Devices · MacBooks and Apple desktops
After the complimentary look has established what went wrong, you can expect to pay £300 + VAT. Macs are different from other computers in three ways. Your Mac has had encryption running from the moment it was first turned on. Flash memory is soldered onto the board in most models and therefore is not removable, and soldered storage is not something we take on; if you cannot determine whether your model has soldered storage, contact us prior to sending. If you have a Fusion pair, then macOS has laid one volume across two physically distinct disks, and the software you download will deal with the first of these and then stop. We routinely recover encrypted volumes and Fusion pairs here on our bench. Mac drives come to us from studies in Muswell Hill and back offices in Ealing alike, and from everywhere in London in between. Please place the password in the box with the drive.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
| What is going on | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| A blinking folder that contains a question mark | It can't find a startup disk | Disconnect it, and have the storage tested |
| A crossed circle appears while it is trying to boot | macOS is on there and won't load | Storage first, then the container |
| First Aid finds errors then stops | APFS damage beyond repair for Disk Utility | Image it first, and decide later |
| disenter error -119930868, from com.apple.DiskManagement | The APFS volume won't show up | Usually readable from a clone |
| Disk Utility, error -69845: file system verify or repair has failed | Disk Utility has run out of options | Turn it off, and don't take any further action |
| Stuck in a boot loop since the last macOS update | Container or firmware damage; the files below are untouched | Comes back, usually |
As soon as your parcel arrives here, an engineer assigns a case number that same day, prior to determining what has really failed, which is the first thing done and costs you nothing. In addition to a note of what can and cannot be recovered from your drive, you will receive at the same time the fixed, written price for restoring what can be recovered. You can accept this quote, or decline it, which will result in no further obligation on your part and nothing owed to us.
Underneath the lock (FileVault, a T2 chip, or the Secure Enclave on Apple silicon) every byte reads as encrypted. T2 and Apple silicon Macs have their flash soldered onto the board, and soldered storage isn't accepted. Where the drive comes out, provide us with the password along with the drive, and we'll consider it a routine job, with the copy captured in a format that will still decrypt later on.
A drive that unscrews can be removed and imaged like any other. The work would only drop to component level if the flash was soldered down or the board beneath it had failed, and soldered storage is not taken on; if you're unsure which kind your Mac has, call us beforehand.
On a Fusion iMac, half of a document can be stored on flash with the remainder on the spinning disk. Each will be imaged alone; once done, the CoreStorage or APFS layer binding them together will be reassembled. Documents will return whole instead of in the halves they were stored as.
You will see what has been recovered as a list first, after which a bill exists. Accepting the list means that a bill will be issued. Rejecting the list means that a bill will not be issued, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The recovered data travels from here back to you via new media purchased specifically for your project, with the cost of postage paid by us. Your case is not resolved (i.e., "closed") until you personally view the files on a computer of your own.
About the numbers: there are none to give. Apple does not publish reliability figures model by model, and no public study, Backblaze's included, has ever covered soldered Mac flash. There is no honest MacBook failure rate that anyone outside of Apple could print.
An iMac from an Apple Store that they'd already decided to give up on. Its storage turned out to be a Fusion set-up (flash and a spinning disk that macOS shows as one volume), where the spinning part was failing. We imaged each of these separately, determined how the two worked together from those images, and brought back ten years' worth of work.
Yes. One of two pieces of information: your login password, or the recovery key. It matters less than people often think which chip is actually doing the locking, whether it's FileVault on older computers, the Secure Enclave on the newer Apple silicon machines or a T2 on the last of the Intel ones (those last two have their storage soldered to the board, which we do not take on). If you hand neither piece of information over, that volume will remain locked at this laboratory and anywhere else.
Typically not. Your request was a data question and you were given a repair answer. A repair technician puts a new logic board into your Mac, and the old board goes onto a shelf with your files still on the flash chip soldered to it. Removing those files is a different trade, using entirely different equipment, and soldered storage is not something we take on here; if you're unsure of what type of storage your Mac has, call us first.
Because one icon in macOS represents two physical disks (a small flash module and a slower mechanical one), and the blocks of any single file can exist on either one. If we only get half of the paired drives, then all that comes back will be incomplete files. So we image both parts of the pair here, then rebuild the map showing where everything exists.
Not here. We don't take on soldered storage, and if you're unsure what type of storage your MacBook has, call us first. But do leave the encryption chain intact: removing the flash and attempting to read it apart from its own motherboard is the method that will fail.
It doesn't cost you anything for us to look at it. All we do is give you a breakdown of what opened and what did not, plus a single fixed price to complete, written down before you agree to let us continue. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. Please don't turn on the drive until you get that breakdown.