Since the first Apple laptop with SSD (Solid-State Drive) debuted in January 2008, many more up-to-date laptops from the Macbook lineup have come into our lives. SSD offers considerable speed benefits, smaller size than HDD, and the cost per GB is decreasing every year. But in terms of data recovery, it is more difficult to locate the data on SSD. Besides, the drive has milliseconds to save the current data to the correct location when power is suddenly removed from an SSD.
SSD failures are harder to detect because the faulty SSDs do not emit audio like whirring or humming like the HDDs. These are some of the most common signals that indicate your SSD has problems, for example, MacBook Pro SSD won’t mount, or MacBook Pro doesn’t recognize the SSD in Disk Utility. When you notice some important files are disappeared from your Mac desktop, or if you carelessly delete some videos, you may want to take steps to intervene. This post about how to recover data from MacBook SSD will you fix the problem.
How Hard is it to Recover Data from Macbook SSD?
If you’ve just deleted your files on Mac and haven’t manually emptied the Trash folder on Mac, you can press the Command + Z hotkey combination to restore them instantly. However, if you have emptied the Trash folder or removed some files from Mac SSD permanently, you will spend more time on data recovery.
#1. What happens to your MacBook SSD when you delete the file(s)?
When you move a file on your computer into your Mac’s trash folder and empty the trash, your computer makes the file inaccessible and invisible to the naked eye, but the file is not erased immediately. Instead, the computer allows the space it took up to be overwritten later. Until that “deleted” file is overwritten by new data in a few hours, days, or weeks, you can take action to retrieve it with the help of data recovery software. But when the TRIM feature of your SSD is enabled on MacBook, it will cost you more effort to recover the permanently deleted files.
#2. What is SSD TRIM and how can I check TRIM status on a Mac SSD?
TRIM, known as an Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) command, was introduced soon after solid-state drives were introduced. The trim feature can trim down the unnecessary writing to an SSD, helping to maximize its life span. With TRIM disabled, even SSDs from industry-leading drive manufacturers is likely to become unreliable.
Here’s how to see whether or not the SSD has TRIM enabled on your Mac computer.
- Click on the Apple icon at the top-left corner of your Mac screen -> select “About This Mac” -> and then choose “System Report”.
- On the left side of the System Information window, go to “Hardware”, and find NVM Express or SATA/SATA Express.
- Scroll down to “TRIM Support”, if you see the value is “Yes” there, the TRIM command is running on your Mac computer, you don’t need to turn it on (see picture below).
#3. Is it practicable to recover data from Mac SSD when TRIM is enabled?
When users permanently delete files from SSD that disabled the TRIM command, the disk sectors have not received the command from TRIM to lets the SSD prioritize blocks for cleaning, the SSD still stores the deleted data on its sectors. In this instance, users will find it easier to recover the deleted files on Macbook.
However, the new generation of SSDs has enabled the TRIM feature by default. As soon as you remove any file from the theTRIM-enabled SSD, the drive will immediately clear all sectors. That makes the trim data recovery much more difficult.
Part 01. When is it a must to recover data from MacBook SSD
Because the failing SSDs can operate in silence until they completely stop functioning on Mac computers, some users cannot discover in time that the hardware is at risk of data loss. Below are some indicators that suggest recovering files from the MacBook SSD as soon as possible before the old data get overwritten.
- You have permanently deleted important files
You should be familiar with these four typical situations, including using the keyboard shortcut Option + Command + Delete to permanently delete files, control-click anywhere in the Trash folder and selecting Empty Trash, removing the files that have been moved to the trash folder for over 30 days, and clicking Delete Immediately in Finder.
- Accidental misoperation on SSD
Human careless mistakes do pose problems to data security. For instance, the accidental deletion of an APFS partition/container, wrongly reformatting the disk, the corruption of the file system, severe physical damage, untreated chemical corrosion, and so on.
- When SSD gets attacked by virus and malware
No SSD in the world is 100% immune to malicious virus infections and malware. When you notice the MacBook screen is flickering, Mac cannot mount but gets stuck on the loading screen, calm down, check out if your computer is safe and then perform data recovery right away.
Part 2. Recover data from MacBook SSD (two feasible solutions)
The right thing to do when a data loss incident happens on the computer should be to stop using the affected SSD. This will minimize the chance that Mac will overwrite the deleted/lost files. And then you should try some feasible methods to get back your files as soon as possible, we will discuss two tested methods here.
2.1 Use Professional Data Recovery for Mac Software
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac supports the recovery of files from SSD, HDD, SD cards, external hard drives, and many other disk-based storage devices. This reliable and easy-to-use Mac data recovery program can give you a hand when you meet data loss problems due to accidental deletion of a drive/folder/files, wrong formatting, and a virus attack on your system.
The software tutorial below will walk you through recovering lost/deleted files on MacBook SSD.
Step 1. Make sure the Internet is well connected, reboot Mac into macOS Recovery mode, then go to “Utilities” to open Terminal (see picture below).
Step 2. Run this command to quickly launch iBoysoft Data Recovery software in macOS Recovery mode.
sh <(curl http://boot.iboysoft.com/boot.sh)
Step 3. After iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac gets launched, select your MacBook SSD on the main interface, then click “Search for Lost Data”.
Step 4. When the data scanning process is finished, you can preview the scanning results. Alternatively, you can use the filters or the search bar to narrow down the results in this step.
Step 5. Choose the files you need, at last click on the “Recover” button to restore the file on Mac. Please note: you should choose a different secure location such as an external device to store the recovered files.
2.2 Restore Files Using Mac’s Time Machine
You can get your files back from Time Machine backup files if the app has been enabled before the data loss incident happens. Read on to know how to recover files backed up with Mac’s Time Machine.
- Connect your Macbook/Macbook Air with the Time Machine backup drive and then click the icon of Time Machine at the menu bar.
One more tip – If you can’t see the icon in this step, try to manually add Time Machine from System Preference this way: click on the Apple icon -> go to System Preference -> select Time Machine -> at last, check the box next to Show Time Machine.
- Check out and find the specific file from the timelines and backup files, select all the files you desire to recover, and press Space Bar to preview the document. At last, click “Restore” to store the files in their original locations.
