FIX BLACK SCREEN ON MACBOOK PRO? 1. Recover Data on MacBook (A1181, A1304, A1342) and MacBook Pro (A1278, A1286, A1297)

1. Recover Data on MacBook (A1181, A1304, A1342) and MacBook Pro (A1278, A1286, A1297)

This method is for the 13” MacBooks and 13”, 15”, 17” MacBook Pros.

Apple manufactured these Macs from 2008 to 2012.

Your task is to remove the SATA hard drive or SATA SSD drive from the Mac, install the hard drive to a “SATA to USB” adapter, plug in the adapter to a working Mac and copy the data to your Mac

Follow these steps to recover data from Mac hard drive:

Use Phillip screwdriver to open the back case of your Mac.
Unscrew the hard drive hold bracket.
Disconnect the SATA cable and remove the hard drive from your Mac.
Install the hard drive to a “SATA to USB” adapter.
Connect the adapter into a USB port of your working Mac.
You may need to enter the user password depending on the macOS in the hard drive.
The hard drive will show on your working Mac as an external drive. Click on the drive to open the folders in it.
Navigate to the user folder and copy these folders to your Mac or another external drive: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Movies, Music, Pictures.

Congratulations! You have successfully retrieved your data from a failed Mac.

Note:

macOS will display an external drive on the desktop by default. If you can’t see the hard drive, check the system preference to ensure the external drive option is enabled.
If you still can’t see the target hard drive on the desktop, you may need to upgrade the macOS of your working Mac. A Mac running on an older macOS may not recognise the file system of a newer macOS. For example, a Mac running on El Capitan will not recognise a hard drive with Caterina.

The photo below shows a typical Mac folder structure. If your Mac has more than one user account, you need to back up the data from every user account