Help needed: Retrieve files from dead 2012 MacBook Pro [solved/help received]

My partner recently had some water damage to her MacBook (A1425), rendering it completely unresponsive. It turns out her backups were not working either.

On the Macbook, nothing happens when pressing the power button, trickery with shift + ctrl + power doesn't help, it seems completely dead. When the charger is connected no light appears on the charger. So I think it's safe to assume it is an ex-mac; it has seized to be. However, the files are of some importance.

When researching online, it seems there are two possible options. One is to try to get hold of a thunderbolt cable and booting it in target mode while connected to another Mac; the other is to buy a hard drive enclosure, remove the hard drive and put it inside, and access from another computer.

From what I've read, the latter is my best bet. First, it might be cheaper than buying a thunderbolt cable; second, it doesn't depend on as many components inside the Mac not being damaged; third, it would leave us with an external hard drive.

However, this leaves me with a few questions, as I am not great with computers and especially illiterate with Macs.

  1. How can I know if an enclosure is compatible with the hard drive?

  2. It seems to me this model has two hard drives. Would the same enclosure work on both, or do I need to get two different ones?

  3. I am not a great tech mechanic, but I did successfully change the battery of a glued together android phone once, and I used to change the parts of desktop computers back in the day. Would hard drive removal be trivial?

  4. Once removed and in the enclosure, are files encrypted? How could they be accessed from another computer, and would such access only work from another Mac? I use Linux, it would be useful to know if I need to borrow a Mac to retrieve the files.

Sorry for the lengthy call for tech support, and thank you in advance for any help!

Edit: Thank you all so much for the amazing help!

For anyone who might arrive from searching the Internet:
The main lesson might be to be careful when buying an external box for the hard drive of these generations of Macbooks. The hard drive used in the 2012 Macbook Pro with retina is different from the one used in the Macbook air, regular Macbook, or regular Mac from the same year, and different from SSDs used in the end of 2013 and onwards. If your Macbook is from 2013, count the pins.

I ended up buying the OWC Envoy Pro s suggested by @bobsuruncle as I found it available with relatively short shipping time to where I am in Europe; Sintech also has a model that might be a little cheaper. External boxes for these hard drives don't come cheap, unfortunately.

redcalcium, (edited )

Edit: looks like it’s a 2012 retina MBP, which means it has an SSD with property connectors. Check out this ifix guide on how to disassemble them and what enclosure you can use to mount the drive in another computer: www.ifixit.com/Guide/…/12823

Those 2012 MBPs are using standard 2.5" SATA drives, so you can use any USB3 SATA adapter that supports 2.5" drives. Remember, always use USB3 sata adapter. Somehow there are still USB 2.0 sata adapters sold online right now, probably for legacy stuff so be sure to not accidentally buy them.

The drive itself is usually formatted in APFS partition, so you’ll need to connect the drive to another mac in order to use. If it’s encrypted, the encryption key is probably stored in the apple account associated with the broken macbook.

Your main concern is probably whether the disk got water damage or not. If the disk is damaged and unreadable, you’ll probably can still recover it by paying a data recovery specialist in your area. They’re expensive but can literally revives the drive as long as the platters are not damaged.

Good luck!

B0rax,

It is a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. It does not use a 2.5” Sata drive.

redcalcium,

Oh shoot, I didn’t notice the retina part. On the flip side, the SSD is probably less likely to be water damaged.

sab,
sab avatar

That is very good news. I am hoping it is not encrypted, as the owner seems to have no idea how to access how to access her apple account (which is another issue entirely and one I hope not to be involved with).

Thank you!

bobsuruncle,

if the water damaged mac doesn’t turn on, the target made with a thunderbolt cable won’t work. You will have to take out the SSD. For your Mac, you will need a specific drive enclosure to match the SSD. You will also need 2 screwdrivers, a torx5 and a pentalobe for opening the bottom case. Check out owc/max sales. They have the enclosure and the screwdriver kit.

eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENVOYPRO/

eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMBA/

If the drive is encrypted, when it mounts on the functioning mac, you will get a prompt for the user name and password for the main account of your partner’s laptop.

sab,
sab avatar

This is wonderfully helpful - thank you so much!

HollowBugs,

deleted_by_author

    •
    sab,
    sab avatar

    Thank you so much! It seems like reading these file systems shouldn't be a problem, so that's comforting. So this is making me feel hopeful. :)

    Jestzer, (edited )

    I don’t know all the specifics about Macs, but I’ve done a little Googling and have replaced storage devices in PCs many times, so here’s my 2 cents:

    • It seems like the HDD is just using SATA and is 2.5", so an enclosure for that would work, but I would NOT store things you care about on a 10 year old HDD with potential liquid damage. Just get a SATA to USB adapter to get what you need.
    • If there are 2 HDDs, chances are only one of them has the personal data you care about on it.
    • I don’t think it would be particularly difficult to open and remove the HDD, assuming you have appropriate tools.
    • Linux may recognize the HDD. Otherwise, macOS will work.

    EDIT: It sounds liku you may have the retina display version, which came with an NVMe m.2 SSD, which is not SATA.

    B0rax,

    That is not correct. OP has a Retina MacBook Pro. Which DOES NOT have a 2.5“ hard drive but a proprietary nvme ssd.

    Jestzer,

    Those existed in 2012 MacBooks?

    sab,
    sab avatar

    It is indeed a tiny proprietary 7+17 pin SSD, which only existed in 2012 and early 2013 Macbook Pros with Retina displays (and possibly some other models of desktop Mac computers, I'm not sure). Thankfully mine seems to be intact. :)

    Finding an external box for it is a pain, but I am amazed by how far ahead of its time this computer was.

    Jestzer,

    Very interesting, thank you for the insight.

    sab,
    sab avatar

    Thank you!

    sab,
    sab avatar

    That's wonderful, thank you. I'm too illiterate on my own to understand which parts of the harddrive/enclosure description that's the relevant information, so that's particularly helpful.

    Regarding recognizing the HDD, I'm mostly afraid there's some strange encryption going on - doing the same with a Linux system I would be entirely comfortable. But probably there's no black magic involved.

    Will get the tools - and excellent point about it not being very valuable as an external hard drive.

    Thank you so much!!

    B0rax,

    Before you do. Please double check if that is really correct. From the number you posted, you have a retina MacBook Pro, it has a different kind of SSD.

    sab, (edited )
    sab avatar

    It seems you're right. Thank you!

    Jestzer,

    You’re most welcome.

    Do you remember if FileVault was enabled? My understanding is that if it was, then the HDD’s contents will be encrypted and you’ll need either the Mac account’s password or FileVault recovery key to access the files. Without FileVault enabled, I’d imagine it’d be plug-n-play.

    Make sure you follow a guide for getting the HDD out. There are comments on the guide, read them for helpful tips.

    If the HDD seems to be dead (clicking noises, disk isn’t spinning, etc.) I’d highly recommend stopping whatever you’re doing in that moment and bring the HDD to data recovery specialists. They are not cheap, but for good reason. What they do is not easy and very resource-consuming even when all fails.

    EDIT: typos.

    sab,
    sab avatar

    Thank you! I will make sure to be careful.

    I doubt FileVault is enabled, as the owner is very tech illiterate and hasn't even updated the computer in a long time. If it is that's very useful information though - hopefully the potential key would be connected to her Mac user and not Apple ID (as I interpreted elsewhere), as that would be seemingly impossible to retrieve.

    Also good to know there are options even in the worst case scenario, if that is applicable to SSDs as well. I'm crossing my fingers it won't come to that though.

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