When you stand at the Genius Bar with a Mac that will not boot, you can expect to receive good hardware service and to be politely informed that your files are not going to be included in the repair. The purpose of this blog entry is to document that boundary: what Apple will do, what the use of the “erase” function within the macOS Recovery will erase, and where a data recovery lab comes in.
Apple’s business model is very clear about backing-up prior to taking their equipment in for service. Since service may involve replacing the hardware components upon which your files reside, Apple’s service desk is a hardware desk, not a recovery lab, by design.
The flow of the service has been consistent throughout our experience: diagnose the problem, provide a quote for the cost of the repair, ask if there was a recent backup made. Once the service requires replacement of either the hard drive or logic board, the original parts leave the premises along with all the data stored on those parts. While Apple does offer services for transferring data from one functioning machine to another, these services are designed for migrating user data from one functional machine to another (not extracting user data from a non-functional machine). Apple support will not open a failed drive nor attempt to recover data from failed component level, because neither of these activities fall under Apple’s scope of service and the physical stores are not equipped to perform such functions. When arriving at the store with a dead hard drive and without having backed up your computer via Time Machine recently, we have come to understand that you will be referred to a specialist.
The recovery environment tends to scare customers much more than necessary, and reassure them in entirely the wrong ways.
Booting into Recovery mode (Cmd-R on Intel systems, holding down the power button on Apple silicon) makes no changes to the disk at all: fact, not myth. ‘Reinstall macOS’ simply installs a fresh version of macOS over the top of your existing system and in the normal course will keep all accounts and documents in their normal locations. Internet Recovery is just like this environment streaming down from Apple when your local copy is damaged; equally not scary. Only two options truly announce themselves as destructive: Disk Utility → Erase, and ‘Erase All Content and Settings’ do exactly what their names say.
While you may be able to use Disk Utility’s First Aid (a tool intended for helping restore disks) on a misbehaving Mac, First Aid does read passes back & forth over the length of the disk repeatedly until it completes its tests. An install that has become stuck in a boot loop is likely wasting what little time remains on the drive each time you try to start up. This can be harmless when used on a functioning system but these types of operations are costly when performed on systems that are struggling due to problems within the system itself.
More recent Macs have increased the consequences of failure as T2 and Apple silicon boards encrypt the storage and bind it directly to those specific boards. A failed board means a problem with access to your data. In older Fusion Drives (which were available in certain models of iMac), one volume was split onto two different drives, one being an HDD, the other being an SSD. Both parts need to be present in order to properly utilise either part of the system. When a Mac fails to power on entirely or displays the greyed out disk icon and/or the question mark folder, the productive action to take is to do the exact opposite of attempting again: unplug it, create an image of your storage (board level where required, as well as providing your FileVault key should you use encryption) and recreate your APFS/HFS+ structure from this image. This is essentially the process we follow with our Mac and MacBook recovery service.
No, Apple doesn’t provide this type of service. At the Genius Bar, the geniuses will determine what hardware caused the issue and give you a price quote for repairs. If the repair replaces the drive or logic board then any data on the original component will also be gone. They always recommend creating a backup. They refer customers without backups to third party services.
It won’t delete anything; it creates an independent maintenance environment. The “Reinstall macOS” option from within that environment leaves your account(s) and files alone unless otherwise stated. Any destructive processes come with “erase” in their names: Disk Utility’s Erase, and ‘Erase All Content and Settings’.
Normally, no. Once an APFS or HFS+ formatted disk becomes greyed (or “un-readable”) then typically the internal file structure has been damaged but the actual data remains intact. The next important decision is to decline Disk Utility’s prompt to erase/repair your disk; shut off your computer and have an image of your drive made so that we can rebuild the file system from the image.
A free 48 hour diagnostic on the bench, as well as a written quote for all repairs before any work begins, including handling of FileVault encryption using your own recovery key.