Apple storage from iMacs, MacBooks, Mac minis and Time Machine disks, read on the bench rather than through Disk Utility. This page covers what changed when Macintosh systems moved from HFS+ to APFS, why a Fusion Drive needs both of its halves, what FileVault does and does not prevent, and the honest position on Apple Silicon machines with soldered storage.
A single Mac drive is £300 + VAT; a FileVault or otherwise encrypted volume is £400 + VAT and needs the password or recovery key. A Fusion pair is quoted as one job and both drives must travel, labelled. Storage soldered to an Apple Silicon board cannot be recovered.
Apple hides most of the machinery, so the symptoms are quieter than on a PC and easy to misread. These six cover nearly every Mac that arrives here.
The Mac cannot find a system to start from. Sometimes the drive has gone; sometimes the volume is intact and only the boot record is damaged. Holding the power button to try again repeatedly is the reflex and it is the wrong one, particularly if the machine has been making any noise.
The volume appears in the list but nothing can be done to it, or First Aid runs and reports that it cannot repair the disk. That is a file system that has lost its structure. First Aid writes as it works, so running it again and again on a volume that matters is not a neutral act.
A user folder that is suddenly empty, a Photos library that will not open, a Desktop with nothing on it. Often this is an account or a library problem rather than a storage failure, and it is one of the more recoverable situations, provided the machine stops being used while it is investigated.
Fusion pairs a small SSD with a large mechanical disk and presents them as one volume. If either half fails or the pairing is broken, the whole logical volume disappears. Both drives are needed to put it back together, which is why both must travel and both must be labelled.
An encrypted Mac volume is recoverable with the password or the recovery key, and not without them. The work is ordinary once the volume can be unlocked. If the key was only ever in an Apple account nobody can now reach, that is the end of it, and it is better said early than after an invoice.
The backup disk mounts but the sparse bundle refuses to open, or the restore stops partway through. Time Machine backups are ordinary volumes with an unusual structure on top, and a damaged one can generally be taken apart and read directly rather than through the restore interface.
Macs spent two decades on HFS+, a file system with a catalogue file at its heart listing every file and folder on the volume. Damage that catalogue and the disk looks empty while every byte is still present. That is a well-understood failure and rebuilding the catalogue from the surrounding structures is routine bench work.
From High Sierra onwards Apple moved to APFS, and it behaves quite differently. APFS is copy-on-write, so changed blocks are written to new locations rather than over the old ones. It uses containers holding several volumes that share free space, and it takes snapshots constantly. All of that is good for reliability and awkward for recovery, because a damaged container can leave the volumes inside it unmountable even though the data is present, and the pointers describing where everything lives are spread across the disk instead of gathered in one catalogue.
The redeeming feature is those snapshots. An APFS volume frequently holds earlier versions of its own structure, and it is often possible to reach a consistent picture from an hour or a day before whatever went wrong. It is the reason an APFS job that looks hopeless in Disk Utility is worth a proper look.
A Fusion Drive is not one disk. It is a small SSD and a large hard drive bonded into a single logical volume by software, with the operating system keeping frequently used data on the fast half. Neither half is readable on its own: the file system spans both, so a job with only one of them is a job with holes through every large file. Both drives must be sent, each labelled so the pair can be matched, and the failure is usually the mechanical half.
FileVault encrypts the whole volume. With the login password or the recovery key it adds a step and no real difficulty, and the drive sits in the encrypted band at £400 + VAT rather than the ordinary £300 + VAT. Without either, the mathematics is the answer and no laboratory can do anything about it. It is worth finding the key before sending the drive, because the answer changes completely depending on it.
Time Machine deserves a word because it produces false comfort. It is a fine backup while it is running, and it is frequently not running: the disk was unplugged in March, the backup has been failing quietly since an upgrade, or the sparse bundle on a network share has become corrupt. If a Mac has just failed, check the backup before assuming it will save you, and if the backup disk is the thing that failed, it can usually be read directly rather than through the restore process.
This is the part of the page that matters most and it is the least welcome. On MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models with M-series processors, and on the current iMac and Mac mini, the storage is not a drive. It is flash memory soldered directly to the mainboard and encrypted by the Secure Enclave inside the processor itself. There is no disk to remove, and the memory chips are cryptographically tied to that specific machine.
If such a Mac has a failed logic board, the data on it cannot be recovered. Not by this bench, not by any bench, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The keys live in silicon that has stopped working. If the board still runs and only the operating system is broken, that is a different and often recoverable situation, and target disk mode or a recovery boot may get the files off — but it is the board's health, not the memory's, that decides.
The practical consequence is that Time Machine or an iCloud copy is not a nice extra on a modern Mac. It is the only thing standing between you and total loss, because the traditional last resort of pulling the drive out no longer exists. Intel Macs from roughly 2012 to 2020 vary: some have removable SSDs, some have proprietary blade drives that can be read with the right adaptor, and some are soldered. The diagnostic will tell you which you have and it costs nothing.
A single Mac drive — a mechanical disk out of an older iMac, an SSD, or a proprietary blade — is £300 + VAT. A FileVault or otherwise encrypted volume is £400 + VAT, the same band as a recorder disk, and it needs the password or the recovery key. A Fusion pair is quoted as a single job rather than as two drives, because it is one logical volume. An Apple RAID or a multi-disk Mac Pro is the array band, from £500 + VAT.
The other bands are unchanged: £250 + VAT for cards, USB sticks and pen drives; £800 + VAT for forensic investigation with a written report, or £400 + VAT for a binary image with deleted-file extraction and no report. Ransomware on a Mac is priced as ordinary media.
Logical Mac work carries no fix, no fee: a corrupt APFS container, a damaged HFS+ catalogue, deleted files, a Time Machine bundle that will not open. Electronic and mechanical failures, chip-level work, DVR jobs and forensic jobs are the published exclusions, and physical work takes half the quoted figure upfront. The free diagnostic closes two working days after the drive is booked in and a single drive is normally finished two to four working days after you approve the figure.
The drive travels and the Mac stays at home. That applies to an iMac, a Mac mini, a Mac Pro and a MacBook with a removable SSD, and an Apple repair shop will free one in minutes if you would rather not open the case. A Fusion machine is the exception in the other direction: both drives come out and both travel, each labelled so the pair is obvious at the far end. An external Time Machine disk travels sealed in its own case, and a NAS travels whole with its disks in the bays.
Say which model and roughly which year it is when you send it, and say whether FileVault was ever switched on, because those two facts change what happens first. If you have the recovery key, send it with the drive or have it ready when you ring. Post to Oxford Data Recovery, John Eccles House, Oxford Science Park, Robert Robinson Avenue, Littlemore, Oxford OX4 4GP, or bring it in on a weekday between 9:00am and 5:30pm. From Coventry it is about an hour down the M40. Phones and tablets of every kind are outside what this bench takes, Apple ones included, so please do not send one.
The Apple work arriving from this part of the Midlands is heavily creative and academic: design studios and photographers around Leamington and Warwick, video and marketing work in the city, architects and consultancies with iMacs full of project files, and a steady flow of MacBooks from Coventry and Warwick universities in the weeks before a submission deadline. The recurring theme is a Mac used as the only copy, with Time Machine either unplugged or quietly failing for six months.
Send the drive rather than the Mac, tell us the model and whether FileVault was on, and the free diagnostic does the rest.
One drive in a padded box is the easiest parcel there is, and it is how most of this work turns up. A disk that has already begun to misbehave would far rather be still and wrapped than rattling about in a rucksack, and something posted from Warwickshire before the last collection is generally on the Oxford bench first thing.
As a rule the storage comes out and the machine stays where it is. That applies to a laptop, a tower, an iMac and to the recorder sitting under a counter. Taking equipment apart is not something this bench does, and a repair shop will free a drive in a few minutes. Two things go the other way: an external drive stays sealed inside its own case, and a NAS travels as a complete unit with its disks still in their bays. A Fusion Mac is a third case — both of its drives come out and travel together, each one labelled. The single situation nobody can work around is memory soldered flat onto a mainboard, which is how Apple Silicon Macs and a good many slim laptops are built: if the storage will not unbolt, there is no parcel to send.
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Put Oxford Data Recovery on the label. From Coventry it is roughly fifty-five miles straight down the M40, about an hour if you would rather drive it in than post it. Either way you are told the moment it is logged, and the free diagnostic finishes two working days later.
Unsure what ought to go in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you seal it, or work through the free online diagnostic and let it do the asking.