Recover hard drive

[Tasaio]

Hi,

My wife's Macbook Air (2015 model) has crashed and won't boot at all (nothing happens at all when trying to turn it on). As it is old, we don't want to repair the computer, but unfortunately my wife kept important photos on the disk without any other backup.

I have removed the SSD disk and sent it to a company for data recovery, and the disk seems to be alive. However, they say that the disk is encrypted (which my wife knows nothing about), my guess would be probably with FileVault? The password for FileVault does not seem to be the same as the user account password. She doesn't have any recovery key.

Do any of you know of a way to recover this data without being able to boot from the disk? I can get a copy of the disk from the data recovery company, but I don't know if I would be able to do anything with it (can I boot a virtual machine from a disk copy in any way...?). I don't have access to any other Macbooks of the same model.

I'm sorry for bad English and would be very thankful for any help

 

[chscag]

You're not going to be able to recover that data without the FileVault password. I suspect that at one time or another, your wife allowed the FileVault encryption and a password was created.

Sorry for the bad news but that's the whole purpose of FileVault - to safeguard your data. Without being able to turn off the encryption, the data will be lost.

 

[Tasaio]

Thank you for the answer.

Then I guess the only way would be if I'm able to boot from the disk in some way so I can enter the account password as normal? Or is that connected to the actual MacBook Air in some way?

 

[Audit13]

You don't have to boot from the disk. You could put the disc into an external enclosure. When you mount the disk, it will ask for the FileVault password.

The drive from a 2015 Air will also work in a mid-2013 to 2017 13" Air and late 2013 to early 2015 13" and 15" Pro.