Apple unable to recover data from mac book pro 2018

I know Apple has rules in place for AASPs to handle cases where a customer requires a professional data recovery service to attempt to retrieve data from an Apple product. I know that both Drive Savers and Ontrack (there are one or two others for certain regions as well) and both are authorized by Apple to handle such data recovery attempts. This will not void the warranty since Apple has special arrangements with the approved data recovery services.

The AASP has special access to the approved data recovery vendors in order to facilitate data recovery referrals. Ask the AASP to refer to Apple service article OP54 for details on how to assist with customer data recovery which includes the recent 2018 laptops. You need to have the data recovery attempt performed before the actual repair for the models with the T2 security chip which the 2018 laptops have.

You can have Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider send the Logic Board to a professional data recovery service on your behalf. The repair will still be covered by the warranty (assuming no accidental damage). You must let the repair technician know that you need to have data recovered before the repair begins.

It’s very difficult to recover data from an SSD. Particularly since you have several – the stock 2018 13” MBP has 256 GB storage, but that’s not one SSD, it’s actually four 64 GB SSDs, two soldered to each side of the logic board. Your Mac seamlessly spreads the data across them, but that complicates recovery even more.

As BobTheFisherman says, you have learned a hard lesson. Always have a backup. Better yet, more than one. Personally, I use Time Machine and all the Macs in my house are backed up hourly to a 10 TB NAS system in RAID1. I keep a second set of TM backups on a 5 TB USB-C HDD in my desk at work (actually now two HDDs since I only go in once a week, so I swap those out every couple of weeks). Is four backup copies overkill? Probably, but I won’t lose data.

A good rule is 3-2-1 — three copies of your data, two local one of which is the Mac’s internal drive, and one offsite. Even if my house burns or is swept away to Oz by a tornado, I can replace the Macs and restore them from the offsite backup.

A hard lesson to learn. "I have very very important data on that SSD (hard work of 1 year)" . So where is your backup? That is the only place you will be able to recover your data from. Sorry.

A basic rule of computing is to always have a current backup. Computers will fail at some point. It is the user's responsibility to protect their data. Apple even provides Time Machine to make it simple to backup.

steve626 wrote:

If you keep a computer long enough, these drives all do fail, including SSD's, although they tend to last longer. We have a 2008 iMac whose internal drive (mechanical) did fail (well it was running but very slowly and SMART warning was "failing") and was replaced with an SSD in 2016. It has been fine since. Also have a 2010 Macbook Air whose SSD is now on "warning" based on DriveDX diagnostics of failing SMART parameters.

Mechanical drives have a limited life due to their moving (spinning) mechanisms, which are spinning at 5400 to 7200 rpm, and the method of moving parts to access the different platters.

My 2006 17" MacBook Pro is still running on it's original 100 GB, 7200 rpm HDD (albeit running only on AC, since the battery swelled up a few years ago and I removed it). But yes, pretty much everything fails eventually.

steve626 wrote:

Also have a 2010 Macbook Air whose SSD is now on "warning" based on DriveDX diagnostics of failing SMART parameters.

FYI, Unfortunately DriveDx and other similar apps don't always properly interpret the health of an SSD. When DriveDx reports a warning or failure with an SSD it is best to manually examine and interpret the SMART attributes on the SSD. A bad block on an SSD is nothing to worry about as it is expected to occur (in limited amounts of course).

SSD's are basically memory chips, but thermal cycling eventually weakens solder joints and other small elements of the ICs and they eventually degrade and finally fail as well. An SSD that does not experience temperature extremes and is kept at a mostly constant temperature will, in theory, last longer. SSD's also have life limits because there is a limited number of read/writes with such chips, although most computers will fail first for other reasons.

Also SSDs are more susceptible to power issues and can become confused where the controller may no longer be able to communicate with the NAND or the computer. SSDs also should not be stored for long periods of time without being powered on once in a while to refresh the NAND memory circuits, otherwise the data can become corrupted and lost and it can also lead to the SSD no longer working even after being erased and formatted. I would not trust SSDs for long term archival storage unless I had other backups as well.

Backups are definitely required even more when using SSDs.

HWTech wrote:

steve626 wrote:

Also have a 2010 Macbook Air whose SSD is now on "warning" based on DriveDX diagnostics of failing SMART parameters.

FYI, Unfortunately DriveDx and other similar apps don't always properly interpret the health of an SSD. When DriveDx reports a warning or failure with an SSD it is best to manually examine and interpret the SMART attributes on the SSD. A bad block on an SSD is nothing to worry about as it is expected to occur (in limited amounts of course).

Good points. I looked at the detailed diagnostics from DriveDX, the temperatures were getting high, and the drive failed its "long" test (passed the "short" test) with unrecoverable read errors. Also, TechTool Pro, which provides readings for a number of SMART parameters, showed "yellow" flags for Reallocated Sectors Count, Reported Uncorrectable Errors, and Temperature Changes. Both DriveDX and TechTool Pro had shown all green 6 months earlier and 12 months earlier. These "yellow" flags are now persistent, so I got a new computer, although I am still using the old one as well.

Thanks, I just learned a lot that I did not know or understand about SSD's from reading your last post!

Keeping in mind that this is a 2010 Macbook Air ... with its original 256 GB SSD, 4 GB memory, it has two USB 2.0 ports (yes, 4 GB memory and USB 2.0! This is 2010 keep in mind.). And the highest it could go is High Sierra, which it is on, but even Turbotax requires Mojave or higher. That said, that little Macbook Air was quite snappy. But sadly, I was needing something more modern anyway. I did get a new 16" Macbook with a 1 TB SSD, it's pretty nice!

I will look into that secure erase feature, how does one activate that?

And wishing the original poster that started this thread good luck on his drive recovery, coordinating that with Apple or the repair center. I'm a big believer in the backup religion, I still have 4 backups of the old 2010 Macbook Air and now have 4 backups of the new Macbook Pro. Just in case.

Remarkable. I can't resist trying this. I do have numerous external drives (some HDD, Some SSD) that I use for backups, so I can use one to make a Linux boot disk. A little project to break up these long days working from home ... thank you!

I’ve never had an internal HDD/SSD fail, and I’ve been using Macs since 1987. I’ve never had a house burn down, either...but I have fire insurance. A backup is like that.

Data recovery services are expensive, and if you go that route you may also have to factor in the cost paying for the repair out-of-pocket afterward, or a new computer. Only you can decide it the year of work is worth the recovery cost.

Hindsight is 20:20, a 1 TB external HDD is <$75 and Time Machine is part of macOS. Hopefully, lesson learned.

neuroanatomist wrote:

I’ve never had an internal HDD/SSD fail, and I’ve been using Macs since 1987. I’ve never had a house burn down, either...but I have fire insurance. A backup is like that.

If you keep a computer long enough, these drives all do fail, including SSD's, although they tend to last longer. We have a 2008 iMac whose internal drive (mechanical) did fail (well it was running but very slowly and SMART warning was "failing") and was replaced with an SSD in 2016. It has been fine since. Also have a 2010 Macbook Air whose SSD is now on "warning" based on DriveDX diagnostics of failing SMART parameters.

Mechanical drives have a limited life due to their moving (spinning) mechanisms, which are spinning at 5400 to 7200 rpm, and the method of moving parts to access the different platters. SSD's are basically memory chips, but thermal cycling eventually weakens solder joints and other small elements of the ICs and they eventually degrade and finally fail as well. An SSD that does not experience temperature extremes and is kept at a mostly constant temperature will, in theory, last longer. SSD's also have life limits because there is a limited number of read/writes with such chips, although most computers will fail first for other reasons.

Is four backup copies overkill? Probably, but I won’t lose data.

I also keep four backups, two different kinds (2+2), plus key files copied to cloud storage. When the above 2010 Macbook Air began to fail, it made migration to a new Macbook Pro simple.

steve626 wrote:

Good points. I looked at the detailed diagnostics from DriveDX, the temperatures were getting high, and the drive failed its "long" test (passed the "short" test) with unrecoverable read errors. Also, TechTool Pro, which provides readings for a number of SMART parameters, showed "yellow" flags for Reallocated Sectors Count, Reported Uncorrectable Errors, and Temperature Changes. Both DriveDX and TechTool Pro had shown all green 6 months earlier and 12 months earlier. These "yellow" flags are now persistent, so I got a new computer, although I am still using the old one as well.

Failing the "long" self-diagnostic isn't good. However, I have revived some SSDs by utilizing the built-in hardware secure erase feature some SSDs have which will reset the SSD to factory defaults as well as erasing the SSD and restoring lost performance. Sometimes these SSDs just get stuck and this reset gets them unstuck.

Our organization had a bunch of Crucial MX300 SSDs where this was a common occurrence with older SSD firmwares. After updating the SSD's firmware to the latest version followed by an ATA Secure Erase (both were required) the SSDs have been operating perfectly ever since (several years now). One of the SSDs had 10K+ errors on it because the firmware could not reallocate a single bad block so it kept finding the same block as bad. I've even had a couple of Apple branded SATA SSDs where the SSD's self-diagnostic failed which was affecting macOS and the hardware based reset fixed them as well. You won't find a lot information about this online and the little bits of reliable information are very hard to locate. Much of this I have learned from lots of searches piecing together clues here & there plus my own personal experiences.