Faulty MacBook Air M2 dead within 6 months. Lost all my work.

PedroSequeira wrote:

I know about the warranty, but that will not give my work back. I don’t have backups nor ICloud as I mentioned before. No need to tell me I should have iCloud, I already know about that. Maybe the stores should strongly advice the users to do it, since no files can be recovered if the computer is faulty from origin!

But that don’t change the fact I lost my work, with a brand new expensive computer.

You appear to be very upset that you lost your work. I am sorry that happened. It is a basic concept that computer users must keep a backup of their data. iCloud does not provide that backup. You must use a backup app such as Time Machine or some other backup app. Your data is gone. Moving forward ensure you maintain a data backup.

Use Time Machine to back up - Apple Support

PedroSequeira wrote:

So, a brand sells a faulty product and I’m not supposed to complaint about it? Is everyone going to tell me I need a backup? I know that already…. “Move forward” yes, I’m moving forward, nothing else I can do. Thanks for nothing.

I am sorry you did not like my response. This is a user to user technical help community. Complaining about Apple here is of no value. I advised you that you need to maintain a backup of your data, which you had not been doing. Electronic devices such as computers sometimes fail. Apple sells about 25 million computers every year; if there was a systemic problem these communities would be ablaze with reports.

If you feel there is a product problem that caused your loss of data please use the Apple Feedback site to provide feedback to Apple. Product Feedback - Apple

Having a backup of important data is the most basic means of recovering data!

In the digital age, data loss can happen from several possible causes not just a computer for drive failure so backup of important data is not just a suggestion but a requirement.

As inexpensive as external drive are these days, there is no excuse.

"Putting all of your eggs in one basket" is never a good idea when it comes to data. That's not just true of Macs – it's true of any computer, phone, or tablet, be it Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeBook, iOS/iPadOS, or Android.

Even if your MacBook Air had removable, unencrypted storage, it would be extremely foolish to count on recovering data from the internal drive of a failed computer as a substitute for proper backups.

• For computers with mechanical hard drives, the hard drive itself is one of the components most likely to fail. Hiring a professional data recovery company to try to scrape your data off a crashed hard drive can cost several thousand dollars – and the partial data that you get back (if you get anything back) is often a mess.
• Some early SSDs were known for having firmware bugs that caused them to fail catastrophically, without warning – with no way to retrieve any data from them. It wasn't so long ago that a photography Web site posted an article saying that they could no longer recommend a particular well-known brand / model of external SSDs due to all of the sudden failures and data loss that customers had been experiencing.

There are horror stories about other forms of media, too. E.g., with reel-to-reel tapes, I believe that the magnetic patterns recorded on one part of the tape can sometimes "print through" to the layer wound immediately below. Or the oxide on which the data is recorded can come loose from the flexible plastic tape, with the result being that the data literally flakes off of the tape and onto the floor.

Zip disks (100 MB disks that looked like oversized floppy disks) once looked like an appealing storage alternative for home users who needed more storage than floppies offered, but couldn't afford expensive hard drives. Then came the <CLICK> <CLICK> <CLICK> of Death …

Backups are how you survive catastrophe. But you must make them before the catastrophe happens. Afterwards is too late.

P.S. - Good luck with Windows or Linux. And with learning how to make proper backups, because if you don't back up your Windows PC or Linux PC, it'll be very easy to lose all of the data you have stored on it, too.

gopal.virtual wrote:

Recovering important data is pretty basic since I know computers, you should be able to pull out the hard drive and plug it into a different computer to retrieve the data. Alas, that's not how Apple wants you to do. They would want you to sell out more money on cloud backups and extended warranty. It's designed to be a paperweight if you don't.

There is no hard drive in a M2 MacBook Air.

The 13" and 15" non-Retina Mid-2012 MacBook Pros were the last Mac notebooks to use mechanical hard drives or to have bays for them. Since then, it has been all SSDs – SSDs that help to make overall performance/usability better than it would be with any hard drive.

On Intel-based Macs with T2 security chips, and on Macs with Apple Silicon processors, most or all of the stuff on the internal SSD is encrypted in real time with keys held by the T2 or Apple Silicon chip. If you do not have access to the keys, and you don't have the means with which to crack the encryption, the data stored on the internal flash chips will be so much useless hash.

This allows for quick "erasing" of the SSD by telling the T2 or Apple Silicon chip to change the keys.

gopal.virtual wrote:

Your technical explanation doesn't help millions of non-tech savvy users, who simply wants a reliable machine to work and options to recover data when it fails in the worst of scenario. Btw, SSD is not new to MacBook. It's been there for ages in desktops and laptops. But in case of Apple, it's not possible to take out the ssd, and give you the means to even start data recovery, while others do.

I strongly hope, the new right-to-repair laws will force Apple to cut down their malpractices.

Creating a data backup has been standard practice for decades, since computers were first invented. The way to prevent data loss is to create backups. It is also the norm for users of other manufacturers' computers to create and maintain data backups rather than to remove SSDs to recover data.

If the device fails (unusual) within the warranty period have it fixed/replaced. Your data is your responsibility.

It happened to me as well. 7 months, M2, 512gigs, MacBook Air, won't turn on or even charge. No physical damage, no liquid damage, it just shuts off itself one fine day. Their so called trained technical have no clue why it happens. Blanket rule, replace the logic board. No assistance provided to recover data. On top of that, post replacement, they are providing 90 days warranty for the replaced logic board.

Recovering important data is pretty basic since I know computers, you should be able to pull out the hard drive and plug it into a different computer to retrieve the data. Alas, that's not how Apple wants you to do. They would want you to sell out more money on cloud backups and extended warranty. It's designed to be a paperweight if you don't.

[Edited by Moderator]

gopal.virtual wrote:

Your technical explanation doesn't help millions of non-tech savvy users, who simply wants a reliable machine to work and options to recover data when it fails in the worst of scenario.

An "option to recover data when [a machine] fails in the worst [case] scenario" is called a backup.

It is not Apple's fault that in all of the time between August 2023 and May 2024, you failed to make even a single backup. They provided USB-C (USB, USB4, Thunderbolt) ports with which you could attach backup drives. They even included a backup application (Time Machine) that you could have used if you did not want to buy a separate backup application from a third party (e.g., Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!).

Btw, SSD is not new to MacBook. It's been there for ages in desktops and laptops. But in case of Apple, it's not possible to take out the ssd, and give you the means to even start data recovery, while others do.

Yes, some other machines use 2.5" SATA notebook SSDs (no room inside of a modern Mac notebook for one of those), or M.2 SATA SSD sticks, or M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD sticks.

There's still no guarantee that if catastrophe strikes, it's going to be one that lets you recover any data off of the drive. A fire could burn down your home. Ransomware could eat up the contents of your drive, and even paying the criminals wouldn't necessarily get you that data back. If a SSD had a catastrophic firmware failure, well, you are not likely to be recovering any data from that drive, even if you pay big bucks to a professional data recovery service. Last, but not least, a removable and unencrypted 2.5" SATA, M.2 SATA, or M.2 PCIe SSD will not be of a lot of use to you if thieves steal your notebook and the drive installed in it.

If you had any sensitive personal data on the drive, that data might now be of great use to any thieves whom had the idea of extracting the drive and putting it into an external case. And if you didn't make any backups, because you thought a removable drive was a substitute for making backups, you wouldn't have that data.

You are certainly free to ignore what everyone here is telling you about backups – what anyone with much of any knowledge about computers would tell you. You may be setting yourself up to lose data again and again – but, if that's your choice, you get to make it and to live with the consequences.

Hopefully anyone else who is reading this thread – but who has not yet realized that they need to make backups – will value their data enough that they will start doing so.

You have a 1-year warranty from Apple so you should pursue those options (and you opted for an extended warranty too). As for your files, you’ll need to restore from your backups.

At least myself I am more interested in what caused the Macbook Air to fail so soon. I have always been a bit concerned about passive cooled notebooks. I really like my M2 Macbook Air 15 inch, but have also noticed some pretty wide swings in temps just doing basics. Definitely, will have to make sure to have a backup just in case. At the very least you have to backup to something external with good frequency. Hardware is hardware no matter who made it.

Servant of Cats wrote:

There is no hard drive in a M2 MacBook Air.

The 13" and 15" non-Retina Mid-2012 MacBook Pros were the last Mac notebooks to use mechanical hard drives or to have bays for them. Since then, it has been all SSDs – SSDs that help to make overall performance/usability better than it would be with any hard drive.

On Intel-based Macs with T2 security chips, and on Macs with Apple Silicon processors, most or all of the stuff on the internal SSD is encrypted in real time with keys held by the T2 or Apple Silicon chip. If you do not have access to the keys, and you don't have the means with which to crack the encryption, the data stored on the internal flash chips will be so much useless hash.

This allows for quick "erasing" of the SSD by telling the T2 or Apple Silicon chip to change the keys.

Your technical explanation doesn't help millions of non-tech savvy users, who simply wants a reliable machine to work and options to recover data when it fails in the worst of scenario. Btw, SSD is not new to MacBook. It's been there for ages in desktops and laptops. But in case of Apple, it's not possible to take out the ssd, and give you the means to even start data recovery, while others do.

I strongly hope, the new right-to-repair laws will force Apple to cut down their malpractices.