Macbook Air hard drive ?

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime · 03-08-2014 4:40pm #1

Hi lads !

have a quick one .

have a friend who has a macbook air, but the laptop broke !

only thing is there is plenty of stuff on the hard drive that would like to keep,

if i get the hard drive out can it be plugged into a normal laptop like a toshiba or a macbook pro so the information can be put onto an external HDD ?

i have no issues getting the drive out but the connections on it dont look normal to me (the regular non apple user)

cheers guys !

5uspect · 03-08-2014 4:47pm

The SSDs in the Air are PCIe based. Most SSDs are shifting to this faster connector. You can get an enclosure:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/owc-mercury-on-the-go-enclosure-for-macbook-air-ssd-review/11540
Apple SSDs are formatted as HFS+, it won't be straight forward to read it on a non Apple machine.

Of course your friend should be using a backup solution such as TimeMachine that comes with all Macs.

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime · 03-08-2014 4:50pm

5uspect wrote: »

The SSDs in the Air are PCIe based. Most SSDs are shifting to this faster connector. You can get an enclosure:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/owc-mercury-on-the-go-enclosure-for-macbook-air-ssd-review/11540

Of course your friend should be using a backup solution such as TimeMachine that comes with all Macs.

Tbh , i know nothing of macbooks... or apple computers, only ever use windows MS and dell / toshiba myself,

is there anyway of pulling the info from the hard drive on those with having to buy one of them ?

or if i pulled the hard drive out could i bring it to an apple store and get it from there ?

5uspect · 03-08-2014 4:53pm

First of all it isn't a hard drive it's a solid state drive.
If you don't know what you're doing bring it to someone who does.

What is broken on the Air?

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime · 03-08-2014 4:55pm

5uspect wrote: »

First of all it isn't a hard drive it's a solid state drive.
If you don't know what you're doing bring it to someone who does.

What is broken on the Air?

i dont know whats broken on it, all i know is as a result they got a new laptop. macbook pro. but still lots of stuff on the old one.

i know how to pull the hard drive out and dismantle it all but once i have it out i just need to get the files transferred.

all i know is it wont power on,

5uspect · 03-08-2014 5:13pm

It's trivial to remove the SSD, it's just a PCI express device after all.
If you don't know what you're doing bring it to someone who does.

If you have access to another Mac then the enclosure is required.
Their files will be in /users/USERNAME/ of the old drive which will be mounted in /Volumes along side any other mounted drives including the new Mac's own drive. Both probably called MacintoshHD.

The alternative is to bring it somewhere that can do it for you.
It'll probably cost about the same either way.

More importantly had your friend set up a TimeMachine backup they could simply restored all their files to the new Mac with a few clicks and avoided all this.

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime · 03-08-2014 5:59pm

5uspect wrote: »

It's trivial to remove the SSD, it's just a PCI express device after all.
If you don't know what you're doing bring it to someone who does.

If you have access to another Mac then the enclosure is required.
Their files will be in /users/USERNAME/ of the old drive which will be mounted in /Volumes along side any other mounted drives including the new Mac's own drive. Both probably called MacintoshHD.

The alternative is to bring it somewhere that can do it for you.
It'll probably cost about the same either way.

More importantly had your friend set up a TimeMachine backup they could simply restored all their files to the new Mac with a few clicks and avoided all this.

i'll find out, just talkin hundreds of photos and some files (word)

5uspect · 03-08-2014 6:07pm

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime wrote: »

i'll find out, just talkin hundreds of photos and some files (word)

The photos could already be synced to iCloud.

Kopparberg Strawberry and Lime · 03-08-2014 6:19pm

5uspect wrote: »

The photos could already be synced to iCloud.

i think i remember iCloud when i had an iPhone a few years ago.. that just automatic updates in the backround i think ?

i'll find out from the person and explore all options first before pulling it apart,

5uspect · 03-08-2014 6:30pm

No, iCloud is more like dropbox. All your iPhone's photos would be copied to Photo Stream in iPhoto. Similarly you can use it to store documents.

Macbook Air hard drive ?

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