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Apple Seemingly Unable To Recover Data From 2018 MacBook Pro With Touch Bar When Logic Board Fails (macrumors.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2016, when Apple introduced the first MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models, the repair experts at iFixit discovered the notebooks have non-removable SSDs, soldered to the logic board, prompting concerns that data recovery would not be possible if the logic board failed. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. Apple has a special tool for 2016 and 2017 models of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar that allows Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers to recover user data when the logic board fails, but the SSD is still intact. [...] But, unfortunately, it appears the tool will not work with the latest models.
Last week, iFixit completed a teardown of the 2018 MacBook Pro, discovering that Apple has removed the data recovery connector from the logic board on both 13-inch and 15-inch models with the Touch Bar, suggesting that the Customer Data Migration Tool can no longer be connected. MacRumors contacted multiple reliable sources at Apple Authorized Service Providers to learn more, and based on the information we obtained, it does appear that the tool is incompatible with 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models. Multiple sources claim that data cannot be recovered if the logic board has failed on a 2018 MacBook Pro. If the notebook is still functioning, data can be transferred to another Mac by booting the system in Target Disk Mode, and using Migration Assistant, which is the standard process that relies on Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Last week, iFixit completed a teardown of the 2018 MacBook Pro, discovering that Apple has removed the data recovery connector from the logic board on both 13-inch and 15-inch models with the Touch Bar, suggesting that the Customer Data Migration Tool can no longer be connected. MacRumors contacted multiple reliable sources at Apple Authorized Service Providers to learn more, and based on the information we obtained, it does appear that the tool is incompatible with 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models. Multiple sources claim that data cannot be recovered if the logic board has failed on a 2018 MacBook Pro. If the notebook is still functioning, data can be transferred to another Mac by booting the system in Target Disk Mode, and using Migration Assistant, which is the standard process that relies on Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Back up frequently, and always.
Bet that Apple's solution will be "make better backups, we'll sell you 1TB of iCloud for a low, low price." (push, push, nudge, nudge)
Ah well, one more reason not to buy "computers" with everything soldered in and no ports to speak of.
Safe =/= private.
"Cloud" = someone else's computer. Bugger the "Cloud" and the marketing droids who push it.
...or just buy a "computer" that works for you, and not to the manufactors agenda of complete and total vendor locking...
That's nice when you're traveling and don't want to carry an external storage device, and either choose not to trust the "cloud" with your data, or don't have the mobile bandwidth for it to work well. Why not give users a CHOICE of removing the internal storage device to recover their data?
Because Apple, that's why? Instead of a $100 SSD upgrade, they want to foist an entire new laptop on their users. Plus they can upsell iCloud space based on the risk of data loss.
Marketeers are arseholes, and Apple are the worst of the worst.
If you have stuff that you don't trust to the prying eyes of the cloud, you can encrypt it before shipping it off there. Any other objections?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If the computer has a removable HDD and only the motherboard failed, one can take the computer to a third-party repair shop which will stick the drive in a "sled" and recover the data. (Even if encrypted, as long as the user knows the appropriate passphrases.)
The ideal is NOT to need a specially blessed authorized dealer to work on the damn things.
TPM / secure enclave again ties your data to specific hardware, they also tie you to more hw that can fail.
I suspect that for the security conscious this is a feature, not a bug. Think about that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You have obviously never owned an Apple laptop — or, for that matter, any laptop containing a standalone GPU soldered onto the logic board. Now that we don't have spinning rust for storage, logic boards are likely the most common non-power-related failure mode by a large margin.
No professional in his or her right might should seriously consider a laptop in which a logic board failure results in the loss of access to storage. Even if you just lose the storage since the last backup, that could be a considerable loss, and this assumes that Time Machine is actually backing things up correctly and that no files on your backup drive have exhibited bit rot. In the worst case, you might lose considerably more, like your entire photo library or some other "why the hell did Apple mark this as a bundle" folder.
No, if true, this qualifies as a showstopper-level flaw, sufficient to get upper management fired. I can't imagine that even the "thin über alles" folks at Apple would be THAT stupid. It seems far more likely that somebody changed a connector, and that they don't have the right tools at the various Apple stores yet, which while qualifying as seriously incompetent, is probably a failure of the Apple Store and/or AppleCare management chain, rather than engineering.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Both lessons apply:
(1) Don't buy non-repairable junk.
(2) Back up frequently. Even a removable SSD or HDD can fail in a catastrophic manner.
So now when my drive fails 1 day after the warranty ends I have to buy a whole new computer? That is actually really shitty.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
This is not the norm in any laptop from any manufacturer. I challenge you to name me a single laptop vendor who is soldering [...]
The feature I was rather clearly talking about in the quote you pulled was the addition of hardware encryption in these new models. That quote had nothing to do with whether or not Apple solders their drives, and I'm not even sure how you could come away thinking that it did.
Let me be clear: soldering a drive in is a horrible practice that needs to stop. I find it reprehensible. It is NOT a feature. It's an anti-feature.
That said, the issue being discussed here is that users with the new models can't recover their data. Whether Apple solders the drives or not has no bearing on that issue. As I already said, the actual reason people can't recover their data is due to the addition of hardware encryption as a security feature in the new models. I don't like that they solder the drives in either, but our complaints about their soldering drives in have as much to do with the issue at hand as our complaints about their ridiculous laptop keyboards do, which is to say, nothing at all.
With all of that in mind, when I gave my "huhr duhr poer users need backups" argument, I wasn't offering a defense of soldering drives in. I was offering a defense of hardware encryption. I was saying that hardware encryption is worth it, and was lamenting that Slashdot did such a poor job of laying out the facts of the situation.
(As a quick aside, Apple has been soldering these drives in for years, which the article makes clear. I suspect that the poor summarizing is why you and others have been misled into thinking that this is the "latest instance of apple's short-sided [sic] thinking", even though it's neither a new practice nor relevant to the actual news: that stronger security features are rendering previous data recovery techniques impossible to use. Apple should stop soldering the drives, to be sure (that way we could upgrade or replace them), but even if they stopped, you still wouldn't be able to recover that data.)