Dan Moren of Macworld, faced with a failing SSD in his MacBook Air, took up his screwdriver and fixed his own laptop without need of the Genius Bar. Better yet, he saved some cash and got comfortable doing repairs in the process. The article has lots of good links to tools and guides you’ll need to get the job done. Really, working on the innards of your Mac or PC isn’t all that scary, and while Apple’s guts are largely proprietary, removing the rear case is to get to components is a lot simpler than it used to be.

I’ve had my fair share of drives die, and I can vouch for SuperDuper being one of the most invaluable pieces of software on my Mac. While you’re waiting for your new SSD for your MacBook Air to come in, you can just boot up off an external drive and keep working like nothing happened — provided your SuperDuper backup is up-to-date of course.