Purchased an iMac from Best Buy in 2011. A few months later it wouldn’t boot up due to a problem with the hard drive. Took it to the Mac store, and their solution was to reformat the drive. After the format, their diagnostic tests said that the drive was “A OK”.

Rewind 15 years. In another lifetime I was a computer tech support agent for a major computer company. We would regularly receive calls from people whose hard drives had crashed. Our standard procedure was to first try and reformat their drive and let them go. This might buy them a day, a week, or even a few years. But inevitably they would be calling tech support again with a dead drive. It was predictable.

So now that I was faced with this situation on my own computer, my instincts jumped to the forefront and screamed at me that “this is a bad drive… they need to replace it”. I urged them to replace it, but they refused, saying that there was nothing wrong with the drive. If I wanted a different drive, I would have to buy it. Warranty wouldn’t cover it.

I pushed just shy of making a scene.

I should have made a scene.

I have now suffered through 5 years of a computer that has always seemed to be a little slower than it should be. And the drive has died. Of course, outside the warranty.

Now, I’m purchasing a new drive and going through a few days of lowered productivity because I didn’t make enough of a scene in the Apple store that day.

If the drive dies in the first year for any reason, it’s a dud. Don’t fall for the “reformat and it’s fine trick”. It’s not fine.