MacBooks do not make a fuss on the way out. The charger stops being accepted, or the lid closes on a working machine that never wakes again, or a question mark folder turns up in the middle of an otherwise ordinary Tuesday. Where the storage releases, which covers the SATA disks in the older bodies along with Apple's own blade SSDs up to 2017, what was written to it is almost certainly still intact, spilled drinks included. What follows is a straightforward job and one honest limit set out further down.
Every MacBook that arrives here is examined at no charge. The figure quoted afterwards is put in writing and settled before anybody reaches for a screwdriver: £300 + VAT on any one hard drive or SSD, an NVMe blade counted the same.
Logical recoveries carry no fix, no fee. The named exceptions to it are electronic and mechanical failures, chip-level work, DVR jobs and forensic jobs; physical work takes 50% up front. The five bands are set out in full on the data recovery cost page.
Tracing a symptom back to the failure underneath it is where the real work begins, and these thirty account for all but a handful of the boxes opened at the Cambridge bench. A fault missing from the list is not an unfamiliar one — describe it on the telephone and you will get a straight view of the odds before you spend anything on postage.
Charging circuits and logic boards fail independently of the storage. A MacBook that will not take power is usually carrying flash or a disk in perfect condition. Where that storage unclips, it comes out and is read here, and the machine itself never needs to leave your desk.
Liquid reaches the board within seconds and corrosion continues for weeks afterwards. On the models with removable storage the drive sits away from the worst of it and frequently survives intact. Do not let it dry out and then try to power it, because that is what turns a wet board into a dead one.
The machine has looked for a system to boot and found nothing to hand over to. That is a damaged boot structure rather than an empty drive, and everything else is generally still present. Repeated restarts repeat the same failed read, so the useful move is to stop.
An interrupted or failed upgrade leaves the machine unbootable and the user files untouched. Nothing has been removed. The files come out of an image of the volume, which avoids the update process entirely and is among the more common arrivals on this page.
The pre-2012 MacBook and MacBook Pro bodies carry ordinary 2.5-inch mechanisms, and they tick for exactly the same reason any other disk does. Heads have stopped reading and the actuator is resetting. Power it down and leave it, because each further attempt costs more of the surface.
Backlights, cables and graphics failures all present as a machine that seems dead and is not. None of them touches the storage. This is one of the frequent reasons a MacBook gets written off with a perfectly good drive inside it, which makes the drive worth removing rather than the machine worth binning.
Every Apple Silicon MacBook, and the Intel models from 2018 onward with a T2 chip, have their flash fixed permanently to the board. That is outside what is done here and there is no route round it. The 2010 to 2017 blades and the earlier SATA disks are a different matter and are handled normally.
These are ordinary flash storage behind an unusual edge connector, and adapters for every variant are held here. They fail at the controller far more often than in the memory, which means a blade that has vanished from a machine entirely is a better prospect than most owners expect.
FileVault is properly implemented encryption and it does not fall to effort. What can be located is the recovery key, which is frequently escrowed against an Apple account or written down during setup and forgotten. Encrypted drive work is 400 pounds + VAT, and where the key is truly lost that is said plainly.
APFS holds several volumes inside a single container and damage to that container takes all of them out together. Snapshots and the checkpoint history often allow an earlier consistent state to be found, and that is worked from an image rather than from the original storage.
Erase is not a repair, and it is one of the few prominent options Disk Utility offers. A volume failing to mount means the structures are damaged, not that the files are gone. Quit, shut the machine down properly, and let the storage be read at block level instead.
On the flash-based models TRIM erases freed blocks in the background whenever there is power, so every hour the machine spends switched on removes material that cannot be brought back. Shut it down fully, not to sleep, and leave it off until the drive is out.
Broken displays and failed hinges are among the commonest reasons a MacBook is retired, and neither has any bearing on the storage. Where the drive or blade releases, it travels and the machine stays. Where the storage is soldered, the position is different and it is said honestly.
Swollen batteries lift the trackpad and put pressure on everything above them, and they are a genuine fire risk rather than an inconvenience. Stop using the machine. The storage is usually unaffected and comes out normally once the machine is opened carefully.
The controller has stopped and the memory behind it has not. Where the manufacturer's service mode gets a word out of it, the blade is read normally. Where it will not, the packages come off the board and are read directly, which is chip-level work at 50% up front.
Long, gradual slowing on a spinning MacBook disk is sector relocation, and the failure at the end is where relocation ran out of room. That warning period is the easy window for a full image, and it closes without any announcement.
Blocked vents and dried thermal paste raise the temperature of everything in a thin case. Read errors that appear under load and clear after a restart are the classic pattern, and they mean the storage is on its way rather than that the software is at fault.
Migration Assistant sometimes leaves a partial account behind or loses the reference to a profile it copied. Nothing is normally deleted. The old volume gets read and the account is lifted out of it, which is far simpler than trying the migration again.
Erasing and reinstalling writes a new file system over the front of the storage. On a spinning disk the previous contents are largely intact further in. On flash, trimming starts at once and the position is much less encouraging. Which of the two you have decides how urgent this is.
Sparse bundles and snapshots are more fragile than the interface suggests, and a backup reported as corrupt is usually looking at a damaged index rather than at absent data. Files are recovered directly from an image, which avoids the restore mechanism altogether.
Video and design work is rarely on one volume. Losing any part of it breaks the project, and reassembling from one volume out of three is guesswork. Send everything that was part of it, labelled, and say which was which on the booking form.
Batteries swell, lubricant stiffens and flash cells leak charge whether the machine is used or not. Most of these still give everything back. None of them improve by waiting another year, and the ones with spinning disks are inspected on the clean bench before they are offered power.
Long scans keep failing storage powered and working, which is the wrong treatment, and several popular tools write their own files onto the volume they are scanning. Say what was run and for how long, because it changes the order of the work rather than usually ruling it out.
Activation locks and firmware passwords present as a machine that powers on and goes no further, and none of them touch the storage. Where the drive releases it is read on the bench, which is a good deal more straightforward than arguing the machine back into service.
Uncommon on macOS but not unheard of, and the machine is generally healthy afterwards. What returns depends on the variant and on what has been written since. It is priced as ordinary media at 300 pounds + VAT for a single drive and is never charged as forensic work.
Blades are thin cards held at one end and they do break. What matters is whether the fracture ran through the memory packages or through empty board next to them. That is answered by inspection during the free assessment, in plain terms, rather than left as a maybe.
Employers send these in wiped, or nearly wiped, and want an account of what left the building. That is forensic work rather than recovery, priced at 800 pounds + VAT with a written report, and it needs to be handled as forensic from the first minute rather than after somebody has browsed the disk.
Boot Camp installations put a second file system on the same storage and a partition map problem takes out both. The two volumes are separate and both get recovered from the same image. It is worth mentioning on the booking form, because it changes what is looked for.
Marginal power delivery or a solder joint behaving differently when cold. Each cycle of switching on and off wears the pattern down. Where the storage releases, the sensible answer is to take it out rather than to keep testing whether the machine will start one more time.
An old MacBook holding fifteen years of photographs and documents, with the owner unsure how to get them out. No fault and no urgency, which makes it the cheapest job on this page. The storage comes out where it releases, the files come off, and they go back on fresh media.
The dividing line is simple and it is worth checking before anything is posted. If the storage unclips or unscrews, it is worked on here. That covers the SATA disks in every body up to 2012, any third-party SSD fitted into one of those, and Apple's own blade SSDs from 2010 through to 2017, all of which have their own edge connectors and all of which have adapters on the shelf. If the flash is soldered to the logic board, it is not, and that covers every Apple Silicon machine and the Intel models from 2018 with a T2 chip. Nobody honest will tell you differently. What sits in the middle is worth knowing about too: Apple's blades are ordinary flash storage behind an unusual connector, and they fail at the controller far more often than in the memory, which means a blade that has vanished from a machine completely is a better prospect than most owners assume. Where the controller cannot be revived, the packages come off the board and are read directly, which is chip-level work at half up front and outside no fix, no fee.
A drink goes through a MacBook keyboard and reaches the board in seconds, and corrosion then works away quietly for weeks whatever the machine looks like. On the models with removable storage the drive sits away from the worst of it and usually survives intact. What finishes these machines is the hopeful power-up two days later, because a shorted rail destroys components that were undamaged. Leave it off, take the storage out if you can, and say in the note what went in and when. The same restraint applies to software. Disk Utility offers to erase a volume that will not mount, which is not a repair and which replaces the structures a recovery would be rebuilt from. First Aid writes to the volume it is repairing, so running it five times tells you nothing that running it once did not. And on the flash-based models, every hour the machine spends switched on after a deletion is another hour of TRIM genuinely erasing blocks. Shut it down fully rather than closing the lid, and leave it off until the storage is out.
A MacBook that arrives here as a drive or a blade is worked exactly like any other storage. What is particular to Apple is the file system, the connectors and the encryption, and most of the equipment below exists to deal with those three things.
The 2010, 2012, 2013 and later variants all differ, and a blade that means nothing to a generic M.2 adapter reads perfectly on the right one. Every generation from 2010 to 2017 is covered, along with the SATA disks in the earlier bodies.
Container headers, snapshot metadata, checkpoint history and catalogue files rebuilt from an image. Where a container will not mount, an earlier consistent checkpoint is frequently the shortest route to a complete set of files.
Apple blades use controllers from the usual families and most have a production diagnostic path. Getting a stalled blade back onto the bus through it is the least invasive route available, and it is tried first because it leaves the device whole.
Where the controller cannot be revived, the packages come off under controlled heat and are read individually, with the page order, interleave and error correction reproduced in software. Chip-level work takes 50% up front and sits outside no fix, no fee.
Encrypted volumes are imaged sealed and the key is applied to the copy afterwards. Repeatedly entering a password into failing storage spends the reliable reads it has left and establishes nothing that could not be established on a bench.
MacBooks up to 2012 carry ordinary 2.5-inch disks, and those get head replacements and stack removals under filtered air like any other notebook drive. Mechanical work takes 50% up front and is one of the published exclusions from the guarantee.
The dividing line on this page is simple and it is worth checking before you post anything. If the storage unclips or unscrews, it is worked on here. That covers the SATA disks in the bodies up to 2012, every third-party upgrade fitted into one of those, and Apple's own blade SSDs from 2010 through to 2017. If the flash is soldered to the logic board, which covers all Apple Silicon machines and the Intel models from 2018 with a T2 chip, then it is not, and no laboratory in this country will tell you otherwise honestly. A single drive or blade is 300 pounds + VAT, with the assessment free and closing two working days after arrival. An encrypted volume, FileVault included, is 400 pounds + VAT. Chip-level work, where the packages have to come off a blade, takes 50% up front and falls outside no fix, no fee. If you are not sure which side of the line your machine is on, ring 0800 689 0668 and ask before paying for postage.
The post office does most of the work of getting a job here. A drive that is already unwell travels better boxed and insured than rattling around a car for a day of errands, and something dropped into a Leicestershire postbox this afternoon is generally logged in at Cambridge tomorrow.
The general rule is the drive travels and the machine stays behind — out of the laptop, out of the tower, out of the iMac, out of the recorder under the counter. This bench does not dismantle equipment, and a repair shop will do it while you wait. Three things are the other way round, and getting them wrong costs you the recovery: an external drive stays sealed in its own case, a NAS comes as a complete unit, and a WD My Passport or My Book travels whole with its cable, because on those the encryption key is held on the bridge board rather than on the disk — separate the two and the data becomes unreadable even to us. A Fusion Mac needs both of its drives, each labelled. The one thing nobody can work round is flash soldered onto the mainboard, as on Apple Silicon machines: if it will not come off, there is nothing to post.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it to Cambridge Data Recovery. It is about seventy miles from Leicester if you fancy driving it — M1 south to Junction 19, then the A14 east — and the lab is two minutes off Junction 32 with parking at the door. Posting costs you a stamp and a day instead. Whichever you choose, you hear from us the moment it is booked in, and the free diagnostic closes two working days after that.
Not certain what belongs in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you tape it up, or let the free online diagnostic ask the questions for you.
The examination is free, one written figure follows it, and the band covering this page is £300 + VAT on any one hard drive or SSD, an NVMe blade counted the same.