How to Retrieve Data from a Dead/Crashed MacBook Pro?

You may encounter such a bad situation where your MacBook Pro keeps crashing and what’s worse, it becomes dead or can’t boot up normally. Nothing can be more awful than experiencing the dead or crashed state of your MacBook Pro. A dead MacBook Pro not only affects the normal use of your Mac but also indicates the risk of losing important data.

Although MacBook Pro is popular for its system stability and security, it is not immune to being out of service due to insufficient system memory or storage, heavy CPU consumption, incompatible software and hardware, operating system malfunctioning, file system corruption, and so on. In the event of a crashed or dead MacBook Pro, the first thing you may consider is to find possible ways to deal with the potential data loss situation caused by a computer crash.  

Frankly speaking, it is not a simple thing to recover data from a dead MacBook Pro, but don’t get panic. This situation could be frustrating for most Mac users. Stay here and get to know some of the straightforward and most commonly used strategies to get data back from your crashed or dead MacBook Pro quickly!

How to Retrieve Data from a Dead/Crashed MacBook Pro?

Although performing data recovery from an unbootable MacBook Pro is not as easy as from a working one, the MacBook Pro’s death doesn’t mean the end of everything or the loss of important data. There are still effective ways to help you recover data from a MacBook that becomes unbootable, crashed, or dead.

Solution 1] Recover Data from an Unbootable MacBook Pro Using iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is one of the top-class data recovery programs that supports recovering different types of files (Office documents, video files, audio files, photos, etc.) from various storage devices (SSDs, HDDs, USB flash drives, CF cards, SD cards, memory cards, and more).

What’s more, whatever the cause of data loss, be it a misdeletion, virus infection, system crash, computer failure to boot, misformatting, file system corruption, or bad sectors, this software will help you recover your data in a breeze.

To proceed with data recovery from a MacBook Pro that won’t boot, here are some necessary steps:

Step 1] Boot your MacBook Pro into macOS Recovery Mode.

For an Intel Mac before 2018, press down the Command + Option + R key combination at once after turning your Mac on to boot it into the internet Recovery Mode. Next, hold the three keyboard keys until you see the spinning globe appear on the Mac screen, and then let go of all the keys.

For an Intel Mac with a T2-secured chip after 2018, simply press down the Command + Option + Shift + R key combination immediately after turning your Mac on to boot it into the internet Recovery Mode. Next, hold the four keyboard keys until you see the spinning globe appear on the Mac screen, and then release all the keys.

For an Apple Silicon M1 Mac, turn your M1 Mac on and then hit the Touch ID button on the keyboard at once. When seeing the loading startup options appear, release the Touch ID button, select Options from the screen, and click Continue.

Step 2] Make sure your Mac is well-connected to a stable Internet.

Step 3] Navigate to Utilities > Terminal from the macOS Utilities window and then launch Terminal by double-clicking it.

Step 4] Launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac from its server by typing the following Terminal command and pressing the enter key:

sh <(curl http://boot.iboysoft.com/boot.sh)

Step 5] Begin to recover your data from the unbootable Mac. Just select a Mac hard drive to search for the wanted data, click the Scan button to initiate the scanning process, preview the found result to find the needed files, tick the needed files, and finally hit the Recover button to complete the data recovery process.

Solution 2] Recover Data from the Dead MacBook Pro with Target Disk Mode

Target Disk Mode, also known as TDM or Target Mode, is a Mac boot mode that can be used for data transfer between two Mac machines with FireWire or Thunderbolt. Under the TDM mode, the Mac booted in Target Disk Mode can act as an external device for another Mac without booting its operating system. Therefore, it is possible to recover data from your dead MacBook Pro through Target Disk Mode.

Before getting data back from your dead or crashed MacBook Pro, you should disable FileVault first. And then, you need a Thunderbolt or FireWire cable to aid you.

Step 1] Use either a Thunderbolt or FireWire to connect your dead or crashed MacBook Pro with another working Mac machine.

Step 2] Turn your dead MacBook Pro on with the T button held down. After that, the storage of your dead MacBook Pro will behave as an external storage device on the other working Mac. 

Step 3] Simply copy all the data from your problematic Mac computer to the working one. 

How to Fix a Dead MacBook Pro?

After retrieving important data, you may wonder how to fix a dead or crashed MacBook Pro for future use because no one is willing to spend much money purchasing a new Mac if the original Mac machine can work well. For this purpose, just conduct a dead MacBook repair with some simple fixes.

Method 1] Implement SMC Reset on Non-M1 Macs

Step 1] Press the Power button or the Touch ID button to turn off your MacBook completely.

Step 2] Make sure your Mac is fully charged.

Step 3] Press and hold down Shift, Control, Option, and the Power/Touch ID button simultaneously. After 10 seconds, release all the keys.

Step 4] Restart your Mac to check if your MacBook can get back to normal.

Method 2 Implement Dead MacBook Pro Repair with First Aid

Step 1] Boot your dead or crashed MacBook Pro into macOS Recovery Mode.

Step 2] Click the Disk Utility option on the macOS Utilities window and then hit the Continue button.

Step 3] Choose the startup disk you want to repair from the left panel, select First Aid, and then click on the Run button. Wait a moment until the check and repair process is complete.

Conclusion

That’s all for data recovery from a dead or crashed MacBook Pro and some basic fixes to repair the dead MacBook Pro when it fails to boot up. To avoid data loss, backing up your MacBook regularly is always strongly preferred. Unfortunately, if you forget to do so, just try iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac rather than give up restoring your vital files from the dead machine. 

Let us know in the comment section which method worked for you? Wanna some more Devicetricks? Stay tuned to this space to get the latest updates on errors related to Windows, macOS, and Android. However, if the issue persists or you need the assistance of the geeks, then feel free to contact us. If you feel this article is helpful please like, share, and follow our Facebook page.