A folder with a question mark, an endless white screen, or an iMac that simply won't wake — the photos and documents inside are usually intact. We recover iMacs with removable drives, standard SATA disks and Fusion Drives alike, imaged directly once the drive is out, for customers across Staines and Surrey.
Free diagnostic on every apple imac job. One fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
No fix, no fee all jobs except electronic and mechanical failures, chip level work, DVR and Forensic jobs. Full pricing is on the free diagnostic page.
Every apple imac job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault — these twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
The iMac can't find a bootable volume — its internal drive has failed or corrupted.
macOS starts loading and hangs; usually a dying drive slowing to a crawl.
The SSD-plus-HDD pair loses sync and the logical volume collapses — both halves must be imaged and rejoined.
The 3.5" drive inside older iMacs fails like any other — it's just glued behind glass.
Firmware or storage failure at boot; data extraction comes first, diagnosis second.
Update dies mid-install and the Mac loops; user data is intact beneath the broken system.
Apple's file systems break in Apple-specific ways; both need native-level parsing to rebuild.
One wrong click in Recovery Mode erases the volume — recoverable if writes stop there.
The 1TB Seagate drives in 2009–2011 iMacs are a known high-failure batch — recovered with donor heads and firmware work.
Dead PSU or logic board with a healthy removable drive inside — extraction is straightforward once the drive is out.
The small SSD half of a Fusion Drive fails or drops out, unbalancing the pair — imaged and logically rejoined with the hard-drive half.
A DIY screen removal that nicks the drive's SATA or power cable mimics a dead drive — re-terminated and imaged in the lab.
Getting into an iMac means releasing the bonded screen — not a kitchen-table job. Behind it sits a hard drive, an SSD, or both working together as a Fusion Drive, formatted with Apple's HFS+ or APFS. Because the drive lives behind the display, it needs removing before it comes to us — we don't run a drive-removal service, so please take the drive out first (or call and we'll walk you through it), and we recover straight from the drive once it lands. Fusion Drives are a speciality: both halves have to be imaged and logically rejoined before your files exist as files again.
We recover iMacs whose storage can be removed and imaged: the SATA hard drives in 2009–2011 machines and the SSD-plus-hard-drive halves of a Fusion Drive. We don't recover iMacs whose storage is soldered to the logic board and hardware-encrypted — the T2-secured Intel models and the Apple Silicon (M-series) iMacs. On those the data is tied to that exact board and can't be lifted off if the board or storage fails, and we stopped attempting board-level recovery of soldered Mac storage two years ago because the success rate was simply too low to promise anyone. Not sure which era yours is? Call before you send anything.
iMac work is Apple-specific from the first tool onwards:
Once you've sent the drive, Fusion pairs are imaged and logically rejoined and APFS / HFS+ volumes rebuilt to extract your files.
Proprietary SSD blades, Fusion pairs and standard SATA drives all attach natively to the imaging rigs.
Failed iMac hard drives get the same head-swap and firmware treatment as any drive.
Native parsers for Apple's file systems, including Fusion Drive logical-volume reassembly.
FileVault-encrypted APFS volumes on removable drives are unlocked with your password and rebuilt to files.
Volumes wiped in Disk Utility or lost after a failed macOS update are carved back where the freed space survives.
We recover iMacs with removable storage — SATA hard drives and Fusion Drives. The 1TB Seagate drives fitted to 2009–2011 iMacs are a known high-failure batch we see constantly, and Fusion pairs unravel when the small SSD blade drops out; matched Seagate and WD donors are kept in stock for both. We don't recover T2 or Apple Silicon iMacs, where the SSD is soldered to the logic board and hardware-encrypted.
Most customers post or courier their media to us.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.