The folder with a blinking question mark icon, the blank unchanging white screen, the "chime" but no login or boot screen afterwards: failing iMacs will nearly always retain their files and images. We are able to recover the removable storage devices located internally within them, including standard SATA drives as well as the two halves of a single Fusion Drive.
A free diagnostic is given with every Apple iMac data recovery job. One fixed quote will be provided in writing prior to commencement of any work.
In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. This is true of all our services except for failure of electrical/mechanical components, chip level repairs, DVRs and forensic analysis. Our full price list can be seen at the cost of data recovery page.
Before an Apple iMac data recovery job commences each problem is matched against possible causes, and the fifteen faults shown here cover almost all of the problems which reach the bench.
When there is no bootable volume present it indicates either that the internal drive has failed or been corrupted.
macOS begins to load and freezes/stalls, most often due to a failing drive which reads extremely slow.
You have two separate drives; one is a hard disk and the other is a solid state disk that make up a single drive called a Fusion Drive. If they get out of sync, then the drive becomes unusable. So if this occurs, we'll create an image of each separately and then join them back together as a Fusion Drive.
An older iMac's 3.5-inch disk is no different than any other disk when it fails. It simply resides behind a laminated display.
Trouble with storage (or firmware) when you start your Mac: data comes first, then diagnosis.
A stuck macOS update will keep looping your Mac, but all of your data remains safe underneath.
You can't get to your files because you have an Apple-specific file system problem. It gets fixed by parsing with native tools.
One wrong Erase of a disk within Recovery Mode is still recoverable as long as nothing else writes to it.
Seagate 1TB drives that were installed on 2009 to 2011 iMacs tend to fail early and often; donor stock for these units is permanent.
The logic board and power supply unit (PSU) of an iMac will burn out simultaneously while the removable hard drive inside remains functional.
Typically, the blade (SSD) half of a Fusion pair will be the first to die, leaving your volume stranded until it is imaged and logically rejoined.
If the APFS FileVault encrypted volume fails, if you provide us with your login credential, we can decrypt the entire volume and rebuild it normally so long as the credentials are correct.
When an iMac crawls to death, chances are that the drive has been failing bit-by-bit over time; therefore, please get the drive imaged immediately before it stops functioning altogether.
Screens removed at home nick the SATA and power cables, but the drive usually survives the cut open process.
When a failing volume won't mount in Target Disk Mode, drive-out imaging is the safe option.
The problem with an iMac's internal storage area is that it is hidden by a glue-in-place display, making it difficult to remove the screen from the frame without damaging something, therefore we require the drive to be sent to us as opposed to the whole unit. We don't offer drive removal, so the drive (or both parts of an iMac Fusion Drive) needs to be removed by you. Please contact us and we will walk you through this process, or use a local repair facility that can accomplish this task inexpensively. Once we have the drive, HFS+ and APFS formatted drives are processed using native tools, and clicking hard drives that are labelled as "Apple" will receive head work on the bench. Fusion Drives will be imaged separately first into each half (SSD and HDD), and after imaging, they will be logically combined to restore the file structure, which is the only method by which their files will exist again.
Recoverable iMacs are the ones that have removable storage: the 3.5-inch SATA drives from 2009 to 2011 and the drive + blade combos for the years of Fusion. Apple's newer models (T2-protected Intel, and all Apple Silicon) have removed this by soldering the SSD directly to the logic board and encrypting it in hardware as well, essentially welding the data to that specific logic board. Two years ago we stopped doing any further board level work on soldered Mac storage since it was never successful enough to justify the promise. Are you unsure what generation/model your iMac is? That can be quickly sorted out with just a single phone call before even posting.
The iMac recovery process is specific to Apple from the first adapter onwards:
Both parts of a posted Fusion pair are imaged and then logically combined, followed by rebuilding the APFS or HFS+ volume into files.
Proprietary blades, Fusion pairs and plain SATA drives will all fit directly onto our imaging systems.
An iMac hard drive is treated just like all others in this lab when it fails mechanically. It has the same swap of heads and firmware processing.
We have native parsers for both Apple file system formats (and include reconstructing Fusion logical volumes).
Volumes encrypted using FileVault on removable drives are unlocked with your password, then rebuilt to files.
If your volume was accidentally deleted by one of the Disk Utility options, or if you were trying to perform some sort of system update which somehow went wrong, and your erased volume still exists somewhere as raw unallocated space on your hard disk (and has not yet had that raw space used for anything else), then we can carve out what remains of your original volume.
Removable storage is the key; SATA drive & Fusion pair recoveries are taken on, but T2 and Apple Silicon iMacs (SSD soldered and encrypted on the logic board) are the ones we must decline. The 1TB Seagate batch from the 2009 to 2011 machines remain the serial failure of that era and as such, matched donor replacements of this type will always be kept on the shelf.
First get a quote over the telephone or use our free on-line diagnostic. The majority of customers then have their media sent to us via post, this is tracked and insured.
Do you want to send a drive from your computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please do not send the complete unit of computer or device with a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) inside. Please remove it and only send the drive itself. For a server, please remove all disks and label them by their bay. We will also not perform removal of internal drives from devices in order to access data. Also, we will not extract data from devices where storage is soldered onto the motherboard (such as T2 and Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops). Additionally, we do not recover data from phones and tablets, only drives that can be removed and sent to us. If you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Clearly mark the parcel with the name Bristol Data Recovery, and when your media has been diagnosed we will call you immediately.
If unsure about what to post, please call us first on 0800 689 0668 (the free phone number), or complete a free online diagnostic.
Diagnostic provided at no charge. Fixed quote. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.