HD Recovery on Mid-2012 MacBook

[soundrichaudio]

Hi all,

First time post, so please feel free to direct me to the correct thread/area....

Im a music producer and have been clinging to a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro for all my work until it crashed about a year ago.

In essence, I'm looking for a place/person/business (anywhere) to recover a specific piece of the file hierarchy so I can get some lost sessions/work files for my music business.

I believe I received a/the virus from one of those "YouTube to mp3" conversion download sites. I use them frequently in my line of business to record rap artists. One day though it crashed my whole system.

Symptoms: I soon started experiencing heavy general system lag..... When I tried to create a regular "new folder" on my desktop, it said the destination was invalid and that didn't make much sense to me.... So I tried to restart... And now during any bootup, I get "the Mac start up sound" followed by an endless spinning loading wheel.. it doesn't end.. I've left the laptop plugged in for days waiting for it to load the OS and let me in but it seems impossible.

I'm now just looking for a company or business that can help me recover my lost files.

I don't care what it costs.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Does the the machine boot up? If so, depending on what version of macOS was on it, you can go into recovery console and re-install the OS. That way you can get the data off.

If the machine is not in a state that it wants to do that, you can open it up, grab the HDD and then use an adapter with another Mac and get the data out of it.

 

[soundrichaudio]

it will not boot up....as stated in my original post.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

it will not boot up....as stated in my original post.

The read the second part of my post.

 

[soundrichaudio]

Noted. Sorry I had to restate part of my original post. I'd also say that if something has infected the HD, prohibiting it from booting up properly, removing the HD may not solve the problem.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

You wouldn't be booting from it on another machine, just accessing it as an external drive. You'd also want to run something like ClamXav or something on the drive to ensure that you don't copy over bad stuff to another machine as well.

If the data on the drive, however, isn't accessible in this manner on the other machine or the drive is corrupted, then you'll have to go down the data recovery path either through software you can try and then buy or professional data recovery that can get quite expensive.

 

[krs]

@soundrichaudio
Not clear to me - Are you using a second Mac right now?
If you are not comfortable opening the 2012 MBp and removing the HD, I would make a USB macOS installer, boot the 2012 MBp up on that, run ClamXav to check for any malware and then see what you can acess on the original 2012 MBp hard drive.

 

[ferrarr]

Have you tried to boot into Recovery?

If you can't start up from macOS Recovery - Apple Support

Learn what to do if you can't get your Mac to start up from macOS Recovery.

support.apple.com

 

[MacInWin]

I don't think it's a virus. There aren't many, if any, in the wild for the Mac. I does sound like either the os is corrupted or more likely, the drive is dead/dying. Even though it won't boot, as Ashwin said you can take it out and read it with another Mac safely. If you can't read it, it is dead. There are some very expensive recovery companies that MIGHT be able to recover it, but it's $$$$.

 

[ferrarr]

Some 2012 models were Retina, so it may not be a removable startup/internal drive.