Recover photos on broken disk from iMac

Using advanced tools to read photos from a faulty disk

Oct. 15, 2020 - Willem L. Middelkoop

This week I received a message from someone with a iMac that crashed. It contained more than 50.000 photos, covering two decades of personal history. As there was no backup, it was up to me to attempt to safe as much as I could. Could I possibly recover the personal photos?

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Be careful when lifting the display as it has multiple cables attached to the main logic board

The hard disk inside the iMac - containing the personal photos

Ohhhh no! Trouble! Read errors while copying photos!

Removing the glass panel using suction caps

This chip is was originally part of a external USB disk drive - you might have one around that you can use for this

Some iMacs require a special cutting blade to cut through the adhesive tape holding the glass on to the Aluminium frame

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Articles (161)

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2025-03-05 Durable Smartphone
2025-02-10 Better Laptop
2025-01-27 Podcast Downloader
2025-01-23 Champions League of Webdesign
2025-01-18 Master of Change
2024-12-19 Data versus Feeling
2024-12-09 The Problem With Bitcoin
2024-11-11 Write your own words
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2024-10-20 Marathon
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2024-05-11 Developing a native iOS app
2024-03-24 Half Marathon
2024-03-05 No, I Won't Build That!
2024-02-16 Vision Pro
2024-01-16 Health and fitness data
2023-12-15 Backup Rotation Scheme
2023-11-10 Apple Watch as Phone
2023-11-01 And... there is light!
2023-10-14 Giving AI Training
2023-10-13 Hello, stranger
2023-08-23 The Same, Differently
2023-05-31 Impact of training
2023-05-08 Tablet as Tool
2023-05-03 Using AI to generate code
2023-05-01 Working Offline First
2023-04-20 Tips for Long-Distance Cycling
2023-04-05 Cutting Cloud Costs
2023-02-08 Back to the University
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2022-11-01 Moving to the countryside
2022-10-23 MUSE in Carré
2022-09-15 The Ultimate Freedom Bike
2022-09-11 Computer says no
2022-07-30 CAPTCHA Alternative
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2022-04-18 Snake '97 High Scores
2022-01-14 Wearing WHOOP 4.0
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2021-11-19 Escaping the flat tires
2021-10-25 Using Google Free Android
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2020-07-09 Repairing a Giro AEON bicycle helmet
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2020-03-09 Making my own tablet OS
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2019-07-16 Limitations of sleep tracking using a wearable
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2019-06-24 Six months with MCADD
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2019-01-29 Born with MCADD
2019-01-24 My first weeks as dad
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2018-11-16 Around town in an electric car
2018-11-02 Is the Apple Watch the modern tool watch?
2018-10-16 Rescuing files from a broken harddisk
2018-10-09 Using a budget Android as main smartphone
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2018-08-20 Google Analytics vs AWStats
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