SSD might have died, what are my options [plot twist]

[absente]

I got this old 2013 Air I usually just use to watch movies while working on my main setup. For whatever reason yesterday it crashed and I got the 'folder questionmark' situation. Resetting PRAM/SMC didn't work, when going into restore Diskmanager didn't even show me my diskdrive - just that 1GB apple partition.

Terminal -> diskutil list also din't show the drive. I opened the back, removed the ssd, put it back in - still the same issue. I am pretty convinced the SSD is toast - however I'd be happy to hear if someone else has an idea what else to do. I mean I tried everything, - getting into verbose mode or single use mode is impossible and the 'apple hardware check' by pressing D does not find any errors. What a mess.

So I went on taobao (our chinese amazon) to check 128GB SSD's for A1465 mid-2013 - there are some pretty cheap ones for like $20 up to more expensive ones in the $90 range. I use this mac just for movies, youtube etc - what is the best option in my case?

The full spec of my air is MacBook Air "Core i5" 1.3 11" (Mid-2013) <-- here

PS: That's the first time a SSD dies in my hands.
PPS: I might have overstressed it. I usually watch hd movies streamed via Thunder, which is a kind of P2P application for hours at a time - meaning I/O usage must have been pretty high, every day for 5-8 hours.

 

[Audit13]

Streaming wouldn't cause a drive failure afaik.

Before replacing the SSD, see if you can boot macOS from an external drive. If yes, just get a cheap replacement. Any drive from a mid-2013 too 2017 Air or late 2013 to 2015 Pro will work in a mid-2013 1465/1466.

 

[mick2]

Do the 2013 Airs have a history of dodgy SATA cables? I'm not familiar with Airs, but have been through several SATA cables on 2011-era MBPs which displayed similar symptoms.

 

[DeltaMac]

No drive cable in any Airs for years, probably since Apple moved away from the original 1.8-inch spinning drives, I think. Certainly no cable in a 2013 MBAir. Just a slot, similar to an m2 card.

 

[absente]

@mick2 it's just a slot for the SSD as @DeltaMac mentioned
@Audit13 I'll try booting it from a USB later - as far as i understand your message, if i cannot boot from the USB the problem might be somewhere else?

 

[Audit13]

@Audit13 I'll try booting it from a USB later - as far as i understand your message, if i cannot boot from the USB the problem might be somewhere else?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, it could be a problem somewhere else if the MacBook can't boot to the os desktop when booting the os from an external drive.

 

[absente]

so here is a plot twist:


I've used an USB (with Mavericks) to boot up the mac - as expected I could not see the SSD at all. While waiting for the new SSD to arrive I used it for the past 2 days mainly to stream movies.

For some reason the system crashed yesterday and I had to do a cold restart (shift+control+option+pw). It took about half an hour for the mac to boot and it had a surprise waiting for me in finder - I could see the ssd! How weird is that?

I immediately used disk utility to check it - it seems that Mavericks was treating it as an external drive and I got the cksum mismatch error, however other than that the disk seemed fine. I am installing a fresh OS on the SSD now and will report back if I can boot.

This obviously raises a lot of questions:

1) How come the SSD suddenly appeared when it was considered to be dead?
I didn't move the mac much - I also didn't remove the ssd after posting this topic. It can't be a contact issue. The disk appeared after I used the smd:// function to connect to my other mac via network.
2) Did anyone ever encounter something like this?

While I am obviously happy that I can return the new SSD that didn't even arrive yet and save my money it raises a valid question on how many people were tricked into believing their SSD is dead, while it could actually be working.

As far as I know a SSD is either working or dead, there is no middle ground, so it's safe to assume that this SSD is ok. I am assuming that the reason why it didn't appear could be a boot-sector issue, that seems to me at least as the most logical explanation.

I'll post back after I reinstall the OS and boot.

Cheers

 

[z2000]

The sounds like, SSD going to dead. I have similar experience with SSD on PC. not on Mac. That SSD also appear working sometimes, some times it just disappear. sometimes it reading error...

Well, SSD dead may not because you used TBW close. Its may fail from controller chip. - that will cause SSD disappear.

 

[iluvmacs99]

so here is a plot twist:


I've used an USB (with Mavericks) to boot up the mac - as expected I could not see the SSD at all. While waiting for the new SSD to arrive I used it for the past 2 days mainly to stream movies.

For some reason the system crashed yesterday and I had to do a cold restart (shift+control+option+pw). It took about half an hour for the mac to boot and it had a surprise waiting for me in finder - I could see the ssd! How weird is that?

I immediately used disk utility to check it - it seems that Mavericks was treating it as an external drive and I got the cksum mismatch error, however other than that the disk seemed fine. I am installing a fresh OS on the SSD now and will report back if I can boot.

This obviously raises a lot of questions:

1) How come the SSD suddenly appeared when it was considered to be dead?
I didn't move the mac much - I also didn't remove the ssd after posting this topic. It can't be a contact issue. The disk appeared after I used the smd:// function to connect to my other mac via network.
2) Did anyone ever encounter something like this?

While I am obviously happy that I can return the new SSD that didn't even arrive yet and save my money it raises a valid question on how many people were tricked into believing their SSD is dead, while it could actually be working.

As far as I know a SSD is either working or dead, there is no middle ground, so it's safe to assume that this SSD is ok. I am assuming that the reason why it didn't appear could be a boot-sector issue, that seems to me at least as the most logical explanation.

I'll post back after I reinstall the OS and boot.

Cheers

My first question is; what was the OS when you were running before you got the folder question mark? High Sierra, Mojave or Catalina? If it is one of those, then you need to check whether you have the current SMC version and current boot EFI rom version. If you don't, then yes you'll get this. I got this "EXACT" problem of my 128Gb SSD that disappeared when upgrading to Mojave from High Sierra. I had to reboot from a HFS+ OS which was El-Capitan, reformat the SSD to HFS+ and re-install High Sierra again and then manually update High Sierra to trigger flashing of the latest EFI boot rom. Once I had the latest EFI boot rom, I then re-cloned back my High Sierra backup of my Air and then proceeded to upgrade to Mojave. After that, the SSD today is working perfectly fine. The problem is with how older EFI boot rom sees my Air's APFS volume. Since it couldn't see the APFS volume for some reason, it determined there was no drive. Mavericks by default treat all drives as HFS+ (Mac OS extended journaled) which was why it saw your SSD and did my El-Capitan boot disk. Not High Sierra and up as it expects SSD volume to be APFS.

 

[absente]

My first question is; what was the OS when you were running before you got the folder question mark?

It's an old mac, I am just running the regular Sierra. However now that you mentioned it, there are some firmware updates I neglected, so it might be a good idea to do them. Thanks for your reply.

Cheers