This one arrives every spring, usually a fortnight before somebody clears the cupboard out. A "crashed MacBook Pro" that "no longer works and has been replaced", and a fair question attached: are the photographs still on it, and can they be got at "before we trash/recycle the old laptop". A crash is the computer failing to run; the storage that holds the pictures is a separate component and usually survives it entirely. Whether we can help depends on one thing only, and it is worth knowing before you post anything: whether the storage comes out. On the older MacBook Pro the drive or the SSD blade unscrews and is read on its own. On a 2018-or-later machine the flash is soldered to the logic board, and that is work we do not take on — we would rather tell you that on the phone than after the postage.
| Media | A MacBook Pro that crashed and no longer runs, already replaced, kept back only because it may still hold family photographs and documents. |
| Reported situation | MacBook Pro · crashed, will not run · already replaced · thought to hold photographs of sentimental value · owner wants them off before the machine is recycled. |
| Fault class | Machine fault over storage of unknown state — the failure may sit in the board, the power section or the storage itself, and only the last of those threatens the data. Recovery needs the storage and nothing else, provided it is a drive or blade that can be removed. Storage soldered to the logic board is outside our intake. |
| Equipment used | The machine opened and the storage identified as removable or not · a removable drive or SSD blade taken out and read behind a hardware write-blocker in line · imaged out to DeepSpar, the Apple filesystem parsed in R-Studio, the photographs and documents checked by rendering rather than by name, then written to fresh media. |
A crashed Mac is a machine that will not start. It is not, by itself, a statement about the files. Boards fail, power sections fail, screens fail, and each of those stops the computer dead while leaving the storage sitting there with everything on it exactly as it was the last time anyone looked. That is why we would always rather see a dead Mac than a healthy one that has been erased: the first is usually a retrieval job, the second is usually nothing at all.
The one question that decides everything is whether the storage can be separated from the machine. Older MacBook Pros — the ones with a spinning drive, and the Retina models with a removable SSD blade — hand it over readily, and once it is out it can be read on the bench regardless of what killed the computer. From 2018 onwards Apple soldered the flash directly to the logic board and tied it to the machine's own encryption. We stopped taking that work on, and we say so plainly rather than accept the parcel and disappoint you later.
So the honest position, before anybody commits to anything, is this. If the storage unscrews and its own electronics are sound — which is the usual outcome when the fault that stopped the machine was elsewhere — the photographs come off in full and the laptop can go for recycling with a clear conscience. If the storage itself is what failed, that becomes an ordinary drive recovery and is priced as one. Either way the diagnostic costs nothing and is finished inside 2 working days of arrival, and you decide with a figure in front of you.
The machine was opened and the storage identified — a removable drive or blade in this class of MacBook Pro, taken out and connected through a write-blocker so that nothing could be written back onto it. It read cleanly, which put the fault firmly in the machine rather than the data. It was copied to an image on DeepSpar, the Apple filesystem parsed in R-Studio, and the photographs and documents opened and rendered to confirm they were genuinely usable before anything went onto fresh media.
Storage removed, imaged and read; the photographs and documents recovered onto a fresh drive, and the old laptop released for recycling with nothing of value left inside it. The diagnostic cost nothing and produced one fixed written figure including VAT. This one read as a logical job — the hardware holding the data was sound — so it ran on no fix, no fee terms: had the pictures not come back, there would have been no bill. Had the storage itself needed opening, half the quote would have been payable before that stage, with the balance owing only on success.
Check before the tip, not after — once the machine has gone, the storage and everything on it has gone with it, and nobody has ever recovered a laptop from a skip. A crash stops the computer running; it rarely touches the storage, so the photographs are usually sitting there intact behind whatever failed. The only thing that decides whether we can help is whether that storage comes out: older MacBook Pros hand over a drive or an SSD blade quite happily, while anything from 2018 onward has the flash soldered to the logic board and is outside what we take. One phone call establishes which you have, and costs nothing.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
Apple's test asks whether the storage answers; when it does not, the module comes out and is read on its own terms
A graphics failure is a fault in the picture, not in the storage — the drive comes out and never needs a screen
The backup has a fault of its own, and it is the second failure that turns an inconvenience into an emergency
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.