MacBook Pro SSD Data Recovery Help!

[andyturk]

Man, that's a heartbreaking end to the story.

Managing archival data storage isn't easy. Cloud services that are supposed to store our stuff forever have to work really hard to build that safety out of imperfect components. Backblaze is one such service, and they've been publishing their internal hard drive failure statistics for several years: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020

Takeaway points: even spinning drives aren't perfect. And no matter what OS you're using, the disks/SSDs are all going to come from the same handful of vendors.

I use Apple hardware for work and run Lightroom. Images are stored on an external SSD drive, so if one computer dies I can easily move the files to another machine. I also back that SSD up to a RAID box elsewhere on my home network. But if there was a building fire, I could still lose all of it.

 

[rfaspen]

I bet just the SSD failed and the OP could revive his machine with a new drive. Maybe a disk drive this time?

SSD usually fail completely when they fail. See my earlier post about that. Disk drives (external) for daily backup is a good strategy. (Disk drive = rotating platter magnetic disk storage. Preferably 7200rpm.)

 

[Godfrey]

Any system with an SSD drive could have had exactly the same failure and been just as unrecoverable. The service personnel of any other company would have given you exactly the same recommendation if they were honest: buy a replacement machine (or failed component). For any computer, a backup system and policy should be installed at the same time that the system is configured for first use. It's that important.

Again: Why do you blame Apple specifically? The Apple systems are no more frangible or likely to have a problem than any others you might buy; industry statistics once seemed to indicate that the opposite is the case, but I haven't looked at any of those statistics in quite a while now. In my personal experience, I've seen fewer and fewer issues with the hardware and operating system given current Apple products.

I'm sorry if this sounds irritating to you, but it's an important and significant thing to understand, remember, and act upon, in a positive manner, right now when you need to either have what you already own repaired (minus your lost data) or need to buy a replacement system. If you don't want to buy another Apple system, whatever other system you buy is just as potentially frangible and you should plan that whatever you buy to replace this one includes the installation of a backup system. If you don't, you're just setting yourself up for another potential loss and more emotional impact.

I've been involved and been using computing hardware and software for my work and play since 1983. I would not dream, even then, of having a system without a backup system and policy in place. As a result, I have not suffered any emotional impact from the loss of many drives (and cpu boxes) over the years, other than the fleeting annoyance at delay in what I'd planned to do on a given day when I had to re-gen a broken hard drive or the expense when I needed to replace a failed machine. Those are transitory annoyances, far far less long lasting or significant than losing several years worth of my photographs, writings, or financial records.

I'd rather annoy you for a moment with a reminder to be objective and take positive action than see you suffer a similar loss a second time. Blaming a brand, a company, and acting on that by not buying another product from them instead of accepting your own actions is misplaced blame in my opinion.

There is no such thing as a 100% defect free manufactured product: any of them can suffer a catastrophic failure at some point or another, regardless of brand, price point, or statistically inferred quality; this is a fact.

G

I already know this Godfrey, and those comments are really not helpful. I took full responsibility if you see my references to mismanagement of my backups all over my posts. I'm just ultimately disappointed in the catastrophic hardware failure when I didn't mishandle the computer or anything. The saying goes "you get what you paid for" and what I paid for is hardware that just crashed and ultimately turned my whole computer into garbage when it had minimal use, not to mention my files being lost. When I brought it into the Apple store, they took 5 mins out of their day, and told me just to buy a new one. This $2k+ suggestion in addition to my files lost is a lot to digest. As we all know, these things are not cheap, so with the hardware failing (never had this happen with any other computer), and Apple telling me to "just spend another $2k+", yeah my faith in their product is a bit shaken.

And yes, I know I should have been more on top of the backup but as I said in my original post, I had ordered a massive external hard drive for backing this up. It crashed while I was literally a few days away from the delivery of the drive. I posted the last message to simply complete the thread and send a cautionary tale to others not to do what I did, so how is that misplaced blame? Also, I'm heartbroken at this loss of files, so rubbing it in is really not helpful. Those comments could easily have just been kept to yourself. Nothing against you, but still. I realize you were trying your best to be helpful in the above comments, so I do appreciate that. It's just too fresh to feel "ok" about losing the files and out an expensive laptop.

 

[Godfrey]

Managing archival data storage isn't easy. ...

Takeaway points: even spinning drives aren't perfect. And no matter what OS you're using, the disks/SSDs are all going to come from the same handful of vendors.

I use Apple hardware for work and run Lightroom. Images are stored on an external SSD drive, so if one computer dies I can easily move the files to another machine. I also back that SSD up to a RAID box elsewhere on my home network. But if there was a building fire, I could still lose all of it.

It's not so hard really. The assessment must be made: how archival is archival enough? In other words, how much risk of loss is acceptable to you and suits your needs?

Maintaining my Apple computing systems for a reasonably low risk, I use a system organization that I define as SWAA ... System, Working, Archive1, Archive2. System drive storage is backed up with Apple's Time Machine to a dedicated backup volume locally, with certain things removed from the backup that I consider insignificant and/or transitory. Working is an external storage facility that ALL my photographs, videos, financial data, and writings are stored on. A1 and A2 are duplicated archive drives that include identical copies of the things skipped in the TM backup of S and all of W.

To handle the extraordinary case of an earthquake or power spike taking out my home or office, when I was generating a lot of new work and data regularly I would swap one of the A drives to a friend in another state in rotation every other month. That way the most I could lose of my important, valued data if the entire system were completely lost at home would be 2 months of new data—that was an acceptable risk to me then. I've since discontinued that practice as I've retired and the valuation of my archived data has been reduced since I no longer rely upon it for my living. (While, over the years, I did have one hard drive damaged by a power spike, and another damaged by an earthquake, I've not yet lost a system in its entirety...)

G

 

[willie_901]

...

I don't know if I ever want to buy another Mac at this point, and it's a huge bummer. ...

Please understand, I am saddened by the tragic loss of your photos. This is a terrible experience.

At the same time your computer was 7-8 years old. Electrical failure for Macs this old is rare – but not rare enough to ignore.

What happened to you is not Apple's fault.

...

I ultimately thought that upgrading to an SSD was the safer choice after using traditional platter based hard drives for years. Now I'm not so sure.

You can be sure using an internal SSD is a significant advantage in increased computer speeds.

You can be sure using an internal SSD for everyday computing tasks can be safe.

SSDs use controllers with error correction (ECC) algorithms.

Our country's defense, financial stability, all forms of infrastructure and corporations use SSD technology for desktop work because it is safe. At some point, for a short period of time, work used to create and defend technology and intellectual property responsible billions of dollars of annual cash flow existed solely on SSD internal drives.

A comprehensive study from 2016 revealed:

• SSD Drives have significantly lower replacement rates than spinning HDs
• SSDs have much higher uncorrectable error rates than spinning HDs

Another 2016 study claimed if drives are used for 300 TB of read-write cycles, a Samsung 840 series SSD is projected to last 21 years while spinning HDs have a 50% chance of failure after 6 years. 300 TB represents 40 GB data R/W per day for about 20 years.

There is no reason to assume a spinning HD had less risk during over 8 year period you used your Mac. But it is possible spinning HD failure is more likely to be recoverable since motor and, or controller failure is more common than head crashes (see below).

This tragedy could have easily happened in a different way with an internal magnetic HD. When a failure causes the read-write heads to impact a magnetic HD platter, the data is destroyed. These events are rare especially if the HD has active hard-drive protection technology. But if your Mac had a spinning HD and a cat jumped on it and knocked it over during intensive r/w head usage. You would loose all your data as well.

When the platter surface is intact, data recovery from damaged magnetic HDs is much more successful compared to SSDs with electrical damage. The cost of recovery is not trivial. You can be sure water damage, burnt or smashed magnetic drive recovery cost could easily start at $3,000.

 

[halfaninchawater]

Jordan,
We all understand what you're going thru. It's not fun. Just understand that all hard drives will fail! All spinning hard drives and all solid state drives will fail. No exceptions. It doesn't matter if they are attached to a Mac, a Windows PC, a Linux system or any other kind of computer you can name. All hard drives eventually fail.

Unfortunately the folks at the Apple store you visited prove once again, just because the are given the title "Apple Genius" does not mean they are very smart. Your computer can be revived with a new hard drive. The cost is minimal, and the Mac OS is online and can be downloaded for free. Yes it's an older computer but it still has life left in it if you want to revive it. It's an option the Apple store didn't give you, but it is do-able. I have a 2009 27" iMac that has had the hard drive replaced three times, all spinning drives. Every time I was lucky enough to have a backup in place.

Once you get up and going, new system or old, Google Peter Krogh and the 3-2-1 Backup Rule. He has some excellent back up advice.


Dave