Chosen Solution
So I just bought a used 2012 13” MacBook Pro today because I had one for many years but killed it last weekend. As I dropped the computer into a tub of water and haven’t tried to turn it on since but it’s probably fried for good. I had 2 SSDs in there which are still working, but I don’t know how to recover the data fully. Should I install the 2 SSDs into the new computer and the data should be all there? I bought a external drive enclosure from best buy to see if the drives still work, both drives don’t show up when plugged into the Mac (as an external drive). However, both hard drives show up on my friend’s ChromeBook and seem to be working fine. What I did with the old SSDs when I first installed them in my original system was combined them together into a Striped (RAID 0) set so the two 250 GB SSD’s are seen as a 500 GB drive through the system. So do I have to install the 2 SSDs into my new system for the computer to retrieve the data? If I do this, am I risking the computer at all because of possible water damage to the SSDs (although when I took out the drives they were very dry)? I also had 16 GB RAM in the dead Mac, is there any way to test if that RAM is still good? Is it worth trying to install it into my new system or am I taking a risk because of possible water damage to the RAM? The new mac is mid 2012 13” running 10.14.3 (Mojave) Thanks for any advice in advance! Update (03/02/2019) So I’m currently able to boot the RAID 0 by plugging in the 2 old SSD’s through enclosures. How would I take the data from the RAID and put it onto my current internal hard drive(so that all the settings and everything are the same)?
Yes, you need to install both drives into the same enclosure (both back into your new MacBook Pro) as you have a striped RAID 0 config. If you loose one drive you can’t recover your data as the file was written across both drives in an interleaved fashion. Great for enlarging your storage just not as safe when your system or one of the drives fail. As long as the drives didn’t get wet internally you should be fine in reusing them. And your RAM likewise will be fine as long as it didn’t get wet and if it did you may need to clean it before using it again. While I like RAID drive setups, I tend not to set them up in RAID-0 in laptops as the risk of loosing all of the data is so great. If you are religiously backing up then you have something to backstop the loss and can recover easily. If not, you may want to alter your setup (after backing your data up to an external drive). I would recommend you get a set of new drives and instead of RAID-0 setup a mirrored RAID-1 set. Here the storage is not altered so as an example I have two 500 GB drives the two drives in RAID-1 are still seen as one 500 GB drive! So if you damaged one drive you had a full copy of your data on the second drive! Lastly, High Sierra & Mojave have issues running in RAID. Presently you can only run the drives in HFS+ under Mojave as a bootable drive so make sure you don’t upgrade your drives to APFS.
If I do this, am I risking the computer at all because of possible water damage to the SSDs[…]? There shouldn’t generally be any risk to the computer, however if there is water damage in your SSDs, plugging them in could result in permament data loss. However, it seems as if you’ve already plugged them in, so that ship has sailed. Luckily you said they showed up as devices on your friends Chromebook, which might be a good sign… I bought a hard disk drive encloser from best buy to see if the hard drives still work, both hard drives don’t show up when plugged into the mac (as an external drive). However, both hard drives show up on my friend’s chromebook and seem to be working fine. If you only plugged in one at a time, they wouldn’t appear on your Mac. Did you check and see if they showed up in Disk Utility? So do I have to install the 2 SSDs into the new mac for the computer to retrieve the data? Yes, if they were in software RAID, you’d need to install or at least plug in both of them for them to appear as a disk. However, they should just appear as a single RAID drive if you install both of them, so if both drives are functional, they should appear as a drive on your Mac, and you’ll be able to read it normally. Worst-case they won’t show up at all, but it shouldn’t cause any data loss unless there is liquid damage. If the data is very important, you should probably talk with a company that specializes in data recovery before continuing with anything. I also had 16gb RAM in the old mac, is there any way to test if that RAM is still good? If there’s no signs of corrosion, and no liquid actually on the RAM (obviously), they should be okay to test. You can test them thoroughly by throwing them in a system and running MemTest86.
If you have two MacBooks of the same year and model you can just pop the drive in and boot off of it on the working MacBook and backup data off to another drive if needed. Very rarely liquid ever gets to the storage drive section of a MacBook.
So what I eventually did was take both drives and plug them into my new computer with enclosures so that the RAID would work. I then used the Migration Assistant and it all worked itself out.
