A freelance translator in Warwick lost her MacBook Air without warning: closed on the Thursday, dead on the Friday, no light, no chime and no response to anything. An Apple Store quoted a repair she thought expensive for a machine that age and would not promise it would fix the fault. She declined, then discovered that the cloud backup she believed had been running had stopped nearly two years earlier. What she wanted was every file off it, and specifically eleven glossaries and translation memories built up over a decade.
| Media | A MacBook Air that stopped working without warning, for which a repair was quoted and declined. The owner discovered afterwards that her cloud backup had not been running. She wants everything from the storage. |
| What was reported | MacBook Air, died unexpectedly with no light or chime, an expensive repair quoted with no guarantee attached and declined, cloud backup found not to have run for two years, all files wanted, translation memories and glossaries the priority. |
| Fault class | A dead machine with healthy storage, which is a much better position than it appears. Whatever had failed had stopped the logic from starting, and recovery needed only to read the storage rather than to make the laptop work. On this model the storage is a removable module, so it could be read on its own. |
| On the bench | The model identified from the serial number before anything was posted, and the storage confirmed as a removable module rather than chips soldered to the board. The module was read behind a hardware write blocker on a matching adapter, imaged on DeepSpar in a single pass, and the volume parsed in R-Studio. The glossaries and translation memories were opened in the software that made them, and the whole set was written to fresh media. |
The first question is not what failed but which machine it is. Apple's laptops fall into two groups for this purpose. Older ones carry storage on a small removable module, which lifts out and can be read on its own. Newer ones have flash soldered to the logic board and tied to the machine's security processor, which cannot be taken in at all. That single fact decides whether there is a job here, and it takes a serial number and a minute to establish.
Hers was on the right side of that line, and it was checked before she posted anything. Nobody should send a laptop across the country to be told it was never possible. The serial gave the model, the model gave the storage type, and only then was the enquiry taken. If it had gone the other way the answer would have been the same as it is elsewhere in this set: outside intake, nothing charged, and here are the free options worth trying.
The repair quote and the recovery are answers to different questions. A repair aims to make the laptop work again, which means diagnosing a fault that might be the power circuitry or might not, hence the absence of a guarantee. Recovery needs the storage only, and the storage was never the thing that failed. Declining a repair therefore cost her nothing in terms of the files, which is worth knowing before anyone agrees to a large figure under pressure.
The cloud backup that was not running is the commonest story in this trade. Free tiers fill up, a password change stops a sync, an update turns a setting off, and nobody is told. A backup nobody has checked in two years is not a backup, and the cheapest lesson available is to open the account once a quarter and confirm the date of the most recent copy.
The module came out of the laptop with one screwdriver and travelled on its own in an anti-static bag, since the machine itself was not needed and there was no reason to post a whole laptop. Read on a matching adapter behind a hardware write blocker, it powered normally and identified itself, which confirmed within a minute that the fault had been elsewhere in the machine.
It imaged in a single pass with no weak regions and no unreadable areas. R-Studio parsed the volume from the image and the whole file tree was present and consistent, which is what you expect from storage that never failed. The glossaries and translation memories were opened in the applications that created them, because a memory file that will not load into the tool is not a recovery, and only then was the set written to fresh media.
Everything came back, all eleven glossaries and the translation memories behind them, plus the invoicing, the correspondence and a folder of reference material going back to her first year in business. She was also given a plain list of what was on the disk so she could see there was nothing else waiting to be missed.
One drive or SSD is £300 + VAT. This was reading a healthy module, with the casing untouched and nothing lifted off a circuit, so no fix, no fee applied and the invoice waited until she had loaded a glossary herself.
Settle the model question first, before you agree to anything or post anything. Find the serial number, which is on the underside or on the box, and check whether the storage in that model is a removable module or flash soldered to the logic board. If it is a module, the dead laptop is largely irrelevant and the files are reachable, and you do not need the repair to get them. If it is soldered, no laboratory can help, and the honest routes are local snapshots, any backup disk you have ever attached, application autosave folders and whatever synchronised to a cloud account before it stopped. Declining an expensive repair does not put the files at risk in either case. While you are working it out, leave the machine switched off rather than trying it every morning, and if it did get wet or hot before it died, say so, because that changes what the storage is likely to have been through.
What this job cost, and on what terms. This one was charged at £300 + VAT, the figure agreed in writing before any work began. Paying for a job like this one. Nothing here called for the disk to be opened, a board rebuilt or a chip lifted off, which puts the work on the logical side of the line and under no fix, no fee. Files back, invoice follows; nothing back, nothing owed, and the media goes home either way. Four sorts of work sit outside that promise and only those four: DVR jobs, forensic jobs, chip-level work, and electronic or mechanical failure. The rest keep it, firmware and service-area repair included — both are logical jobs whatever their reputation suggests.
If yours is doing the same thing. This mac disk was read at Oxford Data Recovery on the Oxford Science Park, about fifty-five miles down the M40. Post it tracked and insured, send it by a courier you book yourself, or bring it to the Oxford reception during Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:30pm — there is no collection service and no counter in Coventry. The free look at it takes two working days from booking in and produces one written figure that then holds.
Freephone 0800 689 0668 to talk it through first. The shipping form and what goes in the parcel are on the contact page, and every band is published in full — including which work sits outside no fix, no fee.
These are real enquiries, from households and from businesses in Coventry and out across Warwickshire — Nuneaton and Bedworth, Rugby, Leamington Spa, Warwick, Kenilworth, Solihull, Stratford-upon-Avon, Atherstone and Southam. Names are gone: the customer, the company, the job title, anything at all that would point back at a person. What stays is the reasoning — what turned up, where the fault genuinely sat, which approach it demanded, and which machine on the bench did the work. One of the thirty-six was refused, and it earns a place here as squarely as any of the rest.
A dead Mac and files you need? Ring 0800 689 0668 with the serial number first. A drive or SSD is £300 + VAT with a free assessment.