Dead MacBook Air M1 - Document Recovery Issue

In most Macs with Apple Silicon processors – like your M1 MacBook Air – the flash chips which make up the SSD are soldered to the motherboard. In all of them, the contents of the internal SSD are encrypted using keys that are held within the Apple Silicon chip.

Separate the flash chips from the M1, and even if you find a way to read the data on the flash chips, the data will be so much indecipherable hash. So if the Mac is dead, you can't pull data off the internal drive – unless there is some way of repairing the Mac that leaves both the M1 and the flash chips intact.

Even on computers that use non-encrypted, removable hard drives, counting on being recovering data from a failed computer is a big gamble. Hard drive failure is one of the most common causes OF failure of such computers.

robert.sergent wrote:

Honestly, I care more about recovering the documents than repairing the laptop. Any advice or insight would be appreciated—thanks!

This is what backups are for – preferably multiple backups. But you must make your backups before catastrophe happens. Afterwards is too late.

Yes, it's normal.

If your data was not backed up or synced to the cloud, it's gone.

robert.sergent wrote:

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Honestly, I care more about recovering the documents than repairing the laptop. Any advice or insight would be appreciated—thanks!

This is exactly why computer users make and maintain data backups. Your data is not Apple's or anyone else's responsibility. My advice going forward, create and maintain at least 2 backups, one local and one offsite.