A MacBook rarely complains when it dies: it refuses the charger, sleeps without waking up, or shows a question-mark folder to a full café. As long as the storage in yours is the removable kind, such as a SATA hard drive in an older MacBook or Apple's blade SSD from 2013 to 2017, your files are most likely still intact, spilled flat white included.
Every Apple MacBook job comes with a free diagnosis. The quote is fixed and always written down before we pick up our first tool.
In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Chip level, electronic and mechanical repair is charged at 50% at start-up, and the other 50% only upon successful recovery of your data; all BitLocker, ransomware, forensic and CCTV/DVR recoveries are charged at start-up when you accept our fixed quote. More information can be found on the data recovery cost page.
The first job on any Apple MacBook is comparing the symptoms with the fault. After twenty-odd years, these twenty-five cover almost all the problems that come through the door.
Regardless of what kind of liquid spills onto your MacBook, it flows rapidly over the logic board, but usually doesn't reach the storage, which sits higher and drier. The board and the data have separate fates, and ours is the data.
The board has failed. The data remains intact on the removable drive or blade, and extracting it from there beats board repair for both speed and certainty.
The internal storage has died or lost its operating system. We always do imaging first, and then we work out what happened. That's just how it works around here.
Died right during installation, now looping. The documents have sat through this whole circus performance untouched on the module.
Those systems have standard spinning disks, so they are prone to standard spinning disk failures (when the heads fail), and they become head-swap cases with well-known endings.
Blade modules go the way of all flash memory: suddenly. Our lab images them on native adapters without needing a donor Mac in house.
Disk Utility took the volume at its word. Carving retrieves the volume's data while the freed blocks are unused, so keep that lid shut.
Once the password or recovery key is supplied, encrypted volumes recover just like standard work. Find yours before you call.
The two will remain until their blocks are reused. Retire the computer today, and tomorrow most of those blocks still have your data on them.
Panels from Flexgate-era computers lock good files away behind a black screen. Getting them out is what this whole task is about, as long as the storage is the removable kind.
An SSUBX (or SSPOLARIS) occasionally loses its mapping and leaves the bus. That is well-trodden service-mode ground for us.
The 2009 to 2012 machines wear through their internal SATA cable, which eventually stages a convincing "drive died", and the disk images perfectly once it's freed.
When a cell swells, it causes the chassis to bow and load against the board; however, the storage unplugs unharmed. Stop charging it as soon as possible: today, not next week or Friday afternoon.
A short circuit on the lower board from a spill, while the storage above stays dry. This is an old film we've seen hundreds of times.
Blades written off at another bench get a real retry here using different adapters. Sometimes this retry is actually the entire recovery process.
Dashboard heat ages both the blade and the battery at the same time. The read errors start to appear weeks after the sunshine.
The signature of flash failing gradually. It gets imaged before it fails completely.
Erased for sale, backup never checked. Carve the original volume back and you get whatever the erase never physically overwrote.
Pre-2012 machines that are asleep still have their platters turning; one dropped rucksack costs them their heads. Donors reopen the conversation.
A closed-lid crush cracks the board at its narrowest point; the module just keeps going. Module removed, module imaged, done.
The £9 knockoff with opinions about voltage takes the board down in an evening. The storage rarely even notices: out and onward.
Most aftermarket M.2-in-a-sled kits come with their own firmware personality and failure habits. Whatever the box label says, we image it natively.
Eventually all those long presses destroy the APFS container metadata. This is rebuilt using an image of the entire module.
When that infamous dGPU dies it kills both the picture and the boot (but never the disk). Get your quote, then post the drive on its own and it images like any other.
The firmware lockout "bricks" the computer with a polite message. Before T2, the storage does not care: it's removed, imaged and recovered.
It's the storage that decides it, not the year on the receipt. Machines up to 2012 carry an ordinary 2.5-inch SATA drive, which is everyday Mac work for us. The 2013 to 2017 machines carry Apple's slide-out blade SSD, just as routine once the right adapter is on the bench. Both kinds unplug, image and come back. Then came 2018: the T2 chip, later Apple Silicon, and the SSD now soldered into the logic board with hardware encryption around it. Once a board from that era fails, its data is beyond reach, for us or for anyone honest, and roughly two years ago we stopped taking those jobs because the success rate no longer justified the fee. Not sure of your year? The model number is printed on the underside, or ring us and we'll pin it down in a minute.
Liquid heads for the logic board first, which then absorbs damage that would otherwise hit your storage. In a removable-storage machine, the drive or blade usually images fine once it's been cleaned and treated. The cases where things go bad have nothing to do with chemistry, but rather with optimism: plugging in the charger "to test it", a week in a bag of rice, and drying it out in the airing cupboard. Simply power down, unplug it, and move as quickly as possible. Do those three things and you've won most of the battle already.
The entire skill when working on MacBooks is getting the module onto a rig quickly, natively, and without adventures along the way:
Every gumstick (and every 12+16-pin) variant images natively. No cannibalised MacBook hosts any component at any stage of the process.
All spinning drives from pre-2012 computers receive the full traditional treatment, donor heads and all.
All spill-damaged blades and connectors are thoroughly cleaned, neutralised and dried out until they read steadily enough to image.
Both file systems are parsed natively; snapshots are extracted; FileVault is accessed using the login details you supply.
Lost volumes, snapshots and files are restored by carving while their freed blocks have yet to be claimed.
Modules previously declared dead in another location can sometimes be revived simply by testing them on new hardware.
In general, we draw the line at 2018. On the near side, drives and blades unplug and we recover them as part of our daily routine; the far side, however, uses T2 and Apple Silicon to fuse encrypted storage into the motherboard, where honest promises do not survive. Whether they are spill victims, cable-damaged impersonators or blades that have forgotten their own names, they all end up the same way: "module out", "module imaged" and "files home".
Get a quote first, by calling us on 0800 689 0668 or using our free online diagnostic tool. After receiving your quote, tracked and insured post is how nearly every job reaches us: it is the fastest and safest way to get your drive to our lab in Leeds. There's no collection service, so the parcel is yours to send, or you can hand it in at the Leeds lab's reception.
Is the hard drive or SSD still inside a machine, such as a laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV/DVR system or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from the machine first and then post just the bare drive by itself; we do not provide a service for removing drives from devices. For a server or RAID, send every disk, each clearly marked with its bay. For a NAS, send its disks labelled by bay if you can remove them, otherwise send the NAS itself. We cannot work on storage soldered to the motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs, T2 Macs and certain slim laptops): if it doesn't come out, it can't come in. If you are unsure whether your storage is removable, call us before sending.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Once you have your quote, send your package addressed to Leeds Data Recovery (about a 40 minute drive from York on the A64 & A1(M) or next working day if you want to send it using trackable post). We will contact you as soon as we have taken delivery of your package and put it in line to be worked upon.
Can't figure out what to pack? Ring 0800 689 0668 first, or try our free online diagnostic tool.
Free diagnosis, fixed written quote, and on most work you only pay if we recover your data. Start online or call our freephone.