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Failing SSD 2017 MBP

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Blarnld

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 18, 2012
38
3
After trying to backup my three month old MacBook Pro (OS 10.12.6) with SuperDuper! I contacted Shirt Pocket Support. After seeing the logs they say the SSD is failing. Anyone else have this happen? Fix?
 
I'm off to Apple Genus Bar tonight. I'll post what happens.
Thanks!
 
It's completely possible the SSD is failing - the solution for a physical failure is a SSD replacement on the nTB or a logic board replacement on the TB. You can pull the SMART data with an App called DriveDX. SMART data is not by any means definitive, but it's often a good indicator of problems. macOS' SMART indicator is IMO not reliable for alerting the User to pending SSD and HDD failures, FWIW.
 
BTW if it is failed, I would see if you get them to swap the entire unit. Likely nothing wrong with a MB swap. But that still would leave me wondering what is next?
 
I went to Apple Genius Bar last night. They ran diagnostics and SSD checked out as all good. They said this was probably a "partition error" problem causing SuperDuper! to fail to backup. They set me up for a Time Machine backup on another exterior hard drive. I did the TM backup and then a restore. All seems to have worked. I've used SD! for years without a hitch, is it time to leave them behind and rely on TM?
Thanks
 
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Blarnld said:
I went to Apple Genius Bar last night. They ran diagnostics and SSD checked out as all good. They said this was probably a "partition error" problem causing SuperDuper! to fail to backup. They set me up for a Time Machine backup on another exterior hard drive. I did the TM backup and then a restore. All seems to have worked. I've used SD! for years without a hitch, is it time to leave them behind and rely on TM?
Thanks
Click to expand...

I use both myself.

The nice thing is that you can pull back earlier versions with time machine, useful sometimes for that feature.

A super duper clone is better to get a computer rerunning from a total failure, to to take the drive and use it as the base for a migration onto a new Mac (I found it much faster.)

I am exploring carbon copy cloner instead of super duper, due to the fact carbon copy cloner will restore the recovery partition as well, which is required for encryption and some other features.
 
TimeMachine and SD are for different uses, or at least for me they are. TM is used for incremental backups while SD, ChronoSync, etc, are used for full backups. If you can afford to have both running, I would.
 
Personally I use TM exclusively. Even for full clone backups to restore to a new computer (or replacement HD/SSD), I find it restores everything and I basically pick up right where I left off. Plus the ability to pull up clones/backups from a different time period further back. IMO, it's all I need.
 
I've used TM like that. Make a new full backup and then do a restore immediately after.
 
Richdmoore said:
I use both myself.

The nice thing is that you can pull back earlier versions with time machine, useful sometimes for that feature.

A super duper clone is better to get a computer rerunning from a total failure, to to take the drive and use it as the base for a migration onto a new Mac (I found it much faster.)

I am exploring carbon copy cloner instead of super duper, due to the fact carbon copy cloner will restore the recovery partition as well, which is required for encryption and some other features.
Click to expand...
What other features might the recovery partition be needed for? Without the recovery partition it isn't a full restore?
 
The Hammer said:
What other features might the recovery partition be needed for? Without the recovery partition it isn't a full restore?
Click to expand...

I have used all 3 backup methods over a period of several years.

As others have said, Time Machine is often used in conjunction with either Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). Time Machine is useful as you can go back X amount of days to get the exact file you’re looking for, for example.

Personally I switched from SuperDuper to CCC about 3 years ago. While SuperDuper is awesome freeware, I bought a premium license for CCC due to some very useful features. Obviously CCC has a freeware model as well.

CCC advantages, in my experience, lie in the documentation and depth of explanations for the features in the app itself. They have fantastic online documentation updated with each macOS release. Also, the ability to create a Recovery Partition (to an existing bootable volume) is immensely useful. I actually screwed up my restore to my new 2018 MBP a few weeks ago and had no way to get into any kind of Recovery Partition. Due to Secure Boot being enabled on the T2 chip, I literally had no way to get into a Recovery Partition using CMD-R or CMD-Option-R or any of the traditional tricks. Booting up a Recovery Partition created via CCC was what saved me from making a trip to the Genius Bar. I still don’t understand how the Recovery Partition (on external drive) was able to work due to Secure Boot being enabled, but it did and I was able to get into Disk Utility and restore my backup successfully.

There are some features in macOS that are actually disabled should a Recovery Partition not exist on your drive, i.e. the ‘Find my Mac’ feature is only supported via iCloud if a Recovery Partition exists. APFS actually will inherently contain a Recovery Partition within the APFS container, however in my case I created an HFS+ backup via CCC since I only had access to an external HDD, not an external SSD.

Both applications are great, however CCC is a bit more advanced especially when utilizing APFS.
 
Last edited:
Trey M said:
I have used all 3 backup methods over a period of several years.

As others have said, Time Machine is often used in conjunction with either Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). Time Machine is useful as you can go back X amount of days to get the exact file you’re looking for, for example.

Personally I switched from SuperDuper to CCC about 3 years ago. While SuperDuper is awesome freeware, I bought a premium license for CCC due to some very useful features. Obviously CCC has a freeware model as well.

CCC advantages, in my experience, lie in the documentation and depth of explanations for the features in the app itself. They have fantastic online documentation updated with each macOS release. Also, the ability to create a Recovery Partition (to an existing bootable volume) is immensely useful. I actually screwed up my restore to my new 2018 MBP a few weeks ago and had no way to get into any kind of Recovery Partition. Due to Secure Boot being enabled on the T2 chip, I literally had no way to get into a Recovery Partition using CMD-R or CMD-Option-R or any of the traditional tricks. Booting up a Recovery Partition created via CCC was what saved me from making a trip to the Genius Bar. I still don’t understand how the Recovery Partition (on external drive) was able to work due to Secure Boot being enabled, but it did and I was able to get into Disk Utility and restore my backup successfully.

There are some features in macOS that are actually disabled should a Recovery Partition not exist on your drive, i.e. the ‘Find my Mac’ feature is only supported via iCloud if a Recovery Partition exists. APFS actually will inherently contain a Recovery Partition within the APFS container, however in my case I created an HFS+ backup via CCC since I only had access to an external HDD, not an external SSD.

Both applications are great, however CCC is a bit more advanced especially when utilizing APFS.
Click to expand...
Thanks. That tells me everything I need to know.
 
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