MBP - suddenly froze - red stripes - won't boot anymore - gray question mark???

[jon08]

I was listening to music and doing some heavy research online (clicking through many websites) when all of a sudden my MBP froze and the screen turned dark with vertical red lines. I had to shut it down manually.

When I restarted it, all I could see was gray screen and after a couple of mins appeared a flashing gray question mark.

I tried safe-booting from my USB and opened Disk Utility and it wouldn't show my SSD....

Which means......that my Crucial M4 failed?


****UPDATE****

After performing a "power cycle", my SSD is alive and kicking! Really glad it was just that and not actually dying. Performing a power cycle is a fairly easy process. All you need to do is the following:

1. Shut down your Macbook.
2. Plug it in electricity, turn it on and leave it alone for 20 mins while the gray folder with the question mark is flashing.
3. Shut down your Macbook.
4. Unscrew the back of your Macbook and disconnect your SSD from the SATA cable for 30 secs.
5. Connect it back to the SATA cable, put the back plate of your Macbook back on and turn on the Macbook.
6. It booted again for me.

Also, I updated my SSD firmware from 010G to 070H just to be on the safe side. I hope I won't ever have to do the power cycle again.

 

[DeltaMac]

… all of a sudden my MBP froze and the screen turned dark with vertical red lines. I had to shut it down manually.

When I restarted it, all I could see was gray screen and after a couple of mins appeared a flashing gray question mark.

I tried safe-booting from my USB and opened Disk Utility and it wouldn't show my SSD....

Which means......that my Crucial M4 failed?

The flashing ? means that your Mac can't find a bootable system.
The symptoms leading up to that are typical of a failed/failing drive.
Then, no SSD in Disk Utility likely means that the SSD has failed.

One disadvantage for SSDs - they sometimes fail with no prior warning.
This is one of those times that should help one learn that a full backup is more than just a good idea.

 

[Cassady]

I was listening to music and doing some heavy research online (clicking through many websites) when all of a sudden my MBP froze and the screen turned dark with vertical red lines. I had to shut it down manually.

When I restarted it, all I could see was gray screen and after a couple of mins appeared a flashing gray question mark.

I tried safe-booting from my USB and opened Disk Utility and it wouldn't show my SSD....

Which means......that my Crucial M4 failed?

That sucks! How old was the SSD?

 

[jon08]

Yeah, so I've heard that they tend to fail without a warning... Fortunately I did a clean install of Mavericks just recently, so I didn't really lose much data since I backed things up before doing the install.

The SSD is 1.5 yrs old. Well, it's still under warranty, I suppose.

 

[jon08]

****UPDATE****

After performing a "power cycle", my SSD is alive and kicking! Really glad it was just that and not actually dying. Performing a power cycle is a fairly easy process. All you need to do is the following:

1. Shut down your Macbook.
2. Plug it in electricity, turn it on and leave it alone for 20 mins while the gray folder with the question mark is flashing.
3. Shut down your Macbook.
4. Unscrew the back of your Macbook and disconnect your SSD from the SATA cable for 30 secs.
5. Connect it back to the SATA cable, put the back plate of your Macbook back on and turn on the Macbook.
6. It booted again for me.

Also, I updated my SSD firmware from 010G to 070H just to be on the safe side. I hope I won't ever have to do the power cycle again.

 

[jon08]

Well, here's another update:

The SSD froze several times in the past couple of days. Fortunately I never had to perform the power cycle again, but it seems there is a problem with the SSD after all...

I contacted Crucial support and they said I could get a M500 as a replacement. Is this a good bargain (apart from losing a few gigs of free space)?