MacBook Air and MacBook Pro computers tend to fail quietly; sometimes they will just not take a charge, go to sleep and never come back, or show the question mark folder when powered on. Whether it's an early MacBook Air hard drive, a pre-Retina MacBook Pro hard drive or a later blade SSD, the recovery process is the same. If the storage in yours unplugs (older machines have a SATA drive, and 2013 to 2017 ones an Apple blade SSD), your files are very likely still alive and well, even after a spill, for owners anywhere from Cirencester to Devizes.
All Apple MacBook jobs get free diagnostic testing. A single fixed price quote will be given in writing before any work starts.
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 MacBook job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault causing the problem, and the twenty below should cover almost everything that comes onto the bench.
Liquid gets into the logic board fast, but the board sits lower down than the removable storage, which usually stays high and dry.
The board dies but the data survives. It sits safely on the removable drive or blade, so the drive can be taken out and the data extracted without trying to fix the board.
When the internal storage fails or loses its system, it needs to be imaged first. Working out why it happened can wait until afterwards.
When an update fails half way through, the Mac gets stuck in a loop trying to finish the install, but the documents and other files are left completely unaffected.
Older units from before 2012 use spinning hard drives, so the usual head failures happen with them, and we see many classic head-swap bench cases.
The gumstick modules (2013 to 2017) fail in the same way all SSDs do. Native adapters image them without the need for a donor Mac.
A single wrong click will erase the volume, but as long as the freed blocks are not used again, carving can bring it back.
Encrypted volumes recover normally when the password or recovery key is provided, so have one ready.
Trashed files and APFS snapshots remain until their blocks are reused, so stop using the Mac straight away.
If the backlight dies, there is good data stuck on a good drive, and the job is getting it out.
At times an SSUBX or SSPOLARIS blade loses its mapping and disappears from the bus, and then it's time for service mode.
On 2009 to 2012 models, the drive ribbon wears through and mimics a dead drive, while the disk inside images perfectly.
When a swelling battery pack bows the chassis and puts load on the board, the storage still unplugs and recovers without harm.
A spill through the trackpad shorts the lower board, but the storage higher up escapes again.
Modules declared dead elsewhere get an honest second run on different adapters, and occasionally that alone solves the problem.
Heat soaking through a windscreen ages the blade and the battery at the same time, and the read errors only show up weeks after the hot day.
Random restarts and grey screens usually mean a blade that is failing bit by bit, and we image it before it gives up completely.
The Mac was erased for sale before anyone checked the backup; carving the old volume recovers whatever the wipe skipped.
Pre-2012 units still have spinning disks even when they're asleep, and sensitive heads too, so a dropped bag can damage the heads. Replacing them with parts from donor units brings back access.
Pressure from a closed lid creates stress at the thinnest part of the logic board and cracks it, while the storage unit inside rides it out: module removed, module imaged.
The storage decides it. Models up to 2012 used standard 2.5-inch SATA drives, which is common Mac hard drive recovery territory; 2013 to 2017 models had Apple's slide-out blade SSDs. Whichever type it is, both unplug, both fit our native adapters and both are considered routine recoveries. So MacBook Pro hard drive repair on machines from before 2013 is everyday SATA work, and Apple data recovery from the blade era is just as routine, as long as the right adapters are used. Beginning in 2018, Apple used the T2 chip and later Apple Silicon, soldered the SSD to the board and wrapped it in hardware encryption, and nobody can lift that data from a failed board. We stopped trying those recoveries two years ago because the success rate didn't justify the invoice. Not sure what year yours is? Check the model number, or call us and we can work it out together.
The liquid heads straight for the logic board and the board takes the impact, so the storage usually doesn't. On machines with removable storage, the drive or blade almost always images perfectly once it's removed from the machine and treated. What really loses spill cases is optimism: the charger plugged in 'just to check', a week in a bag of rice, a warm airing cupboard. Turn the power off, unplug it and move fast, because that sequence will save your files.
The time it takes to recover a MacBook depends on how quickly the module can be connected natively to an imaging rig:
The 12+16-pin and gumstick pinouts allow native imaging, which means there is no need for another scavenged MacBook to act as a host system.
All spinning drives taken out of older machines from before 2012 go through the complete classic hard drive workflow.
If blades or connectors have been damaged by a spill, they are treated, cleaned and dried until the module reads reliably again.
APFS and HFS+ are natively supported, which allows snapshots to be retrieved and FileVault to be unlocked with the password you supply us.
Things such as erased volumes, lost snapshots and deleted files are recovered by carving, provided the freed blocks have not yet been reused.
If another lab has given up on a module, we will give it an honest re-run here on different hardware, and sometimes that is really all it needs.
Before 2018 the drives and blades could be removed and recovered here, but from 2018 T2 and Apple Silicon bonded the encrypted SSD to the motherboard, and as such no honest lab can make any promises about it. Whether the machine suffered a spill, appeared dead because of a frayed drive cable, or an SSUBX blade went missing, the outcome is always the same, as the module is removed and imaged and the files go back to their owner.
The majority of our customers get a quote first, by phone or with the free online diagnostic, and after receiving that quote they post or courier their media to us.
Are you sending a drive from a desktop computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV/DVR or server? If so, then remove the internal hard drive or SSD and only send the drive (from a server, send every disk, each labelled with its bay), as we do not offer a drive removal service. Storage that is soldered to a motherboard (for example T2 and Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) cannot be recovered, so we can only recover data from removable drives that have been sent to us. Please contact us before sending if you are unsure whether your device has a removable drive.
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