I accidentally damaged my 10-year-old Mac by getting water in the charging port, which ruined the circuits and now it won't charge. The Apple store couldn't help and suggested they wouldn't disassemble it to recover my data. I heard that there's still a chance to repair it or extract data. Is it really possible to get my data back, or should I just give up?
3 Answers
You might be able to recover your data by removing the hard drive and connecting it to another computer with recovery tools. Just be careful not to reformat the filesystem or you could lose your data.
It’s unlikely that your Mac will suddenly start working again after the water spill, especially if it was powered on after the incident. If the hard drive is working, you can take it out and extract the data, but if it's dead, recovery could get pricey. Given your Mac's age, it might not be worth the hassle unless the data is really important to you.
Even if the charging port or motherboard is damaged, your hard drive is likely still okay. You can find a tutorial online to learn how to take it apart and remove the hard drive yourself. Once it’s out, you could connect it to another Mac using a USB-to-SATA adapter to access your data.
It’s been a while since I worked on a Mac, but they used to be pretty easy to repair. Just hope that they haven't soldered everything to the motherboard since then!
You're right about the costs; swapping the circuit boards from a similar hard drive could work, but it’s tough and could get expensive quickly. Plus, if it’s encrypted, recovery might be almost impossible.