Chosen Solution
So I’ve been trying to recover a liquid damaged MacBook Air, and it looks like the cost of replacing the parts has exceeded the cost of purchasing a refurbished MacBook Air of the same generation. If I took the SSD out of the damaged system, can I simply plug it into the new Mac and expect it to play as if there were no changes at all? At first, I imagine the SSD will most likely detect that it’s in a new device, but will the OS still load and my data still be available?
Consider getting an OWC Envoy Pro enclosure, then you would be able to access it on another Mac plus have a fast external drive for backup or utility purposes. https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3… A lot of people buy these to use to transfer data for an old machine and then sell them on eBay.
If you had High Sierra on your liquid damaged system you may encounter a problem trying to swap out the SSD. During the OS update your systems firmware was upgraded as well so it can handle the new APFS formatted drives. So you’ll need to first make sure your new system is running High Sierra before you try. I still think getting the OWC Envoy Pro case @mayer recommends is a better answer! Then you can leverage the SSD as a backup drive or offer a large transfer drive if you have a iMac system as well. Here’s a good reference on the Apple SSD’s The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs (Gen4)
