I like to work efficiently and get a logic board repaired while its on the bench just after inspection but customer approval doesnt always appear that quick. Sometimes a logic board can evade repair. They are incredibly complicated and Apple don’t provide us with circuit diagrams or any understanding of the firmware that their custom chips run. The fact that Apple don’t offer component level repair themselves – just board replacement, tells you they don’t care about their customers that much.

After one week

After one week of effort many repairers might say, for their own convenience, that the logic board is not fixable – this allows them to get on with easy repairs and keep making money. I don’t because that’s not being honest. If you have informed me that you need the data then repair of the logic board is the only route to getting the data back. If there is no reason to believe the data chips are damaged then the data is most likely sitting in them quite safely. The problem is the rest of the circuitry has a fault that is not allowing the board to boot.

If I’ve had your MacBook longer than one week then its probably in this class.

The data is probably there but the board wont boot. I will have ploughed 3 to 7 hours of my time into it but without success and I have put it to one side in order to repair other logic boards. I will revisit it periodically or when I get a fresh idea on the myriad of approaches that can be taken to repair such a complex device. I don’t give up on a logic board unless I’m sure the data desired is lost.

At this stage or at any stage if there is no important data on the board then I will always offer to replace the board as an alternative to repair if I think it will be quicker.

I don’t mind you emailing to ask and after a couple of weeks I dont mind if you want to take it somewhere else. It will need reassembly as I store MacBooks in a disassembled state which is another 30minutes of work and for this reason once its been returned I can’t take it back.

Why Data Recovery from a MacBook is not as simple as PCs

With a MacBook the data is on chips soldered to the logic board rather than a pluggable SSD. Blame Apple for that one. The only way to get your data is repair of the board.

Why do I need to know what the data is?

I like to know to help me determine the urgency. If its family photos I know you just want them back and a time delay doesn’t really matter. I recently had some spare time and mended the logic board of somebody who had opted for replacement logic board 6 months ago. I took their faulty logic board in exchange and promised to return their data FOC should I ever repair it. I did and they were very happy!

But if its valuable business data that is of no use after 2 weeks I need to know to apply timely effort and know when to stop. I only get paid for results.