Data recovery on corrupted MBP’s SSD?

Question

Data recovery on corrupted MBP’s SSD?

It seems like I’ve used up all space on my MBP, and when I rebooted it it became corrupted/inoperable (when I go into disk utilities, Macintosh HD is “unmounted”, and when I press “mount”, nothing happens. On internet recovery, the same thing gives me “Alert: couldn’t mount disk”. Clicking “Repair” gives me “Alert: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size.”)

I was wondering if it’s possible to recover any data from it? I have some sensitive documents that haven’t backed up due to poor internet connection. On disk utility it says the drive could not be mounted and I can’t find the drive via the terminal.

Thank you!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 10, 2021 2:23 PM

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Answer 1

steve626

Level 6

13,791 points

Feb 10, 2021 4:36 PM in response to wild-blue-yonder

I don't see how you can recover files unless you can mount the drive.

I am concerned you might not be able to even erase/reformat the drive, if you try. Is this an APFS disk? If it is, there are few utilities available that work on APFS SSD disks. Apple's standard "fix" for these things is to erase/reformat and restore from a backup. With HFS+, there were many commercial utilities that could sometimes recover a disk, but not so for APFS. If somehow this is still HFS+, some of these utilities include TechTool Pro, Disk Warrior, Disk Drill, Prosoft Data Rescue, and others. Some of these may claim to work on APFS as well as HFS+, but from what I have read, success is very limited.

By the way, you have posted multiple times about this issue, multiple posts can result in confusion. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252435975

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Answer 2

Feb 10, 2021 7:41 PM in response to steve626

Yea, I tried erasing the partition but it wouldn’t work, then I tried erasing the entire drive and it says “unable to write to last portion of disk.” I was thinking of trying the following below to see if it works, but don’t have a way to get a bootable drive yet.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251194289

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Answer 3

steve626

Level 6

13,791 points

Feb 10, 2021 9:57 PM in response to wild-blue-yonder

The method of writing zeros, the secure erase that Kappy recommended, is worth a try right in Disk Utility and Terminal, both of which are available in Recovery mode. The other option (HWTech outlined) may also work, but it will be a bit of a project and likely require another computer to make the bootable USB drive with special tools.

I don't think I would trust this internal SSD anymore. Even if one of these methods appears to work. I would instead find an authorized Apple service provider (an independent shop if the Apple Store is not yet open due to the pandemic, there is a shop like that in my neighborhood so I know they exist), wear a mask and gloves, and go there and get them to replace the internal SSD with a new one.

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Data recovery on corrupted MBP’s SSD?

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