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Sorry, a tangential question ... my friend's 2011 Macbook Air's hard drive gave up and she has all of her photos there. The Macbook doesn't boot, just shows a w

Sorry, a tangential question ... my friend's 2011 Macbook Air's hard drive gave up and she has all of her photos there. The Macbook doesn't boot, just shows a white screen. Can the photos be salvaged somehow?

hunter-gatherer 4y ago
I'm not sure off the top of my head if MacOS was encrypting the drive at that time, but you might try plugging the drive into FTK Imager or Autopsy. I believe both of these tools will do some data carving. But before you do that, make sure the issue isn't the hard drive itself. If the hard drive is damaged, you may still be able to recover data, but it'll need to be done by someone who knows what they are doing. If the drive is spinning irregularly, or clicking, or not recognized by another system you might have issues. Source - I used to work in a digital forensics lab.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  thank you!
- netsharc 4y ago
  Wow, my guess was since it was 2011, they would've still been using an old-fashioned spinning disk or probably an SSD with that form factor and normal SATA connection, but they were already using M.2 SSD, but a Frankenstein one where an adapter is needed: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/n4Fo16YKi45Y5JxL.full https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/n4Fo16YKi45Y5JxL.f... Source: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Mid+2011+Solid-State+Drive+Replacement/6317 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Mid+2011+So...
  - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
    That is surprising! I also assumed that being a 2011 it would be a spinning disk drive.
    - sgerenser 4y ago
      Nope, MacBook Air switched over to flash storage shortly after it was introduced (looks like EveryMac confirms it was the 2008 and 2009 higher end models then all 2010 models: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-2-duo-1.86-13-late-2010-specs.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook...).
nrclark 4y ago
Try putting the laptop in "target disk" mode, and see if you can access it from another Mac. It'll make the laptop act like an external hard-drive, and then you can plug it into a different computer and copy off your files (or maybe try a filesystem repair)
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  will try that, thanks!

hunter-gatherer 4y ago

I'm not sure off the top of my head if MacOS was encrypting the drive at that time, but you might try plugging the drive into FTK Imager or Autopsy. I believe both of these tools will do some data carving. But before you do that, make sure the issue isn't the hard drive itself. If the hard drive is damaged, you may still be able to recover data, but it'll need to be done by someone who knows what they are doing. If the drive is spinning irregularly, or clicking, or not recognized by another system you might have issues. Source - I used to work in a digital forensics lab.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
thank you!
netsharc 4y ago
Wow, my guess was since it was 2011, they would've still been using an old-fashioned spinning disk or probably an SSD with that form factor and normal SATA connection, but they were already using M.2 SSD, but a Frankenstein one where an adapter is needed: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/n4Fo16YKi45Y5JxL.full https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/n4Fo16YKi45Y5JxL.f... Source: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Mid+2011+Solid-State+Drive+Replacement/6317 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+11-Inch+Mid+2011+So...
- hunter-gatherer 4y ago
  That is surprising! I also assumed that being a 2011 it would be a spinning disk drive.
  - sgerenser 4y ago
    Nope, MacBook Air switched over to flash storage shortly after it was introduced (looks like EveryMac confirms it was the 2008 and 2009 higher end models then all 2010 models: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-2-duo-1.86-13-late-2010-specs.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook...).

nrclark 4y ago

Try putting the laptop in "target disk" mode, and see if you can access it from another Mac. It'll make the laptop act like an external hard-drive, and then you can plug it into a different computer and copy off your files (or maybe try a filesystem repair)

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
will try that, thanks!