Dead SSD?

Late 2013 rMBP froze < 2 months since delivery. Power down & restart gets flashing ?Folder? icon.
Tried DU Verify via wireless Internet boot, Repair grayed-out.
Tried Target Disk Mode via Thunderbolt-to-FW800 adapter (but not sure if my venerable MacPro1,1 (10.6.8) could see it even without the suspect SSD).
While waiting for warranty mail-in package to arrive (and a DVD w/ latest Disk Warrior) I'm wondering if I can download a Mavericks OS DMG to build a bootable DVD to use in a USB3 superdrive or 32GB memory stick?
Despite best intentions I'd not yet enabled Time Machine back-ups on the rMBP so there're some things I'd like to recover if at all possible before sending it off....

sp_clark wrote:
...Moral: treat any drive as a chimera! Do frequent & complete back-ups of data you'd prefer not to lose forever should the only instance suddenly disappear.
An excellent moral.
Multiple rotating bootable backups give you the added insurance of having an earlier point to retreat to in case something has gone wrong with your installation that the most recent backup includes. Add to that a partition devoted to Time Machine so that you have a second backup source in-depth. In addition, having a bootable Flash drive so that you don't need to boot from a complete backup can allow you to deploy utilities beyond Disk Utility (e.g., Disk Warrior) easily. Since you have USB 3.0 ports, large USB 3.0 flash drives (PNY USB 3.0 128GB drives are going for under $50) allow enough room to create multiple partitions for more than one OS if you have a number of Macs. That also allows you to test something new (like Yosemite) without committing to it on your internal drive. And, in my experience at least, the large USB 3.0 Flash drives are noticeably faster than their smaller siblings.

Similar Messages

Replacing malfunctioning SSD

Does Apple really keep my old SSD if they have to replace it? I've been told "It's Apple's property". So no chance of sending it to e.g.Drive Savers to see if they can recover the contents? I can't believe that I simply have to hand over my entire life, work, personal finances, correspondence etc...

Ughh, thats horrible, you didnt have your data backed up somewhere?
Even if you were to get your SSD back, recovery of data off a dead SSD is a near astronomical impossibility.
Sorry you cant get your data back, a failed SSD is a data black hole.
Apple will not attempt to get your data, youre safe there, and it will be destroyed.

Cost of a MacbookAir Mid 2012 256GB SSD replacement (from Apple)

My Mid 2012 MBA 256GB SSD just failed, 1 week out of warranty if you believe it!. I updated my OS X, restarted and boom, gone. Bad luck I guess.
I'm wondering if anyone has had to replace this part and what the cost was? I am well aware of OWC's solution and I would prefer to avoid them - they seem dodgy and the reviews seem in total pretty negative. I'd like to stick with a legit Apple repair.
I am living in Germany, but the MBA was purchased in Australia if that changes anything.
Also, does Apple provide a warranty on the repair?

In recent days many people with a dead SSD on a 2012 MBAir have had their SSD's replaced by Apple free of charge, even though they were out of warranty.
There is a long and informative thread on failed SSD's in 2012 MBAir here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5210319?tstart=0
This thread here also has some good information:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5300125?start=0&tstart=0
The more recent posts describe people's experiences in getting out-of-warranty repairs from Apple in numerous countries.

Multiple SSD Failures

My niece has a Late 2011 MacBook Air. About 18 months into its life it experienced an SSD failure. They took it to the Apple store and were advised it was a drive failure and it would be $400 (I think) to fix.
Knowing I could get a replacement drive from OWC for about $200 we opted to fix it ourselves. New drive from OWC installed and all was fine for around 3 months.
Then that drive failed. Contacted support at OWC, diagnoses was dead SSD so a new drive was sent out and the issue was resolved. Figured we were having a streak of bad luck.
Last night : drive fails again! Is it possible something on the main board is killing SSDs? Seem unlikely to encounter 3 bad drives in a row

I have just had almost the exact same issue. My MBA's original SSD died after 13 months. I replaced it with an OWC SSD. Now 3 months later that one failed. A new one is on the way. I hear SSD failures are extremely rare. I've lost 2 in 3 months and overall in 16 months. What, if anything, could be causing this? My MBA is mostly on my desk or with me when I travel. I am super careful with it.

HDD Failed; How to recover? Free options?

Hi all -- I have never in 20 years had a HDD fail, but there is always a first time, and that first time for me was with my Toshiba Portege Z835-330 Ultrabook. Failed after 6 months. Rather than shipping in the whole computer for ~$40, I just bought a bigger HDD off of crucial.com. Problem is, I never made system recovery software.
Doing my research, I found the Toshiba recovery FAQ: http://bit.ly/ZrsXml. My HDD is toast, so the only option that looks like it applies to me is to buy new recovery software. (What a pain! And why isn't this downloadable for free upon typing in one's serial number! <end rant>)
So my questions are:
1) Is there any free option I am overlooking? E.g by using my Windows product key from the sticker on the back?
2) If there is no free option available to me, is the best path to order the DVD? Or is there some way to download the software and save on a USB? Would be awesome if I could do this today, while it is top of mind.
Many thanks!
--First time Toshiba purchaser

(ETA: This won't work for a dead SSD, but might for a conventional dead HDD, so I'll post it anyhow.)
Somebody on another forum was able to recover a dead Windows 7 HD's (conventional platter HD) files as follows:
Use a Linux PC, or a laptop or PC that can run Linux from a Linux live cd.   They used Linux Mint Debian but some other variety may work equally well.
Hook up the dead HD with a SATA to USB cable or an enclosure or whatever's on hand.
Use the Linux PC to read and copy files off of the dead HD to a DVD or USB flash drive or to the hard drive for later transfer to other media.   If you could read and copy that recovery partition (or is it two hidden partitions on a Toshiba?), then maybe it can be set up on a new HD?   (I haven't done it. I only read it, on the Internet.   lolz)
alternate:
You can get the Windows 7 SP1 operating system ISO file from Digital River free download (Google for it.) Burn to DVD, install, and then add all of the Toshiba stuff from Downloads at Toshiba.   Activation requires the key code from the sticker on the laptop. If you can't read it or don't have that, then you're outta luck.    You still won't have all of the MS Office & whatever apps came "factory," but at least you can run the laptop until you get a recovery disk set or USB drive.   Disk set is only $30 shipped.

Caddy for secondary Harddrive in MBP

My advise for using a caddy for MBP 2012 []i7 []16mb; primary drive 750gb; Secondary 1T(now) 128gb SSD(Before)
The result from after 6months of using a secondary hd for the macbook Pro, I arrived at the conclusion as unreliable for keeping anything you needed for safe keeping.
A. should not be used as a backup drive for data of necessary
B. Should be use as a trash can.
C. Death Cab for Caddy (since it is created a oneway system of dropping data without able to retrieve and backup/dead SSD 1/ Saved Data 0)

and as most unbelievable things its not true, you can still replace the SSD on both the retina and non retina macbooks. Ram in the only thing you cant replace because of it being soldered (on the retina only).
The ssd in the retina is proprietary so we have to wait for someone to release a compatable module, but it does infact unscrew and come out.
The non-retina macbooks should be as upgradable (hdd and ram wise) as much as the 2011 edition.

Does Firefox 26 use .json for bookmarks?

I ask this because I just lost everything in a crash and was wondering if there might be any bookmark backups lying around on other drives. I searched *.json and only came up with results from 2010. I'll use one of those in a pinch but was wondering a) why results didn't come up for my new profile (dated today) and b) if I could search for any other file types on my machine that might lead to more recent backup files?
Is question a) because my profile is too new to have generated any backups?
Thanks!
I'm on XP SP3.

Hi John99 and Cor-el, thanks for the responses.
John99, a few weeks ago, my 3.5 year old SSD just up and stopped working. It couldn't be detected by the bios. So I got another and am basically starting from scratch. Back when I set everything up, I took a copy of the profile and saved it, so I think I can get a very old version of my bookmarks from there. Haven't tried yet though.
I did a search for .json files and there are a few, but nothing came up later than 9/2010. So I think I'll try importing those using the profile manager.
I was asking this question as a long shot because I'm pretty sure that any backup Firefox would have created all would have been on my now dead SSD. So to answer your first question, my profile died with the drive.
As far as a reset, I think I did reset at one point and I wonder if a profile is lurking around. That's why I was searching for .json files. Are there any other files I can search for that might help me find a more recent profile? Obviously, my desktop didn't survive the crash.
May I repost something here that I posted in another thread, to see if you can give some insight? I would like to store my current, working profile on another drive in my system, and I was told to create an new profile using profile manager in the new spot (E:), then paste my old profile in there (but I'll probably just import the bookmarks).
Here are a couple of my questions regarding better crash proofing my system:
There will be the current profile on C: and also the new one on E:, so will Firefox immediately start using that new profile, or do I have to specify which profile to use, or when to switch when Firefox starts back up? Is there a way to switch back and forth?
If this happens in the future, how then could I direct a new install of Firefox to start using this profile that will be located on E:. For example, OE6 has a place in Options where you can select your "store folder". All you have to do is point it there and it starts using all of my old folders, inbox, sent, etc. I wish Firefox had something this easy.
Thanks guys.

Broken SATA cable or logic board?

Hi.
Today I received my replaced intel 520 series harddisk (I sent one in, because I thought it was dead).
Today, this new SSD didn't show up in disk utilities, although it shows up on another laptop (booting into linux dvd).
I've placed the new SSD in the maindrive of my MacBook Pro 13" early 2011, and i've placed my old HDD in an obtibay in the superdrive's place. The HDD works fine, and i've installed the system onto there, since i can't use my SSD.
Could this be a dead SSD (remember, it showed in Linux), a dead SATA-cable (which i could fix), or a dead logic board connector (which i don't have the balls to fix)?
Regards, Magnus.

No the SSD is more then like OK. the problem is the Optical bay on your model Mac doesn't support the SATA 3 specs, 6GBs. Even if it says it does in the Specifications Apple has limited it. your not the only person that has had problems getting a SATA 3 SSD to work in the optical bay of a Mac notebook.
But Yes the main bay cable is bad. Once you replace that cable the SSD should work in the main bay without problem.
Check with Intel for an updated firmware for that SSD. Problem with that is I don't think they have a way to update it on a Mac. You would need a Windows PC as the firmware is included in the Intel SSD Toolbox program.

Running dead iMac from external SSD?

After watching a video on how to install an SSD in my early 2008 iMac, I bought an external USB enclosure and opted to simply boot off it, using my iMac's internal drive as a backup. This has worked great for more than a year. But last week, after 5 years of yeoman service, the internal drive died. The iMac still boots up fine off the external SSD. I would just like to know if there's any reason I shouldn't continue to use the iMac in this fashion. Any comments or advice appreciated.

Just tried to boot the newly cloned external SSD. Pressed the option key on startup to bring up the startup disk icons. Just got a gray screen. Did a hard shutdown, disconnected the two SSD's. Waited. Reconnected everything. Tried again. This time one SSD icon of the two came up but nothing happened when I clicked on it. Shut down again. Zapped the PRAM. Booted again. This time I got both SSD icons. Yay. But the cursor wouldn't move nor would the arrow keys do anything. Boo. This time I disconnected the SSD's and pulled the power cord from the back of the iMac. Waited a few minutes then reconnected. Booted again. Again got the single icon and the frozen cursor. I had the feeling that the dead (or almost dead) internal hard drive was somehow getting in the way of the startup process. I disconnected one of the SSD's and the remaining one booted fine. I re-connected the second one. It mounted. I opened up the Startup Disk Pref Pane. Only one of the SSD's showed up so I selected the one there. I re-booted & voila. All is sweetness and light. I think I'm going to have to open up the box and disconnect the comatose HD so I don't have to do this dance anymore.

Sandisk cache SSD 24GB dead ?

Hello,
I've recentely decided to install windows 7 pro on my Lenovo U410.
I have lauch diskpart for cleaning disks so i've clean the hard drive and the cache SSD.
But now the SSD is not reconized. Worse, when the SSD is pluged in the bios won't displaying, the boot menu don't want to open and windows doesn't boot (locked on black screen).
The bios want the password, i give him and black screen too.
When i plug-out the SSD the bios work the boot menu too and Windows is booting.
When i plug in the SSD when windows is booted, Windows has no reaction et the SSD is completely invisible in the disk manager or in diskpart.
THe SSD is dead ? or it's just a configuration i've miss ?
thank for attention and sorry for my very poor english :s
Solved!
Go to Solution.

hi leomerirosvo,
When the SSD gets detected, try to use Sandisk's SSD Toolkit which includes a:
Firmware update (if available)
SMART tool
Diagnostic tool
Drive Information tool
Alternatively, you can use a secure erase utility to reset the SSD to factory settings. You may also try to use a USB to mSATA adapter (like this one) to erase the SSD.
Regards,
neokenchi
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I have a brand new MacBook Air 11 inch, 4gb RAM and 256 gb SSD where the screen flickered abnormally and got dead all of a sudden while uploading a photograph in FB. Can anybody help?

I have a new MacBook Air 11 inch, 4gb RAM, 256 SSD and use Mavericks OS. It is still under waranty period.
Just few days ago while I was uploading a photograph in facebook, the screen started flickering abnoromally. I tried using the escape button but nothing was working so switched off by pressing the power button.
After few minutes I tried to switch it on but my system never waked up. Called up the Apple Support, did SMC and PRAM but nothing worked. Then I was advised to take it to Apple's authorised service centre.
At the service centre the engineers diagnoised and then said that the MLB/mother board needs to be replaced. Had waited for six-long days and today they had replaced the MLB/mother board. Now, the system came to life but nothing has booted. The screen goes white and a '?' question mark icon keeps on flickering.
After thoroughly diagnoising it the engineer said that now the problem is with the SSD and the worse thing is all my important documents and photographs etc are no more there. And I don't have a backup of the same!
While Apple Support contact centre is assuring they would replace any other parts if found faulty, but I feel differently. First, the MLB/mother board was changed now they say it is SSD problem - so if the SSD too is replaced there are possibilities of more faults coming up. All I can see and feel that this particular machine has turned out to be architectually deffective that calls for immediate replacement.
Right now I am using a friend's windows pc to write this mail.
Feeling completely miserable - all my expectatations gone after investing in such an expensive machine, loss of all my data, wastage of time and energy and to top it all affecting my daily work.
Can anybody please advise what shall I do?

Take the system to an Apple store to be fixed or replaced as the one you have has defective hardware.

Fusion Drive 4TB + SSD m4 512 Go DEAD can't reformat

Hello,
I have an iMac 27 late 2010 i5 3.6 with 16 Go of RAM running 10.8.3
For Christmas, I received a M4 SSD 512 Go and decided to replace the 2TB in my iMac with a 4TB and create a Fusion Drive.
The operation worked beautifully and my iMac became incredibly fast, which was the goal.
Yesterday, the iMac did not start and I got the white screen with the spinning wheel. After reading about zapping the pram and Vram, nothing worked.
I booted from an external hard drive with Mac os X 10.8.2 and ran Disk Util to check the drive. I got a lot of red lines in the report and got the error Disk Utility can't repair this disk. back , reformat and restore.
I was able to copy some of the files on the drive and decided to reformat the drive.
Everytime I try to reformat the drive (4.4tB Fusion Drive) the mac shuts down and restarts.
I tried to un fuse the fusion drive and I get the same result. the screen goes black, the computer restarts and displays that the mac encountered a problem and had to restart.
when I type the commande in terminal diskutil cs file, I see the logical volume group.
When I do a diskutil cs Delete Volume xxxxxx xxxx xxx x x x x x x x
started CoreStorage operation on disk 2 iMac
Unmounting disk2
Removing Logical Volume from Logical Volume Group
then the mac shuts down and restarts.
it took me 2 hours to crack the beast open to perform the disk implant last christmas and it was scary. I thought I would never manage to close it properly.
I understand that this operation voided the warranty (i have the Apple Care for 3 years).
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Phil

Thanks for your answers.
I still don't know if it was the SSD or the HD that was faulty but I found a solution via this post
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21492423#21492423
Jerome Tremblay
This solved my questionRe: Unable to reformat/repartition Fusion Drive
Mar 12, 2013 11:05 AM (in response to Topher Kessler)
@Topher : It did not work, and it failed with POSIX errors similar to the zeroDisk message I posted above.
However, While I was unable to "cleanly" solve my problem, I managed to reset everything by booting in single-user mode from an external hard drive (with cmd-S) and overwriting the disk directly with
cat /dev/random > /dev/disk0 cat /dev/random > /dev/disk1
Then I rebooted and I could reformat the drives (actually, I created another fusion drive using these directives).
I was able to reformat the drives as a Fusion Drive. My time Machine backup was only a week old but it worked perfectly. I was able to add the rest via my Backblaze subscription.
Don't know how long the Fusion drive will last but I am prepared with my backups in case it happens.
Phil

15'' MBP + M4 SSD + Kernel Panics + Data Doubler = dead end

Hey there,
I've been dealing with an issue since the snow leopard days, and it got worse sometime in Mountain Lion. 2.66 GHz i7 w/ 8GB DDR.
A brief history: In January 2013 I replaced the main HD on my MBP with a 500GB Crucial M4 SSD. I simultaneously upgraded to 8GB of Crucial DDRAM.
For a year or so everything ran at blazing speeds: I use Ableton Live for music production and use many plug-ins along with it, so CPU load has been pushed more than once, never to any place that was immediately fatal. Slowly, with increasing frequency, I began to experience unpredictable kernel panics. Once a month at first, then twice, then once a week, etc. Usually they would happen while doing something low-CPU such as browsing the internet with few or no apps open besides my browser. By September 2014, I t was happening multiple times per day. A colleague suggested moving my SSD to a data doubler and putting the original HD back in the place it started.
Trusting this colleague and some light reading, I ordered an OWC data doubler and installed it. Per "about this mac -> system report," the doubler is properly installed: under "SATA/SATA Express" there are two "Intel 5 Series Chipset" drop downs (see pics). I've tried several HDs and the SSD in the doubler to no avail, and all the same hard drives do show up in the original SATA port (pics demonstrate). In no case can I find the doubler's drive in Disk Utility or in Recovery mode. The most interesting next step I have heard is to open the BIOS (i.e. firmware, right?) and tell my laptop to look for the SSD in the second SATA port. Any ideas?
Other mentionables:
-The kernel panics only occur with the SSD in the main HD port, even after formatting. Booting from Original HD or external HD do not experience these issues
-The SSD is SATA III and both my laptop's connections are SATA II; I don't think that's an issue as the M4 can operate at 3gb / s and does so in the main HD bay
-I haven't done any RAM-isolating trouble shooting, though as mentioned the kernel panics only happen with the SSD in the main HD bay
Thank you so much for any energy you put into my issue.
All the best,
Kevin

As (bad) luck would have it, I don't have the discs that came with the machine . Isn't that always the way?
At any rate, I figured that would be a suggestion and searched the web for looking to see if what I need (AHT) could possibly be downloaded. Looks like some folks have found a way/location to download AHT from the web from some of the posts I've seen, but I've come up empty handed.

Time machining to an SSD from dead HDD

So my HDD has lots of errors and it keeps dying.
I need to replace the SSD and I will soon but I'm not sure whether it's safe to use the Time Machine because some of the files may be corrupted.
Is it safe to use my current HDD's to Time Machine or is it better starting off fresh?
Thankyou.

dippypants wrote:
So my HDD has lots of errors and it keeps dying.
I need to replace the SSD and I will soon but I'm not sure whether it's safe to use the Time Machine because some of the files may be corrupted.
Is it safe to use my current HDD's to Time Machine or is it better starting off fresh?
Err on the safe side and consider it corrupted.
If you have another EHD Drag and Drop what you can to it and then see if any of it is usable once you get your New Internal Drive installed.

Two Kingston SSD dead on Satellite L850-1PD

I replaced my mechanic hard drive with a Kingston SSD and after two months the drive just stopped working. I got my money back and bought another Kingston SSD on another supplier. After another couple of months the new drive stopped working again. I'm on the process of replacing it with a new one however, at this point, I believe that there is something wrong with the laptop causing the hard drives to fail.
If more details are needed, I can provide them.
Thank you.

I dont think that the issue could be related to the notebook.
Why should notebook break the SSD drives and how?
I mean the SSD drive is connected to the SATA controller and thats it!
What you should do is check and modify some system settings
You could disable the scheduled disk defragmentation
Disk defragmentation is only useful for common spinning HDD that have moving parts but not for SSD drive!
You should also disable indexing. Indexing is a Windows service that is designed to speed up Windows search. The indexing service automatically keeps track of the files which makes files searching faster.
But the point is that Windows indexing performs numerous small write operations and this might decrease the SSD working life.
Last but not least make sure TRIM support is enabled and you could disable, move or reduce the page file

Dead SSD?

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