2018 MacBook Pro With Touch Bar Might Have A Data Recovery Problem

It seems that the uncertainty over Apple's newest MacBook Pro generation. The problematic keyboard has been "fixed" by what is practically a cover-up. The most powerful Core i9 model might be throttling too much to take advantage of all that power. But now there might be an even bigger threat to the 2018 MacBook Pro's longevity. Based on teardowns, sources, and lack of documentation, the latest gen notebooks might be unable to save the data on your SSD if its logic board becomes irreparable.

When Apple launched the first MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models, there was an immediate concern over data recovery. The SSDs were non-removable and soldered directly to the logic board. If the latter failed, it would be impossible to recover the data stored there. Fortunately, Apple had a special tool that allowed service providers to still recover data from a failed board provided the SSD is still intact.

That tool, however, uses a special data recover connector that iFixit discovered to be missing from the 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. That is true for both 13 and 15 inch models, sparking worries from interested buyers. Unfortunately, MacRumors' sources confirm those fears: there's no way to recover data from a failed logic board.

That is supposedly due to the Apple T2 chip in the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar that encrypts the SSD storage. Allowing data to be recovered even with that hardware encryption feature is broke would defeat the purpose of encrypting the SSD in the first place. Apple may have exchanged data recovery for data security. For now, it seems that the best advice would be to take advantage of Apple's easy-to-use Time Machine for regular backups which, of course, would only matter if you save those backups to an external storage.