SoCal: SSD lifeboat port and Apple Kit Customer Data Migration Tool

Liquid damaged my 2016 13” MacBook Pro with tea (sugar and milk). Laptop lid was closed and computer asleep. But the tea got in through the rear vents and soaked most of the screen hinge area.

Made several mistakes:

• Opened the lid to dry the liquid immediately
• Turned on laptop 10-15 mns after the spill and got missing drive ? reset NVRAM and booted up normally.
• Then rebooted because the trackpad wasn’t working properly.
• Booted normally and used for an urgent transaction before I heard a click (similar to a HDD failing) and the computer shut down.
• Haven’t been able to turn on after leaving it alone for a week. I know now that corrosion caused even more damage.

The Apple Store I visited last night won’t repair but replace everything for $1,299. They won’t use the “lifeboat” port to retrieve my data either. But they kindly removed the P5 Pentalobe fasteners so that I can remove the bottom cover at home. Which I did (one clip left and right, in the middle of the shorter side for whose wondering and reading this in the future).

I also disconnected the battery by removing the ribbon cable. I learned about the existence of that port on 2016-2017 MBPs with soldered SSD via google search.

Grossman Group (repair store) in NYC estimated $500+ to repair or $200+ to retrieve data. They want the whole laptop shipped to them.

Reluctant to trust anyone with my admin password (Filevault is turned on) which gives access to keychain and an encrypted not inside Keychain with all my passwords for everything (reusing the same password for that as the user login is another mistake)

I really just want my data. Don’t care to save the laptop which is now 4 years old. The money can be put towards an entirely new laptop instead.

From the photos:

1. Looks like I have 2 SSD chips and I can’t spot any damage. But and IF there is some corrosion damage in one of them or both, would that render it/ then permanently lost thus making my current data recovery efforts useless?
2. Should I remove the logic board and clean in a pan filled with > 91% alcohol and a toothbrush? My iFixit toolkit was just delivered today.
3. Is there anyone in SoCal with the Apple Kit Customer Data Migration Tool part # 076-00236? I can purchase it and resell it when done or rent it from you for 1-2 hours to pull my data?

I would appreciate any insight and help. Thank you.