Pleased with Apple's Applecare service

I've got a original 17" Core Duo MacBook pro, which I purchased when they were first announced, and I purchased AppleCare with it when I got it. I wasn't sure if the applecare would be worth the money at the time, but this week it's proven to be worth the expense.

First, the hard drive failed. The hard drive was a 7200RPM Seagate - I don't have the exact model number, but I think it was a ST910021AS - a Seagate Momentus 7200.1. It started spitting out messages like this:
disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED) to the system.log. However, Disk Utility reported that the S.M.A.R.T. status was Verified. I thought "this can't be good", and backed up all my stuff. I then nuked the machine and reinstalled tiger. (as an aside, I backup at least nightly using rsync to a file server at work. If I do this before I leave for the day, it generally takes less than 5 minutes.)

Much to my surprise, things got worse. The install went fine, as did installing all my stuff. However, when I put the machine to sleep, it got really hot, there was a clicking noise from the lower left-hand side of the case (where the hard drive lives), and the little LED in the latch never started throbbing, it just stayed lit. It also refused to wake when I opened the lid - I had to hold down the power button to get it to reboot. Interestingly enough, when I changed the sleep mode from "safe sleep" to just sleep (see discussion at macworld and the manpage for pmset(1)), then the machine slept fine. So, I started to suspect that there was a bad sector allocated in the /private/var/vm/sleepimage file, that S.M.A.R.T. wasn't picking up as a problem.

I was able to verify this by running sudo cksum /private/var/vm/sleepimage. This command reads in that whole file and computes a checksum for it. I don't care about the checksum, I just wanted to read it. Bingo! The hard drive started clicking, and after a minute or so I started getting the same disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED) messages to the system log.

Time to call applecare. They asked me to reinstall tiger again to verify that the problem wasn't from a third-party app. I did this, and had the same effect. It's interesting that the bad sector got allocated in the same sleepimage file. I was all prepared to write a script using mkfile(8) and cksum(1) to make a bunch of files to fill up the drive and then get one of them to fail again, but that turned out to not be necessary.

Wanting to have a bit more understanding of what was going on, I found a program called Mac Helpmate, which, buried inside it, contains universal binaries of the smartmontools suite for digging into the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive, and having the drive run self-tests. I had the drive run an "extended offline" self-test, which took two hours. At the end, it indicated a bunch of uncorrectable read errors, but reported that the drive was healthy. Seems wrong to me...

So, a Genius Bar reservation was made at the Apple store at Rosedale, walked the tech support guy through what was happening (including the nice little cksum experiment to get the drive to click), and he said "yep - sounds like a bad drive. I don't know if we've got that in stock, but we can get one. Should have the machine ready for you in 2 to 4 days. Do you have a backup of the data on the machine, or do you need us to try to save it?" Thankfully, everything is backed up and I don't need them to worry about trying to preserve anything.

The next evening, I get a call around 8:30 PM, saying "Mr Clark, your repair is complete". I ask how late they're open, and they say "10:00 PM, but the leopard launch is going on now - it's a little crazy". Nevertheless, after the girls are in bed, I head up to fetch the machine. I've now got a happy new Hitachi HTS721010G9SA00 hard drive in my macbook pro, which may actually be somewhat faster than the seagate it replaced.

Then, on saturday, I noticed that my spare laptop battery was bulging. Evidently, bulging is what they do before they combust. There's some discussion at the Apple message forums about swollen batteries too.

I really didn't want to think about having the mac be on fire, and there was some history here; Apple did a recall of batteries from the 15" macbook pro.

Same deal - went to the apple store with the battery, went to the genius bar, did some paperwork and walked out with a new battey. No hassles at all. Evidently, others have had the same problem and the same level of pleasant service.

I'm not thrilled that the machine had these problems in the first place, but I'm happy that Apple took care of them without complaint. The applecare warranty has more than paid for itself.

Monster Dashing

Len and I did the Monster Dash 1/2 marathon on saturday, Oct 27th. The course started at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, went down the Minnehaha Parkway nearly to Cedar, then turned around and looped Lake Calhoun and then back down to Lake Harriet.

It was a beautiful day for a run - the temp was a little cold at the start, but we warmed up nicely. Len said he wanted to take it slow, but slow for him was a bit fast for me - I was out of gas near Mile 11. But, it's not a high-intensity course, and a little walking was OK. At the end, Len said "Hit it!", and I did - took off sprinting - and beat him by 5 seconds! ;-) Still, my time was 2:25:25, which is hardly anything to brag about.

2007 TC 10-miler results

Well, I was right about where I expected to be - 1:44:48, for a 10:29/mile pace. This is a little slower than my first time doing the TC 10-miler, but again, I'm happy with the time, particularly given the weather. The weather was hot and sticky - as I write this, it's 82 degrees and 67% humidity. Rain had been in the forecast but didn't make an appearance. Even so, I was soaked just from my own sweat by the time I got to the finish. I feel a little concerned for the slower folks doing the full marathon; they got baked today.

I ran into Sarah Harwood at the start; we've done several of the same races over the past few years. It was nice to have someone to chat with for the first few miles.

At the finish, I managed to put on a little extra gas after the hill, passed several people heading into the chute (always a nice feeling), and got my banana, t-shirt, and massage.

The next race is in two weeks - another half-marathon, the Monster Dash!

Hey! Abby! Hope to see you tomorrow

I'm running in the Twin Cities 10-miler tomorrow (Oct 7th, 2007). It's supposed to be stinky hot for October in Minnesota; the high today (the day before the race) was a record-setting 87 - the normal high for early october is in the mid 60s.

I expect to be slow. Nevertheless, it should be a good run. The re-route around the collapsed I-35W bridge makes the middle part of the course even more in synch with my usual route for running home.

Abby Hegland - hope you got in, hope to see you tomorrow!