Soldered storage and a dead logic board - recovered by repairing the board enough to image the flash in place.
A designer's MacBook Pro took a drink spill and wouldn't power on afterwards, with active client work and personal files on board. These models present a particular challenge that surprises a lot of people: the storage is soldered directly onto the logic board, so there is no drive to simply unplug and read in another machine. If the board is dead, reaching the data means dealing with the board itself. Liquid also leaves corrosion behind that quietly continues to do damage, so it has to be addressed before anything can be powered safely.
Under magnification we found corrosion across parts of the board and traced the damage to the power circuitry the storage depends on. The flash chips themselves looked intact — the problem was that the board could no longer deliver them power correctly. The goal, then, was not to fully repair the laptop but to restore just enough of the board to read the storage one time.
We cleaned the corrosion and carried out board-level repairs to bring the relevant power rails back to life — enough to read the flash even though the machine still wasn't fully functional. We then imaged the storage, working against a copy on the PC3000 and validating the data as it came across. On these machines the storage is also encrypted by the hardware, so the recovered data is only readable with the owner's account credentials, which were provided; without them, even a perfect image would yield nothing usable.
From the decrypted image we rebuilt the file system and confirmed the designer's client work and personal files opened correctly before writing everything to fresh media.
We recovered around 96% of the storage, including the active client work, over eight working days of careful board-level repair. The case is a reminder that on modern Macs the storage can't be separated from the machine the way it once could — which makes an automatic backup, whether Time Machine or a cloud service, more important than ever.
PC3000 — imaging and recovery carried out in-house. Every job is imaged before any recovery work begins, and the original media is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Recovering your data starts with getting the device to us. Pack it safely, add your contact details, and send it over — after we run a free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work begins.
Posting it in? We recommend a tracked, insured service. Prefer to drop it off? You’re welcome Monday–Friday, 9am–5:30pm — please still package the device as above.
If you need more information on our data recovery service, fill out the form with more detail about your issue and an engineer will review it and give you a custom quote.
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Yes — including failed drives, corrupt APFS, Fusion Drives and liquid-damaged MacBooks, where soldered storage is recovered at board level.
From £300 plus VAT for models with a removable drive, and from £550 plus VAT where the storage is soldered to the logic board. No fix, no fee on most jobs.
Yes, with your account password. FileVault and hardware encryption are only recoverable for the device's owner.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.