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Internal SSD not recognized and not working in 13" MacBook Pro Retina

Hello everybody!

 I have a 13" Macbook Pro that is no longer under warranty and everything started fail after installing Mojave. I started getting kernel panic errors when you try to see your memory size from the Apple menu > About this Mac. After that the original SSD drive failed. The main problem was when I logged into the system, it was getting frozen out of no where after three minutes, independent from whatever you do on your system with spinning wheel and so on. The only solution was to do hard reset.

 I wanted to format or to reinstall the system but the computer wasn't recognizing "Macintosh HD" so I failed to recover the system. Then went to Apple Store and they tried to format my system but they couldn't. They recommended me to change my drive, despite of getting no problem related with my hard drive from diagnostics.

After getting my system back from Genius guys, when I boot up, I saw the folder with the question mark. I could not even wipe the new drive in recovery mode with the disk utility because it would not show up. The only thing I see is "disk0" and under that, Mac OS X Base System.

Therefore, I bought a new Transcend JetDrive 850 and again the situation was the same, system doesn't recognize the new SSD either. I could not even wipe the new drive in recovery mode with the disk utility because it would not show up. The only thing I see is "disk0" and under that, Mac OS X Base System which I know is not my new SSD given the size. It does not show up no matter what I do. I checked that the SSD was in correctly etc. Again, I cannot get Disk Utility to recognize it so I can’t format and restore the OS.

What do I do to get my Mac to see the new SSD I have installed?

Would I even be able to get into the Disk Utility and recovery mode if this were an issue with the logic board or have I neglected something totally obvious here?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Answer this question I have this problem too

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The same issue..however, with MULTIPLE MACs...2 iMacs, MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro...Long story short. When ALL THE ISSUES impacted millions of Apple customers with the release, upgrade to OS High Sierra led many to be forced to use an external drive to upload the OS into their device. I had this issue as well and wasted time, the money I didn't have to simply have a functional computer...I too am no longer able to access the internal hard-drive- I now use an external hard drive to boot my Macs-I've researched everything & tried everything it seems- All to no avail..I was eventually able to mount int Hard drive on one but still can not make any changes due to permission issues...I have duplicate, triplicate apps, etc due to this problem. Most disturbing is the internal Hard drive memory size was sliced in half...I can not erase, adjust, remove, change... "partition/container" the OS X is located has "owners enabled" & can verify..but it is located inside the disc which I can not access...no permissions.

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Did you managed to solve the problem? I have the exact same situation as mentioned but with a 2015 MBP 15” and I don’t know what to do.

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Did you follow the steps I outlined in the answer? Who's SSD do you have a Samsung or a Toshiba drive?

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Unfortunately, I couldn’t solve the problem. My internal SSD doesn’t work. In the end I ordered an external Samsung SSD (512GB) and installed mojave into it and keep continue to use my pc with this way. However, when I launch my mac from external SSD, it can recognize it for 10 mins as “external” ssd then eject it automatically. I don’t know why, but mac works perfectly from the external SSD.

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It does sound like you may have multiple issues here. First High Sierra and Mojave introduced a new file system called APFS which is designed to be more efficient on SSD drives. During the OS install process your drives format is converted from HFS+ to APFS and your systems firmware is also updated so it can support the new file system as a boot drive.

So what can happen is if your drive was overly full and/or about to fail and if you’ve run Windows on your Mac you can get into trouble as the update won’t install the firmware properly. Your older OS boot drives also won’t help you here as they don’t recognized the newer APFS format on your drive.

At this point I think you need to put aside the internal drive and just get an external drive setup as a boot drive. Here we want to get a USB or Thunderbolt drive and use a USB thumb drive with the OS installer setup How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive and yes! We want to go back to Sierra OS installer! Which is the last HFS+ MacOS. The other option is to use a second Mac system connecting your Mac to it via Target Disk Mode How to use target disk mode to move files to another computer Here again we want to stick with Sierra! Using your other Mac system you can run Disk Utility to scrub the drive and install the OS.

So once you get Sierra back on to your MacBook system run it a bit to make sure its stable (a good week would be wise). Then we should be able to go back and try upgrading to Mojave again.

For now don’t store to much on your internal drive as you do need to keep between 1/3 free for 256 GB or smaller SSD and 1/4 for 512 GB or larger as the OS its self needs this free room.

Let us know how it goes - Good Luck!

Reference: Mac startup key combinations

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Thanks for your answer and will try to do things asap then leave a feedback but before that, want to verify some things and ask some questions.

First of all, my ssd drive was almost full there was just 18 gb of free space on it and wanted to make space using the memory option of mac and these things happened to me. Secondly, I didn’t use Windows using space from my SSD and thirdly, I don’t have any installed OS on my mac now. When I turned it on, I can only see the famous flashing question mark.

As a first question, after getting computer back from Genius bar, in recovery mode>macOs Utilities>Reinstall Mac Os X there was just a copy of Yosemite not Mojave and it couldn’t recognize any hard drive. Yosemite is one of the OS version coming before Sierra so there shouldn’t be any problem or should I try it specifically using Sierra?

Should I remove internal SSD hard drive before trying to install Sierra?

Should I use the new SSD drive bought recently, or use the old one, that I was using till now?

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Having so little room could have sent you over the knifes edge as the OS was looking for more space which it didn't have.

Sure! You can install Yosemite as that was the original OS your system had. Once there you can go into the Apps Store App and go into your purchase history to find the Sierra installer and re-download it if you haven't saved it. That way you are at the newest HFS+ version.

If you dare you can even go back to Mojave using the startup keys Option-⌘-R Do keep in mind this will format your drive to APFS!

As for which SSD if you want to try to recover your stuff from your original SSD (if it wasn't reformatted) I would recommend you get this OWC adapter case: OWC Envoy Pro (You might find one used as well) this will allow you to reuse the Apple SSD.

I would stay with the Transcend drive as your internal drive.

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unfortunately, it didn't work. Created a bootable USB, but it doesn't recognize the internal SSD :(

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Which SSD did you use the original Apple or the Transcend?

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I used original Apple SSD but recently have discovered one issue, when I launch in recovery mode using cmd+r key combination by keeping my external portable hard disk connected, I can see my internal ssd drive as an external readable disk, however I cannot erase it or format or do any manipulation related with it.

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