Night before last, I found bad blocks on my MacBook Pro. I dropped off the laptop at the Burlingame Apple Store (after making an “Apple Concierge” appointment, so no lines), and the Apple employee that took my laptop said that it would be ready in “3 to 5 days, but we’ll try our best”. That afternoon the laptop hard drive had been replaced and was ready for pickup.

When I turned on the mac, the clean install of Leopard asked me if I had a Time Machine backup to restore from, I plugged in the external drive, and 4 hours later (!!) the computer was back.