to pass inspection,

Headlamps cannot be discolored. It is in the code. Look it up. Find a different example.

flamehunter wrote:Headlamps cannot be discolored. It is in the code. Look it up. Find a different example.

Tell that to the last five places I've taken to get my car inspected then, obviously they didn't get that memo then.

lynchburgwildcats wrote: Faulty SATA cables don't necessitate "data rescue" software unless when the cable shorted out it messed up the hard drive. So either you let them talk you into wasting $100 that was never needed, or whatever happened when the cable shorted messed up your hard drive and they didn't bother to tell you that.

I thought I made it clear that the local repair shop had nothing to do with the hard drive. They never even saw it. I took the SSD out of the computer, tried to mount it to another computer, but it wouldn't mount. A hard drive that won't mount = messed up hard drive. As I said before, the drive was scrambled. Using the data rescue software recovered most, but not all of my files.

I popped in the original, perfectly good hard drive and ran disc utility, but the drive wasn't recognizable. I double checked with my mac mini, and the drive was perfectly fine. Since I didn't know what the problem was, I took it to the local shop. I <should> have gone to an Apple store, but as I said before I have no plans to be anywhere near for a while. Since I use my Laptop everyday for small group, toastmasters, cub scouts, etc. I felt it was worth the premium of going local. FWIW - the $100 included the $50 diagnostic fee. I paid $50 for the part and installation.

alabama24 wrote:

lynchburgwildcats wrote: Faulty SATA cables don't necessitate "data rescue" software unless when the cable shorted out it messed up the hard drive. So either you let them talk you into wasting $100 that was never needed, or whatever happened when the cable shorted messed up your hard drive and they didn't bother to tell you that.

I thought I made it clear that the local repair shop had nothing to do with the hard drive. They never even saw it. I took the SSD out of the computer, tried to mount it to another computer, but it wouldn't mount. A hard drive that won't mount = messed up hard drive. As I said before, the drive was scrambled. Using the data rescue software recovered most, but not all of my files.

I popped in the original, perfectly good hard drive and ran disc utility, but the drive wasn't recognizable. I double checked with my mac mini, and the drive was perfectly fine. Since I didn't know what the problem was, I took it to the local shop. I <should> have gone to an Apple store, but as I said before I have no plans to be anywhere near for a while. Since I use my Laptop everyday for small group, toastmasters, cub scouts, etc. I felt it was worth the premium of going local. FWIW - the $100 included the $50 diagnostic fee. I paid $50 for the part and installation.

This is why you shouldn't feed the troll.

Not once did you ever mention on this board that you attempted to mount any hard drive or SSD in another computer. If you had mentioned that to begin with, that would have fundamentally changed the entire story. The devil is in the details.

That would be like saying you have a faulty light bulb because it doesn't work in a lamp with a faulty electrical cord. You wouldn't know with 100% certainty that the light bulb is faulty unless you tried it in a properly functioning lamp.

alabama24 wrote:

I thought I made it clear that the local repair shop had nothing to do with the hard drive. They never even saw it. I took the SSD out of the computer, tried to mount it to another computer, but it wouldn't mount. A hard drive that won't mount = messed up hard drive. As I said before, the drive was scrambled. Using the data rescue software recovered most, but not all of my files.

I popped in the original, perfectly good hard drive and ran disc utility, but the drive wasn't recognizable. I double checked with my mac mini, and the drive was perfectly fine. Since I didn't know what the problem was, I took it to the local shop. I <should> have gone to an Apple store, but as I said before I have no plans to be anywhere near for a while. Since I use my Laptop everyday for small group, toastmasters, cub scouts, etc. I felt it was worth the premium of going local. FWIW - the $100 included the $50 diagnostic fee. I paid $50 for the part and installation.

And what wouldn't mount, a hard drive or a solid state drive? A hard drive ≠ a solid state drive. They are two different types of storage technology.

alabama24 wrote:Once I got home, I put my SSD back in the computer (I had put the original drive back in when I sent it out)

Here you say the repair shop had nothing to do with the hard drive, then in another post you say you swapped out the SSD with the HDD when you took it to the shop. Either they did or didn't see the HDD or the SSD. Which drive did they see? Which drive didn't they see? Which drive was even faulty to begin with? I have no clue since you are using the term hard drive incorrectly.

Keep the details of your story straight.

Why the hostility?

adam42381 wrote:Why the hostility?

Why are you feeding the troll?

ATrain wrote:

adam42381 wrote:Why the hostility?

Why are you feeding the troll?

They. Never. Learn.

Sheesh.