MacBookPro11,3: System SSD Initialize? via USB Adapter?

[bsbeamer]

Have a MacBookPro11,3 that has been mostly out of service for over a year.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core i7" 2.6 Late 2013 with 16GB RAM & NVIDIA 750M
Retina Late 2013 15" - ME874LL/A
MacBookPro11,3 - A1398

Went to turn it on for a factory reset and to wipe the SSD. Booted into recovery to erase the SSD and now the SSD will not show or mount on the machine at all.

MBP11,3 machine boots fine from a USB HDD clone. Disk utility shows no internal drives when booting from USB external. CCC's volume navigator is the same - no internal volumes available.

Via USB clone boot, System Information > SATA/SATA Express shows Apple SSD Controller > Unknown

Apple SSD Controller:
Vendor: Apple
Product: SSD Controller
Physical Interconnect: PCI
Link Width: x4
Link Speed: 5.0 GT/s
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
Unknown:
Native Command Queuing: No
Detachable Drive: No

Can boot into recovery mode without anything connected, but cannot perform a basic OS X install since the system SSD cannot be located by the machine. Booting from external recovery cannot initialize the SSD. Booting from USB installer media cannot initialize the internal SSD drive.

Have a TB3 to TB2 adapter arriving tomorrow to attempt Target Mode recovery from another machine. Unsure if it'll work. Target Mode does enable with the shuffling TB icon when holding T after power on. Target Mode was not working via USB (not sure if it ever did).

Thinking if I can physically remove the SSD, 100% format from the top and initialize/re-initialize and format HFS+ as a blank/empty volume it would solve the OS X install issue.

Is this the only physical adapter that natively works with the MBP11,3 system SSD to physically mount/read on another machine?

OWC Envoy Pro - SSD Enclosure for 2013-Current Macs

Portable, bus-powered USB 3.0 enclosure for Apple flash SSDs. Offers speeds up to 500MB/s in an award-winning aluminum design. Includes 1 year warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

Any other options? Not looking to use this machine a ton. Dropping $100 for this one-time use is not ideal.

 

[bsbeamer]

Getting the "apple.com/support -5101F" error message on standard recovery.

Shift + Command + Option + R on start triggers internet recovery (globe with countdown/clock). Get through to the Reinstall OS X (Mavericks) screen, but disk does not appear.

Quitting to Disk Utility shows disk1 > OS X Base System only, below horizontal line. Is this technically part of the main Apple SM1024F SSD, or separate flash storage?

Randomly tried a few older USB installers (10.8-10.14) and the 10.10 would show the root "1 TB APPLE SSD SM1024F MEDIA" with a grey'd disk labeled as disk0s2 "Core Storage", but was not mounted and could not mount.

Target Disk Mode is likely the last option before new SSD/NVMe with Sintech adapter. Can't see dumping $100 into an external USB blade adapter/reader without knowing the blade is OK. (Cheaper to get 500GB NVMe and adapter.)

 

[bsbeamer]

MBP11,3 internal "APPLE SSD SM1024F Media" mounts 100% perfectly fine via Target Mode using TB3>TB2>TB2 cable.

Reformatted the SSD via Target Mode. Drive passes all First Aid tests in Disk Utility without issue. Passes both DriveDx short and long self-tests without issue. DriveDx reports and SMART are all fine.

MBP11,3 standard boot shows blinking arrow/folder (as expected).

Booting into Internet Recovery to reinstall OS and finally can get into the "preparing to install" portion. Internet Recovery is OS X Mavericks. Seems stuck/stalled with no progress bar progress, now the pinwheel of death...

If this fails, next step will be to setup SATA SSD external with bootable macOS and then CCC clone to SM1024F via target mode.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you have the drive erased, can you boot to internet recovery and see what version of the OS the "default installer" offers you?

The "install it onto an EXTERNAL drive" and then "clone it over" approach may do the trick.

Is the drive inside the original factory drive... or... is it a replacement?

 

[bsbeamer]

Internet recovery failed numerous times. Was defaulting to Mavericks.

Drive is the original OEM and never touched or replaced.

Setting up an external SATA SSD with Catalina 10.15.7 on another machine, then using Target Mode with CCC to clone seemed to work initially. Was able to boot the machine into 10.15.7 without issue.

Sitting idle for 10-15 minutes and now running into an issue with pinwheel of death, system lockups and reboots with the "your computer restarted because of a problem".

Machine passes Apple diagnostics with "no issues found / ADP000". SMC has been reset. NVRAM reset, multiple times in a row.

Machine boots and runs fine from an external USB SATA SSD.
System SSD is totally fine via Target Mode on all scans and SMART reports.

 

[chrfr]

Setting up an external SATA SSD with Catalina 10.15.7 on another machine, then using Target Mode with CCC to clone seemed to work initially. Was able to boot the machine into 10.15.7 without issue.

Sitting idle for 10-15 minutes and now running into an issue with pinwheel of death, system lockups and reboots with the "your computer restarted because of a problem".

If the computer was only offering Mavericks through internet recovery, the firmware is probably now out of date and mismatched with the OS. I would now reinstall Catalina (no need to do a clean install, just run the installer again from within macOS) and then when that's done apply the appropriate security updates to be sure that the firmware is updated properly.

 

[bsbeamer]

BootROM is at 156.0.0.0.0
SMC is at 2.19f12

Can only boot from USB SATA drive. Cannot install to the built-in SM1024F via target mode. Would need to physically remove the drive and use an adapter of some kind to treat as an external. (Target mode was blocked by macOS for OS install.)

This is the only adapter that I am aware of:
OWC Envoy Pro - SSD Enclosure for 2013-Current Macs

When booting via USB SATA external, the internal SM1024F drive will occasionally show up and often ejects itself randomly within 10-15 minutes (sometimes much sooner). Even when shows as mounted on the desktop, it does not show in DriveDx report via USB boot. Does not reappear unless it's a hard shutdown.

 

[chrfr]

BootROM is at 156.0.0.0.0

That is out of date, at least as of the latest security update for Catalina.
It sounds like this SSD is failing, however, regardless of what any diagnostics are reporting.

 

[Fishrrman]

Sorry if you already mentioned this, but...
... how much free space is left on the internal drive?

 

[bsbeamer]

Internal drive is/was cleared, so entire 1TB is free.
Previously was used a 1TB system drive with at least 300GB free. Kept DriveDx monitoring with 30% free space alert.

BootROM stuck at 156.0.0.0.0 when reinstalling macOS Catalina via USB SATA SSD bootable. Just redownloaded the MAS installer, reinstalled and then installed latest OS update (19H524). Probably stuck here without an internal OEM drive?

 

[bsbeamer]

After Big Sur upgrade on a bootable SATA SSD clone, BootROM is still stuck at 156.0.0.0.0 and have not found a method that works for extracting standalone firmware updates after Sierra/High Sierra.

 

[Fishrrman]

Again I apologize if you haven't already tried the following:

Try a special version of internet recovery:
Shift-Option-Command-R:
This should install the macOS that came with the Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available.

And again, you'll have to use disk utility to completely erase the internal drive (to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

The idea here is to get ANY version of the OS (doesn't matter which) onto the internal drive and make it bootable.

 

[bsbeamer]

Yes, already tried Shift + Command + Option + R for internet recovery boot. Got Mavericks recovery and internal SSD disk could not be found after numerous attempts. Appears the internal SSD is "disappearing" during those situations and/or cannot be read. Reformatted the internal SSD via target mode and had no change in recovery mode. Removed and reseated the SSD just in case that was an issue and had no change either.

Boot from USB SATA SSD works fine (Big Sur, Catalina, High Sierra, Sierra) - just can't update the machine's BootROM at the moment.

At this point, I'll either velcro the USB SATA SSD drive housing to the top lid and use a right angle cable for a semi-permanent workaround or go the NVMe replacement route with Sinetech NGFF M.2 adapter. The OWC Envoy Pro adapter for $100 is a waste of money without some "guarantee" the SSD is fine.

 

[chrfr]

Yes, already tried Shift + Command + Option + R for internet recovery boot. Got Mavericks recovery and internal SSD disk could not be found after numerous attempts. Appears the internal SSD is "disappearing" during those situations and/or cannot be read.

Does the SSD show at all in Disk Utility when started up from Mavericks? If it's formatted as APFS the disk itself should appear but no partitions or data will be accessible because Mavericks doesn't recognize APFS so the disk would have to be fully erased within the Mavericks disk utility in order to be able to install onto it.

 

[bsbeamer]

Reformatted as HFS+ via target mode and it still disappears in Mavericks recovery. Disk utility in recovery only occasionally sees the disk. Mavericks install does not finish/succeed on the internal SSD when disk is found at the start because it disappears during the install.

 

[chrfr]

Reformatted as HFS+ via target mode and it still disappears in Mavericks recovery. Disk utility in recovery only occasionally sees the disk. Mavericks install does not finish/succeed on the internal SSD when disk is found at the start because it disappears during the install.

It definitely sounds like the SSD is failing, then.

 

[bsbeamer]

Gave this one last shot... Cloned bootable APFS USB SATA SSD with macOS Catalina 10.15.7 19H524 via target mode to the internal SSD of MBP11,3.

Ran first aid on each individual container on main "APPLE SSD SM1024F Media" via target mode - all clear.
Ran first aid on the container branch down "Container disk4" via target mode - all clear.
Ran first aid on the "Macintosh SSD" via target mode - all clear.
Ran first aid on the "Macintosh SSD - Data" via target mode - all clear.
Report on DriveDx via target mode is clear.

Have had this disk connected via target mode for over three hours and it has not disappeared or become inaccessible at all. Have been running AJA and Blackmagic disk tests on it constantly for over 45 minutes without an issue with various test file sizes just to let the SSD constantly work.

Eject from target mode.
Shutdown MBP11,3.

Cold boot MBP11,3 on it's own with internal SSD - it actually boots.
Download macOS Catalina from Mac App Store (8.25GB installer) to run again, machine locks up with pinwheel of death about 10 minutes into the process (around 1.6GB into download).
Let pinwheel sit.

> Screen eventually goes black.
> Appears the machine is rebooting.
> Get the "Your computer restarted because of a problem" error.
> Machine restarts, get the "problem report for macOS" error message.
> Attempt to review and locks up again with pinwheel.
This repeats numerous times.

Shut machine down.
Cold boot MBP11,3 into internet recovery (Shift + Command + Option + R).
Clock counts to over 1:00 at one point and takes at least 25 minutes with consistent progress bar and globe/map movement. Machine stays on fine this entire time.

White screen with Apple logo then Mavericks recovery.
Finally able to format internal SSD in Disk Utility.
Finally able to choose formatted disk for Mavericks install.

Get pinwheel of death before progress bar ticks more than 1/20th of the way.
Internal SSD likely disappears through the installation process.
Have left pinwheel going for over 30 minutes just to see what eventually happens.
(Screen does go dim then dark after some period of time, back to pinwheel with any key.)

----

At this point, I'm guessing the blade/SSD of MBP11,3 might actually be OK and there could be something corrupted, blocked or bricked in the BootROM and the only true remedy would be reconstruction or the equivalent of an SPI Flash (like a MacPro4,1/5,1 resurrection). More effort than it is worth for this machine.

Will likely install an NVMe blade with Sintech adapter later this week. If that fails, will just use USB SATA SSD in an enclosure secured to the lid of the machine.

 

[Calimero1105]

Have a MacBookPro11,3 that has been mostly out of service for over a year.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core i7" 2.6 Late 2013 with 16GB RAM & NVIDIA 750M
Retina Late 2013 15" - ME874LL/A
MacBookPro11,3 - A1398

Went to turn it on for a factory reset and to wipe the SSD. Booted into recovery to erase the SSD and now the SSD will not show or mount on the machine at all.

MBP11,3 machine boots fine from a USB HDD clone. Disk utility shows no internal drives when booting from USB external. CCC's volume navigator is the same - no internal volumes available.

Via USB clone boot, System Information > SATA/SATA Express shows Apple SSD Controller > Unknown

Apple SSD Controller:
Vendor: Apple
Product: SSD Controller
Physical Interconnect: PCI
Link Width: x4
Link Speed: 5.0 GT/s
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
Unknown:
Native Command Queuing: No
Detachable Drive: No

Can boot into recovery mode without anything connected, but cannot perform a basic OS X install since the system SSD cannot be located by the machine. Booting from external recovery cannot initialize the SSD. Booting from USB installer media cannot initialize the internal SSD drive.

Have a TB3 to TB2 adapter arriving tomorrow to attempt Target Mode recovery from another machine. Unsure if it'll work. Target Mode does enable with the shuffling TB icon when holding T after power on. Target Mode was not working via USB (not sure if it ever did).

Thinking if I can physically remove the SSD, 100% format from the top and initialize/re-initialize and format HFS+ as a blank/empty volume it would solve the OS X install issue.

Is this the only physical adapter that natively works with the MBP11,3 system SSD to physically mount/read on another machine?

OWC Envoy Pro - SSD Enclosure for 2013-Current Macs

Portable, bus-powered USB 3.0 enclosure for Apple flash SSDs. Offers speeds up to 500MB/s in an award-winning aluminum design. Includes 1 year warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

Any other options? Not looking to use this machine a ton. Dropping $100 for this one-time use is not ideal.