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iMac Pro 2017 iMac Pro suddenly went completely dead.

Turnpike

Turnpike

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 2, 2011
586
326
New York City!
My 2017, iMac Pro, which I bought refurbished from Apple about five years ago, suddenly went dead. I assume it is a power unit or motherboard, unless someone else knows of some thing I can try on a machine that shows no life at all.

My question is that I have been using the internal hard drive, with a lot of recent work on it, is there any way I can access it on a completely dead machine by connecting it to another machine or a MacBook? It’s running the latest iOS whatever that is, but if the machine doesn’t power up whatsoever, is it possible to access the hard drive from another device? Either to look around on it, or to clone it or whatever.
 
This reads like you don't have an external backup like maybe created by the free Time Machine app? If so, you can buy the replacement Mac and restore from the Time Machine backup. That should get you back to just about exactly where you left off (up to the very last hour of new file creation may be lost at most).

However, if you have no backup, you might take the iMac in to see if Apple can get it going again. It could be as simple as a dead power supply. If Apple can't get it going, you probably want to get the drive out of it (either you do it or if not comfortable, get a local shop to do it for you), install it in an enclosure or a bare drive dock and then use Migration Assistant on a new Mac to basically restore from that drive.

OR, you may want to start over from scratch with a new Silicon Mac and bring over only what you know you want on the new machine from that old drive. Manual migration like that may be something you do slowly- as you realize you need files that were on the old iMac- over weeks or months or even a year or two. This option will likely be "cleaner" than using Migration Assistant... but more complicated and likely to take a good while to actually get everything over that you will want to use on the new one.

Whether paragraph 2 or 3, ASAP after setting up your new Mac, set up Time Machine and back it up to at least one external drive... but ideally TWO drives with a goal of storing one of the backups offsite (to protect against fire/flood/theft) and regularly rotating the on-site TM backup with the off-site TM backup drive. I swap my TM drives on a monthly schedule but your amount of time should be driven by how quickly you are creating new files (NOT yet backed up on the offsite drive).

A good test to determine that is imagine a catastrophic loss (fire/flood/theft). At what point since you last took a fresh backup off site would feel like you lost too many new files to recreate from scratch? Maybe that's also monthly? Maybe that's weekly? Bi-weekly? Whatever the answer, rotate your two TM drives on that schedule and you'll never be in a spot where you appear to be right now.

Most people gain massive attraction to creating backups in THIS situation- when they are facing a potential loss of access to all of their files. In your case, loss risk is low... but you need access to the drive in what is probably a dead Mac. Getting it out of there should put it back in use, so you can recover your files. If so, consider yourself lucky if you have no other backup. If the drive itself failed, you may have no economical way to recover data and be learning about options that can cost up to THOUSANDS to recover your data.

When you get it back, get your backup strategy and hardware in place so this can never happen again. It could be much worse next time.
 
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The storage in an iMac Pro is encrypted- and that encryption is paired to the specific Secure Enclave on that particular logic board, so if the computer is really dead, and you don't have backups, the data is, unfortunately, lost.
The storage modules are also not standard and cannot be installed in an external enclosure.
www.ifixit.com

iMac Pro Teardown

We dropped $4,999 to get our hands on the hot new space gray Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard—and Apple was generous enough to throw in a brand-new...
www.ifixit.com www.ifixit.com
 
  • Wow
Reactions: HobeSoundDarryl
HobeSoundDarryl said:
For OPs sake, I was hoping #3 was wrong about that being proactively enabled but it appears that is the case. See this article.

So if OP doesn't have backups and the data is very important, it appears OP is going to need to get whatever conked on that iMac fixed. Hopefully, it is as simple as dead power supply. Sorry OP. I hope you DO have a backup.
Click to expand...
Storage on T2 and Apple Silicon Macs is always encrypted even if FileVault is turned off.
 
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chrfr said:
The storage in an iMac Pro is encrypted- and that encryption is paired to the specific Secure Enclave on that particular logic board, so if the computer is really dead, and you don't have backups, the data is, unfortunately, lost.
The storage modules are also not standard and cannot be installed in an external enclosure.
www.ifixit.com

iMac Pro Teardown

We dropped $4,999 to get our hands on the hot new space gray Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard—and Apple was generous enough to throw in a brand-new...
www.ifixit.com www.ifixit.com
Click to expand...
are you saying that if you put the ssd/nand modules in a second imac pro that it still would not work or be readable ??
 
macguru9999 said:
are you saying that if you put the ssd/nand modules in a second imac pro that it still would not work or be readable ??
Click to expand...
That’s exactly correct.
These documents provide some detail. One is linked above in post 4.

Security features on your iMac Pro

Learn about built-in security features on your Mac, including encrypted storage and secure boot.
support.apple.com

Protect data on your Mac with FileVault

Turn on FileVault to add an extra layer of security to the encrypted data on your Mac.
support.apple.com
 
OP:

Looks like your only hope at this point is to take it to an Apple Store (not a 3rd-party provider) and see if they can revive it.

Otherwise, unless you have a backup, you're probably not getting the data back.
 
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  • Like
Reactions: HobeSoundDarryl
Turnpike said:
My 2017, iMac Pro, which I bought refurbished from Apple about five years ago, suddenly went dead. I assume it is a power unit or motherboard, unless someone else knows of some thing I can try on a machine that shows no life at all.

My question is that I have been using the internal hard drive, with a lot of recent work on it, is there any way I can access it on a completely dead machine by connecting it to another machine or a MacBook? It’s running the latest iOS whatever that is, but if the machine doesn’t power up whatsoever, is it possible to access the hard drive from another device? Either to look around on it, or to clone it or whatever.
Click to expand...
I used to have the same model and after about a year, the same thing happened to me. Turns out it was a bad motherboard and Apple fixed it no charge. One of the reasons I love and respect APple, is their excellent customer service. About 6 months later I had it go dead again and though oh boy. It turned out I was using a develop build of macOS and there was a known bug that froze the machine. They fixed it in 3 days with no charge. It was out of warranty but they fixed it for free. Kudos to Apple as they have always treated me great.
 
Wow, I didn't realize iMac Pro's treated data differently than other iMacs... Part of the time I use a "work computer" which is an installation of Monterey on an external SSD that I plugged into this iMac. That SSD is also unable to work on any of my other iMacs, even if the OS is updated. 2015, 2019, and my iMac Pro is a 2017. I thought using my work set up on an external SSD would let me plug into any other iMac and keep going if there should ever be a problem, but am I correct from the above that this is not the case?
 
You have an EXTERNAL SSD, as well?
What FORMAT is it?

If the SSD is formatted for APFS, it might not be "mountable" on the earlier Macs if they're running HFS+.

Do you have a Mac at work that can mount this drive?
And this drive has your important data on it?
If that's the case, get ANOTHER drive, format it to HFS+, and copy your data onto it.
 
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