Macbook 12" dead hard drive - any options?
Jason Davies
Hi gang
We lost my brother during lockdown and his pile of laptops has sat there ever since. My mum is now ready to get rid of them/find them new homes (I'm having SUCH fun trying to get round passwords on his three Windows laptops but that's another story).
He had a Macbook 12" which used to start up (I tried to get into it a couple of years ago but didn't know the password). I just tried it again and it said it couldn't find a hard drive. I booted it happily from a USB drive with Mojave installed but it shows no sign of the internal hard drive.
Google tells me it's soldered in and cannot be replaced/upgraded. Before I consign it to recycling or sell for parts, is there anything else I can try? Disk Utility shows nothing either. I'm not entirely sure what year it was made but can look stuff up if need be.
If it wasn't for the fact it only has one USB, I'd probably use it for this and that with an external drive to boot it, but getting power in becomes problematic;)
Cheers,
Jason
Jason Davies
forgot to say I have reset PRAM and tried starting in recovery mode but neither take me anywhere except wanting to login over the net (which is taking forever).
Cheers,
J
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Cheers,
Jason
Sam - MacAmbulance
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Regards 
MacAmbulance Ltd.Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development |
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MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597 |
Sam - MacAmbulance
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Regards
MacAmbulance Ltd.Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development |
|
MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597 |
On 22 Sep 2026, at 17:30, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group <sm...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Jason Davies
Thanks for the thoughts about Tom, it was a really rough set of events.
Not even sure which versions...this was 2021 so whatever came before then lol. I've tried various key combinations that I found on google and at best get dumped into BIOS. We just want to erase the disks/restore to factory settings. I've been doing things like holding down ALT F8 or F12 or hitting F2 repeatedly, usually to no avail. I don't even know how to tell by looking at the login but they may well be Win 10. One of them has a Win 8 sticker on it but he would have upgraded if he could. I think 10 came out in 2015 so it's probably 10...
We have a bunch of passwords for his online accounts like gmail (via his phone, which he gave us the PIN for) but not these.
Since this is the Mac group, I wasn't going to ask but if there is a simple way...Curently trying to coax a Win 10 start up onto a USB to erase them from that but am tripping on creating the installer (my wife has a PC, when she's available I will use her machine to do it).
(I have found various pages about how to boot from external drive so will cross that bridge when I get to it).
Cheers,
Jason
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/0307F5D3-327B-4C94-82B2-7F9FE3752DB6%40macambulance.com.
Cheers,
Jason
Sam - MacAmbulance
|
|
Regards
MacAmbulance Ltd.Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development |
|
MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597 |
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/C795E6C7-51AF-47A0-B8F2-6AC736DC753D%40me.com.
Jason P. Davies
Thanks,
-Jason
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Sent from my iPhone
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On 22 Sep 2026 at 18:12:27 BST, Sam - MacAmbulance <in...@macambulance.com> wrote:
There’s a method where you make a windows 10 USB installer, boot from it, use CMD to swap the sethc.exe and cmd.exe applications on the internal storage. When you reboot you can press I think ctrl a few times to bring up what Windows thinks will be an accessibility settings panel, but we’ve tricked it into loading CMD, from where you can reset the password on a user.
If you just want to reset the laptop you can boot from the Win 10 installer USB, usually F10 or F12 at startup to bring up a list of what it can find to boot from (like alt/opt on a Mac but less graceful), then erase the internal storage and reinstall Windows on it
_
Regards
Sam Mullen
in...@macambulance.com <mailto:in...@macambulance.com>
www.macambulance.com <http://www.macambulance.com/>
MacAmbulance Ltd.
Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development
MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597
This email is intended solely for the addressed recipients and may contain privileged or confidential information.
If you have received this email in error please notify the sender and delete the email immediately.
> On 22 Sep 2026, at 17:59, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group <sm...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the thoughts about Tom, it was a really rough set of events.
>
> Not even sure which versions...this was 2021 so whatever came before then lol. I've tried various key combinations that I found on google and at best get dumped into BIOS. We just want to erase the disks/restore to factory settings. I've been doing things like holding down ALT F8 or F12 or hitting F2 repeatedly, usually to no avail. I don't even know how to tell by looking at the login but they may well be Win 10. One of them has a Win 8 sticker on it but he would have upgraded if he could. I think 10 came out in 2015 so it's probably 10...
>
> We have a bunch of passwords for his online accounts like gmail (via his phone, which he gave us the PIN for) but not these.
>
> Since this is the Mac group, I wasn't going to ask but if there is a simple way...Curently trying to coax a Win 10 start up onto a USB to erase them from that but am tripping on creating the installer (my wife has a PC, when she's available I will use her machine to do it).
>
> (I have found various pages about how to boot from external drive so will cross that bridge when I get to it).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jason
>
> On 22 Sep 2026, at 17:48, Sam - MacAmbulance wrote:
>
> Which version of Windows are the three laptops running? Anything up Windows 10 is easy to access
> _
> Regards
> Sam Mullen
>
> in...@macambulance.com <mailto:in...@macambulance.com>
> www.macambulance.com <http://www.macambulance.com/>
> MacAmbulance Ltd.
> Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development
>
> MacAmbulance Ltd. is a registered company in England & Wales, registration number 8466597
>
> This email is intended solely for the addressed recipients and may contain privileged or confidential information.
>
> If you have received this email in error please notify the sender and delete the email immediately.
>
>
>> On 22 Sep 2026, at 17:30, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group <sm...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi gang
>>
>> We lost my brother during lockdown and his pile of laptops has sat there ever since. My mum is now ready to get rid of them/find them new homes (I'm having SUCH fun trying to get round passwords on his three Windows laptops but that's another story).
>>
>> He had a Macbook 12" which used to start up (I tried to get into it a couple of years ago but didn't know the password). I just tried it again and it said it couldn't find a hard drive. I booted it happily from a USB drive with Mojave installed but it shows no sign of the internal hard drive.
>>
>> Google tells me it's soldered in and cannot be replaced/upgraded. Before I consign it to recycling or sell for parts, is there anything else I can try? Disk Utility shows nothing either. I'm not entirely sure what year it was made but can look stuff up if need be.
>>
>> If it wasn't for the fact it only has one USB, I'd probably use it for this and that with an external drive to boot it, but getting power in becomes problematic;)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
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>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
>> To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/C442F4FB-68BC-4C71-A7FB-FFB2FAD53E58%40me.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/C442F4FB-68BC-4C71-A7FB-FFB2FAD53E58%40me.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
> To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/0307F5D3-327B-4C94-82B2-7F9FE3752DB6%40macambulance.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/0307F5D3-327B-4C94-82B2-7F9FE3752DB6%40macambulance.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
> Cheers,
>
> Jason
>
>
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
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