The office of a racing yard near Ascot still ran its entry lists, feed records and accounts off a 2010 MacBook Pro, on the sound reasoning that it worked. Then the trackpad started to sit proud of the case, then it stopped charging, then it stopped turning on at all. A repair shop confirmed a swollen battery, said the machine was not economic to fix, and took the drive out for them so it could be sent on its own.
| Media | A 2.5-inch drive removed from a 2010 MacBook Pro whose battery had swollen, pushing the trackpad up and leaving the machine dead and unable to charge. It holds a racing yard's entry lists, feed records and accounts. |
| What was reported | MacBook Pro from 2010, trackpad bulging, will not turn on or charge, diagnosed as an expanded battery, machine written off, drive removed and sent alone, yard office records wanted. |
| Fault class | None on the disk. The failure was a swollen battery, which is a power and safety problem belonging to the machine. The drive readied normally, held full speed and had a short defect list. What it did carry was a Mac volume with a handful of directory errors from the abrupt shutdowns. |
| On the bench | Attached as a data device behind a hardware write blocker on PC-3000 UDMA and profiled, imaged on DeepSpar in one pass, the HFS+ volume parsed in R-Studio from the image with the directory errors reconciled on the copy rather than on the disk, files validated by opening a sample from each year and written to fresh media. |
A swollen battery is a machine problem with a deadline attached. Lithium cells that have begun to expand are producing gas, and the expansion does not stop. On a laptop it lifts the trackpad first because that is the thinnest panel above the cells. It is worth taking seriously as a hazard, and it is worth ignoring entirely as a data question.
The drive is a separate object bolted to the same chassis. Nothing about a failed battery reaches the platters. On a machine of that generation the drive is a standard 2.5-inch unit held in by two screws, so it can simply be taken out and read on equipment that has nothing to do with Apple.
Not economic to repair is a verdict on the laptop. It says nothing about whether the files can be read, and it is a good moment to separate the two questions. The yard did not need the machine back; they needed this season's entries and last year's accounts.
The abrupt shutdowns left a mark, but on the volume rather than the disk. A machine that dies mid-write leaves small inconsistencies in the directory, which is the sort of thing macOS would normally tidy up on the next boot. There was no next boot, so it was tidied on an image instead, where a wrong guess costs nothing.
The drive arrived on its own, correctly, and was attached as a data device behind a write blocker. Its firmware answered without argument, the defect list was short and it held full speed across the surface, so it was imaged on DeepSpar in a single pass with no special handling.
R-Studio parsed the HFS+ volume out of the image. Several directory records were inconsistent, all of them consistent with the machine having been cut off mid-write, and each was reconciled against the catalogue on the copy. Files from each of the last four seasons were opened to prove them before the set was written to fresh media.
Entry lists, feed records, accounts and a decade of correspondence all came back. The laptop was recycled, battery included, which is where a swollen cell belongs.
One drive, £300 + VAT. Nothing here was opened, soldered or replaced, so the job stayed inside no fix, no fee and was invoiced only after the office had confirmed the files.
Stop using it and stop charging it. A cell that has begun to expand is generating gas and will keep going, and pressing a bulging case flat or puncturing it is genuinely dangerous. Take the machine to somebody who will remove and dispose of the battery properly rather than leaving it in a cupboard. As far as the data goes, the answer is simple on any machine with a removable drive: take the drive out and read it. Send the drive alone rather than the laptop, because stripping machines is not work this lab takes on. Where the storage is soldered to the board instead, as it is on newer models, there is no drive to send and the honest answer is a different one.
These files are written up from genuine enquiries taken from households and businesses in Bracknell, across Berkshire and Surrey and into London, with names, firms and anything else identifying stripped out. Each one sets down how the fault was reasoned through, the method it actually needed and the equipment it was worked on. One of them is a job that was turned away, which belongs here as much as the rest of them.
A confirmed head fault over sound platters is the most ordinary job in the trade, whoever failed to finish it
A drive that stops a computer starting is shorting the supply, and the platters behind it are usually untouched
A bent socket is a repairable joint, and unlabelled drives are read one at a time rather than guessed at
Examining it is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure goes to you in writing and does not move afterwards, and a logical fault carries no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.