Over the last 5-6 months we’ve received an influx of inaccessible Solid State Drives (SSD) from MacBook Air laptops. Apparently Apple is aware of this problem and they are replacing them under warranty. The laptops effected were sold between June 2012 and June 2013.
Once removed, these SSDs are easily identified by the large “Toshiba” controller chip residing on the left side of the SSD as shown in the picture below. However Apple considers the removal as something not do-able in the field. For information on their replacement program, please visit this link MAC SSD replacement.
As for data recovery from these units, you had better get your wallet out. Typical costs for us to recover your data range from $2000-2500. Costs could be even higher depending on the nature of the data required, and due to the complexity of these recoveries we typically require 3 weeks or even more. We are getting faster but the rebuilding of SSD devices is very labor intensive.
If you have one of these Solid State Drives in your system, we suggest you keep all your important data backed up to at least one additional storage device or hard drive.
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