this is the second time within 2 months now that my macbookpro has randomly crashed and the system has become corrupt. Last night my macbook randomly restarted and upon restart I got the question mark folder of death. Is there some sort of virus going around that is corrupting the system files, or is mavericks just bad? or is my ssd failing on me? I'm going to contact samsung to see about getting a replacement, not sure what the warranty is on the drive, but I have had it since september of 2013 which I had originally purchased through amazon. Anyhelp would be appreciated.
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Macbookpro Samsung SSD 840 Pro/Mavericks Crashing Corrupt
- Thread starter ggoerl
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There are not some viruses corrupting Mac system files. In order to provide some more help I need some more information.
What year, model, screen size MBP? Your symptoms could also be a failing hard drive cable, some models are more prone to this problem.
Have you done any testing (Disk Utility, Apple Hardware Test)? If yes, then what were the results?
Have you tried to start up in Safe mode or Recovery? Here is a list of start up key combinations, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255
Do you have data back ups? Do you have a bootable backup on an external drive that can be used to start up and do some testing?
What year, model, screen size MBP? Your symptoms could also be a failing hard drive cable, some models are more prone to this problem.
Have you done any testing (Disk Utility, Apple Hardware Test)? If yes, then what were the results?
Have you tried to start up in Safe mode or Recovery? Here is a list of start up key combinations, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255
Do you have data back ups? Do you have a bootable backup on an external drive that can be used to start up and do some testing?
my mistake it's actually an 840 must've hit the 5 by mistake, regardless, I cannot think of anything else that would cause mavericks to fail making the system unable to boot, twice! luckily the 1st time around I was able to salvage the majority of my data off of the drive thanks to diskwarrior but I had to reformat and reinstall mavericks now within two months of reinstallation of mavericks the same thing has happened again leading me to believing maybe the drive is going bad.
Yes, luckily I now have it backed up to a time capsule, unfortunately the first time it crashed the day my time capsule arrived in the mail...how ironic. It's a late 2011 2.8ghz i7 13" it won't boot in safe mode as the system contents are missing and gives me the folder with question mark. I can boot into recovery using my mavericks usb flash/bootdrive.
It is good to know your data is backed up and all will not be lost if it is a failed SSD.
I suspected the other start up modes would not work since you are getting the question mark.
2011 MBPs are known to have problems with the hard drive ribbon cable. They are fragile and get more so as they get older. Unfortunately the best way to test is to remove your SSD, put it in an external enclosure, and try to boot from the external. If the SSD in an external enclosure works then that points to an internal cable problem.
I will look up the hard drive cable repair instructions and post a link.
Here is the hard drive cable repair instructions from ifixit so you can gauge what is involved if you go that route:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Late+2011+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/7655
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Late+2011+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/7655
Well I was able to boot up fine running it external through usb so the hard drive cable seems to be the culprit but it makes me wonder wouldn't the cable have quit altogether rather than work for two months after I reformatted only to fail again? the problem I seem to have is that running it through usb it is rather slow, not sure since if its because usb 2.0 causing a bottleneck? I only ask because I restored my previous browsing session on chrome which was running an excessive amount of tabs and mavericks became slow and unresponsive so I shut it down to restart but this time not getting to the boot screen, so now i'm not sure whether or not it could be the SSD again or even possibly my enclosure as it was a cheap sata/ide to usb adapter.
is there anywhere else to get a replacement cable besides ifixit that may be cheaper than $40?
is there anywhere else to get a replacement cable besides ifixit that may be cheaper than $40?
There have many threads on this forum discussing intermittent performance/behavior from a failing hard drive cable. Not always a complete total failure. There have also been discussions about the drive cable being marginal and working fine with HDD at their slower data rate, but it would perform poorly or with errors at the faster 6 Gbs data rate of an SSD.
USB2 is definitely a bottleneck for day-to-day use. Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt are better options, but again, it was just a test to see if you could access the SSD. The test did show you could since all you got before was a question mark.
There are other places that are less expensive than ifixit. Here is a search showing some:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Hard+drive+cable+for+2011+13"+MacBook+Pro&t=osx
I think the part number you need is: 922-9771
Also, I recommend getting a new cable if you can afford it. Some places offer used.
Powerbookmedic also has a good reputation, but they are not much cheaper ($38.95)