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Dead MacBook (white) - retrieve hard drive?

M

MrJames

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 20, 2013
4
0
My MacBook died over a year ago when I unfortunately spilt some liquid onto the keyboard. I am wondering if it is still possible for me to get all of the documents, photos, music etc from its hard drive? Can I do this at home or is it a specialist job? If I can do it at home, could you let me know the equipment that I will need and the procedure?

The computer no longer switches on, nor does the charger light up when attached.

Thanks!
 
MrJames said:
My MacBook died over a year ago when I unfortunately spilt some liquid onto the keyboard. I am wondering if it is still possible for me to get all of the documents, photos, music etc from its hard drive? Can I do this at home or is it a specialist job? If I can do it at home, could you let me know the equipment that I will need and the procedure?

The computer no longer switches on, nor does the charger light up when attached.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Hard Drives are vacuum sealed, so if the HDD is not punctured nor the chipset got wet, then you are pretty much set to retrieve all your info.

You would need to remove the HDD from your mac, a power cable and a data cable and some application to retrieve the data. This would be pretty much it.

However, I am not familiar with white macs nor mac software as I am new to apple word, so I can't give you specifics on cables and which application to use. But that is pretty much what you would need to do and should be straight forward.

Hopefully someone comes and clarifies which cables you should use.

EDIT: This is a DIY, home easy type of job, based on what you will recover. If you were to recover sensitive information, such as bank accounts, clients, business stuff, I would leave it to the pros, because more likely your income would depend on it.
 
Thank you for this information, Luisito. Really appreciate any help at all on this.

So, does the hard drive have a USB slot in it?

Sorry - I'm mega thick when it comes to tech!
 
MrJames said:
Thank you for this information, Luisito. Really appreciate any help at all on this.

So, does the hard drive have a USB slot in it?

Sorry - I'm mega thick when it comes to tech!
Click to expand...

No... you will need to get an adaptor something like this one. Just remove the drive from the Macbook then pop it in the adaptor. You can then read the drive over USB with another Mac and grab your data.
 
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MrJames said:
Thank you for this information, Luisito. Really appreciate any help at all on this.

So, does the hard drive have a USB slot in it?

Sorry - I'm mega thick when it comes to tech!
Click to expand...

Oh no!

USB it only for some external Hard Drives.
If you were asking me about a Windows environment, I would be able to guide you on a heart beat. I would tell you to get a SATA to USB cable, and a molex or SATA power connection from your desktop PSU, but that is not the case, you are not using windows nor have a PC desktop.

Because Apple works quite different, specially the way things are connected on the inside, I would recommend you to do some research online and see if you find anything until a hero shows up here and educate us both. Haha. :)

But you will find that the idea is pretty simply, and you shouldn't have any trouble doing it yourself.

Hey, I just thought... perhaps there is a Apple HDD to External HDD kit out there, there are many available for Windows based HDDs but no so sure about Apple, if you find one that matches your format/connection and size, then you will be pretty much set up.

EDIT: Good guy Weaselboy just gave you a link to what I was talking about, those enclosure kits make life easier!
 
Thank you both so much for your help!

Weaselboy, I think that will certainly make my life a lot easier - last question. Does one size fit all?
 
MrJames said:
Thank you both so much for your help!

Weaselboy, I think that will certainly make my life a lot easier - last question. Does one size fit all?
Click to expand...

Your Macbook will have a 2.5 inch SATA drive, so any 2.5 inch SATA/USB enclosure will work.

You can also use a cable adaptor like this.

Both are pretty common and I bet you could find one of these two solutions at Best Buy or Radio Shack if you were looking to knock this out today.
 
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