We have all done it. Working really hard on a project in the early morning hours and bumping a cup of coffee across your keyboard. Macbook Vs Coffee Spill, Who wins? Sometimes you are lucky sometimes you are not. But what can you do? Can the Macbook be repaired?
Bad news first
Let’s get the bad news out of the way. The bad news is that computers and liquid is always a bad mix. While I am one of the more hopeful techs who would rather spend hours trying to repair a liquid-damaged phone or computer than throw it away, The reality is that liquid damage is a death sentence for a Macbook.
Liquid damage causes all kinds of short circuits, the problem is that liquids like water, coffee, and wine can continue to cause harm to a computer even after the liquid is dried. due to the corrosion that will continue to cause problems.
Rice does not work
The best way to describe the rice trick is “Making sure the ambulance driver is not drunk when they come to rescue you from a car wreck” While it will remove moisture from a computer the damage has already been done.
Mac Vs Coffee Spill, Who wins? Why can’t we just fix it?
The big problem with fixing liquid damage is finding all the places where the liquid touched the computer. This in itself can be a huge task as this should be done under a microscope. Even then the chips on the main board will need to be replaced if it has come in contact with liquid. In most cases, the board-level repair is not worth it due to the amount of labor involved.. and that is assuming we find all the damage.
A Liquid damaged Macbook is unpredictable. Even if we replace the parts and the Macbook boots up. There is a good chance that it may die at any moment without warning. It might be hours, days or months before this happens. While there is a chance that this might happen outside of my warranty I would hate to give false hope to someone who needs a functioning computer.
But there is a good news
The way Macbooks are designed there is a good chance that the liquid will miss the hard drive or SSD. This means that we can hopefully recover all your data without sending your MacBook to a data recovery service. After all the Macbook only needs to boot one more time to access all the data.
In this case, we dry out the computer and make sure that it is totally dry before booting again. From there we run Time Machine and make a backup of the entire computer while at the same time making a manual copy of the data that is the most important. Mac Vs Coffee Spill The coffee always wins !
