Can’t boot MBP13” Flashing question mark folder

[tivoboy]

So, I understand that this issue is most likely cannot find the boot drive.. but I’ve tried everything I can think of to get past it or recover data.

This started a few days ago. The unit drive was pretty full (119/128) but reboots usually cleared some VRAM. Then, it only showed the flashing question mark folder icon.

I’ve tried to boot into recovery, and I CAN get to what appears to be a recovery Disk Utility but when I run first air or repair, it says cannot mount disk is full. I have also tried booting with Option R (maybe it was command R) which loads the world icon and seems to load a much NEWER version of the macOS recovery mode. Most likely from the cloud. From there, I can run disk utility, but I get the same failures. DU SEES the drive and recognizes the size (and shows I think disk1s2 or something like that) and there is a disk0, i imafine that is the base recovery partition.

You can see from the picture below, that at times I can select the STARTUP drive, it sees it, but it won’t reboot and startup to it at all.

So, I can also get it into Target Disk Mode, with the floating icon of the Thunderbolt icon. I tried hooking it up to my 15” MPB with a Thunderbolt cable, but it doesn’t show up. So, I thought maybe since this 13” was in High Sierra, I had to get the 15” up to HS as well so I upgraded the 15”, and still it doesn’t show up with TDM.

So, I got a USB-C to TB2/3 adaptor from apple, and tried connecting it to my 16” MBP and still, it doesn’t show up at all? Maybe I’m doing the TDM wrong, but I’ve tried it connected but off, and booting holding down the T.. I’ve tried it running TDM and THEN connecting the machines. Nothing shows up anywhere that I can find.

I’ve also tried booting into Safe mode, but I still just get the Flashing question mark icon folder. I’ve tried running Diagnostics, and it quickly says there ”MAY be an issue with the drive” but I find it odd that DU can see it all and actually either mount or at least view all the partitions.

Any thoughts helpful!. I guess next I’m going to try and remove it and put it into an enclosure. Sadly, our last backup of this machine was October 2020 - so you know what that means.

 

[McScooby]

The TDM just shows on your other mac as a hard drive - make sure in preferences you have the box checked to show drives on your desktop.

 

[tivoboy]

The TDM just shows on your other mac as a hard drive - make sure in preferences you have the box checked to show drives on your desktop.

Thanks. yes, I’ve tried that but nothing shows on the desktop or in the finder.

 

[tivoboy]

when using the regular option R to start recovery, it will connect to a WiFi hotspot and this seems like the LOCAL machine recovery Disk Utility it’s the old school interface. One can see that the drive (and seemingly the recovery partition?) are present.. Verify disk gets somewhere, but REPAIR disk does not. Says cannot mount, seemingly as the disk is full?

 

[tivoboy]

Here are two more

 

[Apple_Robert]

I think at this point, you are going to have to erase the disk and restore from backup. You can use the Configurator 2 app, provided your Mac is 2018 or newer. It will erase and reinstall the OS very quickly and then you can restore from your Time Machine backup.

Revive or restore an Intel-based Mac using Apple Configurator 2

In rare circumstances, Apple computers may become unresponsive and the chip’s firmware must be revived.

support.apple.com

 

[McScooby]

I'm pretty sure I had a similar thing last year. Before wiping it, just pull the drive, connect it as a standard drive, delete some stuff & it should boot fine fingers crossed.

 

[tivoboy]

I think at this point, you are going to have to erase the disk and restore from backup. You can use the Configurator 2 app, provided your Mac is 2018 or newer. It will erase and reinstall the OS very quickly and then you can restore from your Time Machine backup.

Revive or restore an Intel-based Mac using Apple Configurator 2

In rare circumstances, Apple computers may become unresponsive and the chip’s firmware must be revived.

support.apple.com

I think the 13” MBP is older than the revive will allow. It has thunderbolt and USB and SD card slots, so I think it was the vintage at the same time there was a 13” with touch bar Just came out.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I think the 13” MBP is older than the revive will allow. It has thunderbolt and USB and SD card slots, so I think it was the vintage at the same time there was a 13” with touch bar Just came out.

Hopefully, @McScooby idea will work for you. Moving forward, make sure to leave 20% of the disk free.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think your SSD is close to failing, or at least needs to be reformatted. You MIGHT be able to backup the drive, but from how your drive shows in your Disk Utility, that may only be a waste of your time.

Can you tell us what exact model 13-inch MBPro you have?
(13-inch MBPro has had Thunderbolt and SD card, (and USB, of course) slots since 2011, so can be much older than touchbar models, which did not appear until 2016 )

 

[tivoboy]

I'm pretty sure it's an early 2015 model. I just pulled the drive and tried to put into my OWC enclosure from my 2012 rMBP 15", and the SSD has different pins. So, it's early 2015 and now my only next option is what appears to be a very $$ new enclosure to try and get it connected... or is there a simpler dongle that one can use?

 

[McScooby]

I'm pretty sure it's an early 2015 model. I just pulled the drive and tried to put into my OWC enclosure from my 2012 rMBP 15", and the SSD has different pins. So, it's early 2015 and now my only next option is what appears to be a very $$ new enclosure to try and get it connected... or is there a simpler dongle that one can use?

Sorry didn't realise it was flash memory, things are just so much easier with SATA drives. Not saying this is the right adapter, but maybe just get something like this -
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32397520...6&customid=ql8ozxQHAAAAdPGHPxK8T2266GQBAAAAAA
Or get a similar one that has a usb connector on the end.

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, both the 2015, and your older 2012 have proprietary connectors, different from each other, and Apple-only
It's easy to put a standard PCIe drive card in your 2015, just takes a simple adapter. Not so simple to put that Apple card in something else. Maybe someone else can offer a suggestion on a less expensive external case (that you will probably only use this one time.
The adapter that McScooby suggested is correct for replacing your Apple card with a standard PCIe card, but you need the reverse of that.
(I have a small repair shop, and the OWC external case with Apple-standard connector to USB was worth the cost for me, as I have used it a few times. A bit expensive for a single, or very limited use.

 

[tivoboy]

Yes, both the 2015, and your older 2012 have proprietary connectors, different from each other, and Apple-only
It's easy to put a standard PCIe drive card in your 2015, just takes a simple adapter. Not so simple to put that Apple card in something else. Maybe someone else can offer a suggestion on a less expensive external case (that you will probably only use this one time.
The adapter that McScooby suggested is correct for replacing your Apple card with a standard PCIe card, but you need the reverse of that.
(I have a small repair shop, and the OWC external case with Apple-standard connector to USB was worth the cost for me, as I have used it a few times. A bit expensive for a single, or very limited use.

yes, I was just going to post that the adaptor linked above is essentially the opposite of what I need. I may try and find someone I know with an external, since as you said it's basically a single use test for me. I already have an OWC 480GB ssd that I had been delaying putting in, but I didn't get it with the external enclsoure since I had never expected to use the 128GB that came with this 2015 13" for anything else. It's funny that the 480GB OWC drive was about 110$, and the enclosure is 99$.

 

[Fishrrman]

If a Mac won't boot because the internal drive is "full".

Then...

The way to make it bootable again is to remove enough stuff from it to create "enough free space" (for the OS to "breathe") so it CAN boot again.

The way to remove enough stuff is to BOOT FROM AN EXTERNAL BOOT DRIVE, then just "throw stuff out".

Of course, YOU HAVE TO HAVE an external boot drive that will boot the Mac.

If you DON'T have one, it's possible to MAKE ONE.

To create one, you need:
- an external drive, of course
- boot to INTERNET recovery
- erase/initialize the external drive
- use the OS installer to install a copy of the OS onto the external drive
- create a user account on the external drive
- then, you can access the INTERNAL drive "from the finder", and throw out stuff until you have about 10gb of free space. That ought to do it.

Once done, try booting from the internal drive again.

If that doesn't work, I'd just ERASE the internal drive and try to start over.
You MIGHT be able to clone the external boot drive to the internal, and just go on that way...

 

[tivoboy]

So, I went ahead and created a bootable drive from a Samsung external SSD.. installed High Sierra, it didn’t create it in APFS which is odd, but an HFS+ drive.. but installed HS fine. From there, I booted the computer up from that drive and can see the HD and have started to try and copy items over from the internal HD (the one that won’t boot) Some files are EXCRUCIATINGLY painful to copy over and the finder seems to freeze up for 10-20 minutes at a time. I’m going to try and copy files that are OLDER and not the most recent created since maybe there is some most recent file corruption. At the moment, it’s getting somewhere. Thanks for all the tips. Hopefully, with enough time I’ll get all that I need off, try and delete a bunch of stuff and see if rebooting will work.

Should one use Disk Util with the external boot drive ON the INTERNAL drive to try and correct anything first?

 

[Fishrrman]

"From there, I booted the computer up from that drive and can see the HD and have started to try and copy items over from the internal HD (the one that won’t boot) Some files are EXCRUCIATINGLY painful to copy over and the finder seems to freeze up for 10-20 minutes at a time. I’m going to try and copy files that are OLDER and not the most recent created since maybe there is some most recent file corruption."

If you delete some files on the internal drive right away, "operations" on that disk may go somewhat faster.

Once you've cleared enough stuff off, leaving, say, 10gb of "free space", you can run disk utility's "first aid" function on the drive. I'd run it on the physical drive, and also on the Mac volume.

Be sure to go to the view menu in disk utility and choose "show all devices"...

 

[tivoboy]

working on it, but even trying to put stuff in the trash, to be ABLE to delete them takes 15-20 min and often won’t complete.

It seems to have trouble just mounting or being available. I got an enclosure today, put the drive in and it mounted fine on one of my other macs.. but then transfers just would not proceed. After shutting down the working Mac and re-attaching again, it wouldn’t mount at all. then, rebooting the working Mac again, it mounted but opening it up just gave spinning beach balls for an hour. Finally shut it down. Then, another reboot of working Mac, it mounted and would display content, but then after copying a few files, copying went back to just slow as bananas. So, part of me things the drive has certainly failed somewhat, somewhere, at this point I’m just trying to get a bit more off it, and then will restore to a new internal drive.

Any other thoughts or suggestions welcomed.

 

[Hici]

resolved the issue ?