Late 2013 rMBP Freezes upon boot up HELP

[Fishrrman]

I know you said in the first post that the Macbook is out-of-warranty, but...
...have you considered stopping by an Apple Store genius bar and letting them have a look at it?

 

[Alag28]

Hmm...could be:

Something not right with the OS clone
Boot problem with the USB drive

I would next:

Do a clean install on a freshly formatted external drive. IF your internal SSD is problematic, which you are testing for, then installing to it, and cloning from it could be part of the issue. Only way I can see to rule it out is to get a fresh, known good external boot drive to run.....without any issues (beyond being much slower performance than your internal SSD).

gonna see where i can get a clean boot drive....
[doublepost=1483113939][/doublepost]

I know you said in the first post that the Macbook is out-of-warranty, but...
...have you considered stopping by an Apple Store genius bar and letting them have a look at it?

yes that was the very first thing i did...now i did have the complete logic board swapped out last june due to a pesky problem with the screen not waking up when i opened the lid....these guys couldnt pin point the problem either.. they want to charge me 475$ flat rate charge to get whatever that needs to get fixed... fixed

 

[Alag28]

Hmm...could be:

Something not right with the OS clone
Boot problem with the USB drive

I would next:

Do a clean install on a freshly formatted external drive. IF your internal SSD is problematic, which you are testing for, then installing to it, and cloning from it could be part of the issue. Only way I can see to rule it out is to get a fresh, known good external boot drive to run.....without any issues (beyond being much slower performance than your internal SSD).

Update - 1/2/17 Happy new year guys btw. Finally we can rule some stuff out. i erased my 32gb flash drive completely..took my sis macbook 12" made a clone of her ssd. booted the flash drive (holding option) and it WORKS. it has not frozen and everything is working fine...other than its slow since its working off a flash drive lol but it works. so seems this is a hard drive problem?

update - 1/2/17 4:30 EST - so now im like what the heck lemme try booting normally into my internal ssd.. and it hasnt froze... seems as if booting off the usb drive "triggered" something...but it makes ZERO sense to me...wth is going on?!

 

[hobowankenobi]

Good news.

First thought:

Hard drives have the ability to detect and retire (stop using) bad sectors when a full formatting is done....which takes writing zeros to the entire drive, which Apple calls a Secure erase. When a quick erase/format is performed, only a small sample of the HD is actually erased/tested; if it passes, the assumption is made the HD is good. It does a spot check only.

Typically, in ye olde hard drive days, writing zeros to the entire HD was a good test of its health; a failing HD would often produce errors during the process.....or completely die. And at least one would know were the fault was.

With SSDs, with their limited number of reads and writes, writing zeros the entire drive is seen as wasteful, as excessive wear to be generally avoided. But, it could also be helpful in rooting out a bad block, or a dying drive.

Most SSDs have over provisioning that helps to cover not only failed sectors, but failing or slow sectors, and it may be possible that at some point in the process of formatting and installing, some bad sectors have been retired. More info in this discussion.

A good utility that gives SMART information might shed some more light on the SSD's health.

 

[Alag28]

Good news.

First thought:

Hard drives have the ability to detect and retire (stop using) bad sectors when a full formatting is done....which takes writing zeros to the entire drive, which Apple calls a Secure erase. When a quick erase/format is performed, only a small sample of the HD is actually erased/tested; if it passes, the assumption is made the HD is good. It does a spot check only.

Typically, in ye olde hard drive days, writing zeros to the entire HD was a good test of its health; a failing HD would often produce errors during the process.....or completely die. And at least one would know were the fault was.

With SSDs, with their limited number of reads and writes, writing zeros the entire drive is seen as wasteful, as excessive wear to be generally avoided. But, it could also be helpful in rooting out a bad block, or a dying drive.

Most SSDs have over provisioning that helps to cover not only failed sectors, but failing or slow sectors, and it may be possible that at some point in the process of formatting and installing, some bad sectors have been retired. More info in this discussion.

A good utility that gives SMART information might shed some more light on the SSD's health.

interesting, however i do not see a SCAN anywhere on that utility...im using the trial of course and i dont see any scan feature lol