Maybe I read it wrong, but OP makes it seem like he never did the update. You have nothing to lose by performing the update. Your drive could fail either way.
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Do not update your macbook air 2012 to new software
- Thread starter jamesjingyi
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My bad, I saw the post #21, and then was under the impression it was OP's post, apologies.
I never did the update... The MacBook Air just died on me... Must have been the downloading of 120mb+ of stuff
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You don't, honestly. They only replace the SSD and its a lot of hassle and stress going about everything to get it fixed. Therefore, they won't give you a new machine or upgrade you so there's no point wishing for it!
128GB SSD failure and data recovery
I have a MBA with this SSD which has failed. The system would not boot, and of course it wasn't backed up. I could boot into the recovery partition and run Disk Utility, which showed a lot of errors on the SSD and wouldn't verify it, and it told me I had to reinstall OS/X. I built a bootable USB flash drive (a Cruzer 16GB) that has OS/X on it, and I could boot the system with that. (Man, does it run SLOWLY, but it eventually works.) The data is readable on the SSD, but not writable, at least in my case. I could run Time Machine to back my data up to my WD My Book external drive.
I couldn't restore from TM, though. I tried and it died (now, there's a title for a country geek song) which is probably due to the bad SSD. I could restore OS/X to the SSD, which I did. Then I ran Migration Assistant to move settings, applications, and documents over, but it didn't seem to work all the way. I ended up having to manually move documents over from the TM backup. I also had to delete and reinstall Office 2011, which evidently had gotten kiboshed. But then the system worked perfectly. When I installed the updates to the OS, one was for the firmware to the SSD, and it redirected me to an Apple page saying I needed to get the flash drive replaced, which would be free to me.
For 2 days the system ran fine. Then it froze and refused to boot again, just like before. I played around with it like before, and got the same issues, so it is the SSD. I have an appointment later today with the local Genius Bar (thought I could use an actual bar at this point) to have the SSD replaced, or at least, to start that process.
It's a real shame that this SSD issue has happened. I can't recall Apple ever having a wide-scale recall like this before. I've found that 128GB on the Air is sufficient. I have 256GB on a rMBP, and that's really good. If I could upgrade the SSD in the Air to 256GB at this time, I'd do that, but it doesn't really need it. And I bet Apple will probably say I have to get the 128GB SSD, and can't upgrade. It would be a good PR program for Apple to let people in this situation do that, though.
Another point... there are hardware diagnostics on the system, which you get to by holding the D key down when booting. I ran that, and no issues showed up. But there are no SSD diagnostics in this package. That doesn't make sense. Why ignore a major hardware component like that?
I have a MBA with this SSD which has failed. The system would not boot, and of course it wasn't backed up. I could boot into the recovery partition and run Disk Utility, which showed a lot of errors on the SSD and wouldn't verify it, and it told me I had to reinstall OS/X. I built a bootable USB flash drive (a Cruzer 16GB) that has OS/X on it, and I could boot the system with that. (Man, does it run SLOWLY, but it eventually works.) The data is readable on the SSD, but not writable, at least in my case. I could run Time Machine to back my data up to my WD My Book external drive.
I couldn't restore from TM, though. I tried and it died (now, there's a title for a country geek song) which is probably due to the bad SSD. I could restore OS/X to the SSD, which I did. Then I ran Migration Assistant to move settings, applications, and documents over, but it didn't seem to work all the way. I ended up having to manually move documents over from the TM backup. I also had to delete and reinstall Office 2011, which evidently had gotten kiboshed. But then the system worked perfectly. When I installed the updates to the OS, one was for the firmware to the SSD, and it redirected me to an Apple page saying I needed to get the flash drive replaced, which would be free to me.
For 2 days the system ran fine. Then it froze and refused to boot again, just like before. I played around with it like before, and got the same issues, so it is the SSD. I have an appointment later today with the local Genius Bar (thought I could use an actual bar at this point) to have the SSD replaced, or at least, to start that process.
It's a real shame that this SSD issue has happened. I can't recall Apple ever having a wide-scale recall like this before. I've found that 128GB on the Air is sufficient. I have 256GB on a rMBP, and that's really good. If I could upgrade the SSD in the Air to 256GB at this time, I'd do that, but it doesn't really need it. And I bet Apple will probably say I have to get the 128GB SSD, and can't upgrade. It would be a good PR program for Apple to let people in this situation do that, though.
Another point... there are hardware diagnostics on the system, which you get to by holding the D key down when booting. I ran that, and no issues showed up. But there are no SSD diagnostics in this package. That doesn't make sense. Why ignore a major hardware component like that?
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Oh, really? Tell that to the press.
http://www.zdnet.com/sensible-concerns-following-apples-flash-drive-recall-7000022176/
http://www.cnet.com.au/apple-recall...book-air-flash-storage-339345722.htm?feed=rss
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/18/...st-years-macbook-air-due-to-faulty-ssd-drives.
http://mashable.com/2013/10/19/apple-macbook-air-recall/
http://www.geek.com/apple/apple-recall-macbook-air-at-risk-of-catastrophic-ssd-failure-1574292/
etc
Do you think they will upgrade me?Because I have genuinely lost about 30+ hours of work because SSDs are said to never die...
Classic. Who said this?
Always keep backups of your work.
I know... What I meant was that SSDs are supposed to be a lot more durable and long lasting.. Well they were supposed to be...
It is true and it is also not true. In this case there seems to be a real issue with the particular batch of SSDs. I have been using an OCZ Vertex 3 since 2011 without any issues. I have lost more mechanical hard drives than I care to count. Always keep backups and get into the habit of backing up work on a very regular basis.
Yeah, it was just the batch, which was lucky for me... I suppose it could have been worse though... I had just transferred all my photos off my Mac which were irreplaceable...
SSDs obviously benefit from having no moving parts, but earlier models were beset with reliability issues - the issues we've had with the macbook air 2012 drive were common place (and yes, thanks, grabbed the update and it upgraded my firmware!).
While things are better now than they were, I'd say that most professional IT people (and I'm talking about sysadmins like myself who manage networks with thousands of machines on them and therefore have some meaningful data) would very much say that for desktop SSD drives at least, the jury is still out on whether or not they're reliable.
The one thing I would say is that on those large scales traditional hard drives are also shown to be less reliable than people seem to think, though I think more reliable that comparable SSD drives. That's why we all back up data we care about regardless of what type of drives we have, right?