Devices · Apple laptops and desktops
Once the free look has established what went wrong, reckon on £300 + VAT. A Mac differs in three ways, and none of the three stops the job. Its encryption was already running the day you first pressed the power button. Its flash, on most models, is not a component anybody can unplug. And where there is a Fusion pair, macOS has spread one volume over two separate disks. Anything you download stops dead at the first of them; on this bench all three are ordinary steps. Put the password in with the machine before it leaves Nottingham.
Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
0115 8220606
| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| A flashing question mark on a folder | It has no disk it can start from | Leave it switched off and have the drive tested |
| A crossed-out circle as it tries to start | macOS is there, and will not load | The drive first, then the container |
| First Aid reports errors and then gives up | APFS damage beyond anything Disk Utility can mend | Take the image first, decide afterwards |
| Error -119930868 from com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter | That APFS volume will not mount | Normally read back from a clone |
| Disk Utility: file system verify or repair has failed, error -69845 | Disk Utility has nothing left to try | Power it off and go no further |
| A boot loop, beginning with a macOS update | Firmware or container damage, and the files beneath it untouched | Comes back, as a rule |
Your device picks up a case number the day it arrives, and an engineer then establishes what has genuinely gone wrong — at no cost, and ahead of everything else. Two things come back to you together: a plain account of what can be lifted and what cannot, and one fixed figure in writing. Agree to that figure, or turn it down and pay nothing.
Under the lock — FileVault, a T2, or Apple silicon's Secure Enclave — every byte reads as ciphertext. Hand us the password and this turns into a routine recovery. The image gets captured in a form that will still unlock afterwards.
A drive held in by screws is imaged as any other would be. Soldered flash, or a failed board beneath it, takes the work down to component level. Those chips will still give up what they hold years after the machine last ran.
On a Fusion iMac the first half of a document may be on flash with the second half on the mechanical disk. Each is imaged on its own, and afterwards the CoreStorage or APFS structure that stitches the pair together is rebuilt. Documents come back, rather than the fragments they were kept as.
The file list reaches you before any invoice does. Say yes and it is billed; say no and it is not — and on most jobs, if nothing comes back there is nothing to pay. Whatever comes off goes home on media bought in for your case, carriage at our end. Nothing here is closed until you have opened those files on your own machine.
About the figures: Apple publishes none model by model, and soldered Mac flash has never been the subject of a public reliability study — Backblaze included. No honest MacBook failure rate can be printed by anyone. Apple alone has those numbers, and keeps them.
The Apple Store had written this iMac off already. Inside it was a Fusion Drive — flash bonded to a mechanical disk and presented by macOS as one volume — with the mechanical side failing. Both halves went separately to the imager, the pairing was reconstructed from those two images, and a Lace Market design studio had ten years of work back.
Yes. Either one will do — the login password, or the recovery key. Where the lock physically sits matters less than people expect: FileVault on machines of a certain age, a T2 on the late Intel models, and on Apple silicon the Secure Enclave. Without one of those two credentials the volume stays closed, at this lab and at every other.
Usually not. What you asked was a data question, and what came back was a repair answer. A repairer fits a fresh logic board; the failed board goes on a shelf, and your files are still on the flash attached to it. Recovering those is a separate trade, done on separate equipment.
Because macOS is showing you one icon where there are two physical disks: a small flash module tied to a slower mechanical one. Blocks belonging to a single file can be on either. Send one half only, and fragments are the whole of what returns. We image both, then reconstruct the map that binds them.
Usually — it turns into component work on the board. Send the password, leave the encryption chain intact, and each chip gets read exactly where it is. What never works is taking the flash off and trying to read it away from its own board.
The look costs nothing. What comes back to you is a file list — what opened, what did not — plus one figure to finish the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. Most jobs carry no fee at all unless the data comes back. Leave the drive switched off until you have that list.