Recently My MacBook Pro suddenly stopped working with total loss of power at 1.5years. No power was present on the board and the service center informed me that they were also unable to power up the logic board out side the machine. No liquid damage no corrosion (no explanation as to the reason for total power loss). I was aware that MBP with soldered SSD have a device for data recovery. I have however been informed by my apple service center (Singapore) that data recovery is impossible even with this tool on MBP’s with a T2 chip. Is this really true?
I have been painted a picture whereby the the T2 chip would prevent any and all data recovery due to the “encryption”. Its been stated that similar to iphones that codes are not even known to apple.
Would really welcome the communities feed back on this as it has profound implications for me as I have lost a substantial amount of data. (I understand about regular back ups but this is another thread that I may need to start)
It’s possible to recover files from a MacBook Pro with a T2 chip if you perform with the right solution and right software. You can read this article to get files from your unresponsive device: How to Recover Lost Data from MacBook Pro/Air 2018/2019/2020? I found it informative because I have recovered files from my dead computer with it’s insturction.
Well, data recovery of Mac with T2 chip is far more difficult than the Macs configured with Intel processors, because these Macs’s SSDs are soldered with the motherboard, you get no way to extract them out for file recovery, let alone your Mac stops working which refuses your access. I suggest that you take the device to local Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support to see if there is any solution.
Maybe you can ask the Apple team to try the following procedure which I saw in a troubleshooting example for older non-USB-C Macs, but may still possibly work for the USB-C Macs.
Disconnect the battery and connect the charger. Power on the Mac, if the Mac powers on, then reconnect the battery while the laptop is still powered on (it is tricky on the USB-C Macs due to the delicate connector and needing to install a screw). Let the laptop charge to at least 10% before disconnecting the charger or powering off the laptop. The laptop may not fully boot since many times I have found it may take all day for a USB-C Mac to boot without the battery being properly connected at power on. What this procedure does is allow the battery to possibly charge when otherwise it would not charge.
Sometimes just disconnecting the battery from the Logic Board for a few minutes and reconnecting the battery may be enough to clear the SMC to allow the battery to charge and the laptop to power on. Of course this all assumes a completed discharged battery is the problem here (it is highly likely it is the problem from what you described).
These USB-C Apple laptops are very quirky, so this may not work. It is hard to say whether the Apple tech would be willing to try these procedures. They are not in Apple’s troubleshooting guides and some techs will only blindly follow Apple’s official directions. Good experienced techs actually know more about a device than the manufacturer and develop extra techniques not listed in any official service guides/manuals usually out of necessity. The advice above is some of that knowledge.
Unfortunately some repairs may be restricted to certain regions. I am surprised though that a Logic Board cannot be replaced at any AASP worldwide since a Logic Board is not tied to a specific region like the Keyboard AFAIK