A grey screen that never moves on, a folder icon flashing its question mark, a chime followed by nothing: a struggling iMac nearly always still holds its photo library and paperwork. We recover the removable storage inside these machines, from plain SATA disks to the two halves of a Fusion Drive, for Apple owners across Swindon, Marlborough and Malmesbury.
Free diagnostic on every Apple iMac job. You get one fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Electronic and mechanical failures and chip-level work are 50% upfront, with the balance only if we recover your data, while BitLocker, ransomware, DVR and forensic jobs are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote. You'll find full pricing on the data recovery cost page.
Every Apple iMac job begins by matching the symptoms to the fault, and these twenty cover almost everything that reaches our bench.
The Mac found nothing it could boot from, because its internal drive has failed or the file system on it has fallen apart.
macOS starts loading but never finishes, which usually means the drive underneath it is reading at walking pace.
The SSD and HDD halves drift apart and the joint volume dissolves; each one is imaged, then the pair is rebuilt in software.
Older iMacs carry a 3.5-inch drive that fails in the ordinary way, only it sits behind a glued display.
Storage or firmware trouble at start-up: the data is secured first, and the diagnosis is argued about afterwards.
A macOS update that died part-way through leaves the machine looping, while the user folders sit unharmed the whole time.
Apple's file systems break in Apple-shaped ways, and the bench rebuilds them with native parsers.
One wrong Erase in Recovery Mode is still retrievable, provided nothing writes to the volume afterwards.
Apple's 2009 to 2011 machines shipped with 1TB Seagates that die young and often, and permanent donor stock covers them.
One spike finishes off the PSU and logic board together, but the removable drive rides it out unharmed.
The blade side of a Fusion pair usually quits first and strands the volume; it is imaged and logically re-joined here.
Given the password, encrypted APFS opens and rebuilds as normal, so send the credentials in with the drive.
A crawling iMac generally means a disk dying bit by bit, so capture it now, while it still answers.
Removing the screen at the kitchen table can nick the SATA and power leads, but the drive itself usually survives the surgery.
If Target Disk Mode won't mount a sick volume, there is one safe way forward: the drive comes out and gets imaged.
Thin iMacs made after 2012 run laptop-class drives warm for years, and they age into bad sectors that need hardware imaging.
An iMac boxed up for a house move can arrive at its new home ticking, because platters and heads dislike travel; donor parts put it right.
A power cut mid-write corrupts the APFS journal and the volume refuses to mount, so it is rebuilt from a full image.
The 3TB Seagates in 2012 to 2013 machines carried a known fault and many were never swapped, so theirs is a familiar rescue.
Damp rooms oxidise the SSD blade's edge connector until it drops offline; it is cleaned, re-seated on an adapter and imaged.
The drive in an iMac lives behind a display held on with adhesive, so extraction is delicate, and it happens at your end, because removing drives from machines isn't a service we offer. Ring us for a walkthrough, or a Swindon repair shop will manage it inexpensively. Once the drive is here, HFS+ and APFS are parsed natively, mechanical Apple disks get the head-swap bench routine, and Fusion Drives are handled as what they are: an SSD and an HDD acting as one volume, with each half captured on its own before the pair is re-joined in software.
Everything hinges on whether the storage unplugs. 2009 to 2011 machines with 3.5-inch SATA disks: yes. The Fusion generations that pair a blade with a hard drive: yes. T2-protected Intel iMacs and every Apple Silicon model: no. Their SSDs are soldered down and encrypted in hardware, tying the data to one specific logic board, and we withdrew from soldered-Apple work two years ago because the results couldn't honestly be sold. One phone call identifies your model year before anything gets posted.
From the first adapter to the final file copy, iMac recovery stays Apple-specific:
Both posted halves of a Fusion pair are imaged separately, logically re-joined, and their APFS or HFS+ volume is rebuilt into files.
Proprietary blades, Fusion pairs and SATA drives each plug directly into the imaging hardware.
As far as head swaps and firmware go, an iMac hard drive with a mechanical fault goes through the exact same process as all the other disks here.
Native parsing is available for Apple file system formats, and Fusion logical volumes are rebuilt as part of it.
FileVault volumes on removable drives open with the password you supply and are then converted into plain files.
If you have a volume that was lost through a Disk Utility error or a failed update, it can be restored by carving, provided the freed space on the original device has not been used.
It all comes down to one question: can the storage be unplugged? With SATA drives and Fusion pairs, yes. The 1TB Seagate drives fitted from 2009 to 2011 are notorious and are still that era's most dependable failure, so we hold donors for them. With T2 and Apple Silicon iMacs, no. Their SSDs are encrypted and soldered onto the motherboard, and we stopped doing that work two years ago instead of selling it on false hope.
Most customers get a quote first, by phone or with the free online diagnostic, and then post or courier their media to us.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive (from a server, every disk, each labelled with its bay), as we don't offer a drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (for example T2 and Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops), only drives that can be removed and sent to us. If you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Oxford Data Recovery and we'll ring you as soon as we've diagnosed your media.
Not sure what to send? Ring 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.