Split Fusion drive

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Level 1

8 points

Split Fusion drive

Hi, a client of mine wanted a SSD disk in his iMac 27" and brought the iMac to an Apple repair centre.

They swapped the spinning plate disk with the SSD and when he came to collect his iMac they told him that they also installed a new OSX on the drive.

He thought that all his data was still on the old drive that was taken out of the iMac...

The moment he connected this "old" drive through an external drive bay it said something like "this drive used to belong to a fusion drive and is unreadable do you want to fix it".

It turned out that my client already had a SSD disk inside his iMac that was configured as a fusion drive together with the spinning plate disk.

The guys at Apple changed the spinning plate disk with the SSD and made a fusion drive of the now both SSD disks and installed a clean OSX on them/it.

My question: is there still a way for my client to get a hold on the data that was on the spinning plate disk?

thanks

iMac 27" late 2103, El Capitan OSX 10.11.4

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 26, 2016 7:29 AM

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Answer 1

dialabrain

Level 10

122,483 points

Apr 26, 2016 7:46 AM in response to wimmichels

That's odd. It makes no sense to create a Fusion drive out of two SSD drives.

If he backed up his computer before he took it in, Yes. If not, No.

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Answer 2

wimmichels Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 26, 2016 7:50 AM in response to dialabrain

They told my client that it would become "super fast". But my client was unaware of the fact that it already was a hybrid drive...

He had no backup and thought that he could retrieve his data after the replacement as he assumed it was just a "normal" single disk setup.

When i do a scan with data rescue i can see a lot of data that can be rescued but that will become one large pile of files. It would be great if we could at least see the folders as they where on this drive like the actual tree structure (sorry, english is not my native language hope you understand what i mean 😉)

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

122,483 points

Apr 26, 2016 7:53 AM in response to wimmichels

So you still have the platter drive?

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Answer 4

wimmichels Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 26, 2016 7:55 AM in response to dialabrain

I do, there's nothing wrong with it apart form the fact that it is looking for its former SSD buddy...

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Answer 5

dialabrain

Level 10

122,483 points

Apr 26, 2016 8:04 AM in response to wimmichels

I don't know this for sure but, if it's in a disk enclosure, you should be able to just connect it to his Mac and read the files off it without using disk recovery. Then the structure would be as it was. How you go about doing that I don't know. Someone else might.

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Answer 6

dialabrain

Level 10

122,483 points

Apr 26, 2016 8:08 AM in response to wimmichels

Sorry, I have to take that back. The catalog for the platter drive could have been stored on the SSD. I don't know. You may be stuck with an endless nameless list of non nondescript files.

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