Missing HD on early 2015 Macbook Air

[wren1700]

I dont really know what I am doing. I'm not a Mac person but my daughter has a MacBook air early 2015. really good with pcs, not so good with macs. I was prepping the machine to be sold but completely messed it up. In order of things I did:

1. Several years back I put in a faster drive in the machine. I believe it was a western digital black m2, cant really remember, but I took the machine apart and did it. I think I cloned the existing SSD to the new WD SSD, something like that. It had been running fine ever since that upgrade for years.

2. A few days ago I upgraded the os as far as it would go. I *think* it was big sur, but can't be sure. At that point I wanted to do a clean install after logging my daughter out of the machine.

3. I booted into recovery and I think erased the HD-data, then the regular HD. the windows guy in me assumed i was just erasing partitions, and i could recreate a new partition to load os. probably not a good move.

4. Now when I boot up the machine I get the folder with the question mark.

5. When I go into recovery disk utilities, I don't see a hard drive anymore.

6. When I do a terminal diskutil list, I can see my WD512 drive, but I have no corestorage, whatever that is.

7. I tried booting from a big sur bootable usb, and i.can hook up wifi, but when I go into disk utilities I see no hard drive. If I try to do an OS X install or recovery, same thing, no hard drive.

Is this thing salvageable?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Try booting with SHIFT + OPTION + CMD + R keys and see what happens.

It is salvageable. Since this isn't the stock drive you will may need to use Terminal to fixed. If this was the stock drive, I would be able to get you going. I am not fully versed in all the terminal commands. @Weaselboy will probably be able to help you.

 

[wren1700]

shift+option+cmd+R

puts me into internet recovery. when the GUI pops up, it's the same. disk utilities shows no HD. term diskutil list shows a bunch of disks (which i dont understand - why are there so many) but i do see disk(s) which match my WD 512 stick.

 

[wren1700]

can someone help me with term commands to get the machine to recognize the drive so i can install os?

 

[chown33]

Details are important. It's difficult or impossible to give accurate Terminal commands with only the information you've provided so far.

For example, you've mentioned using diskutil list in Terminal, but you haven't shown us what the complete actual output was. Seeing the output is an important detail, so we can see what things diskutil knows about. If you've used any other commands in a Terminal window, tell us what they were, and show their output.

Similarly, you've noted, "When I go into recovery disk utilities, I don't see a hard drive anymore." While it can be useful to know what you don't see, it's usually more informative to know what you do see. In short, please post a screenshot or photo of the actual Disk Utility window you see.

It would also be useful to know if you read or followed any article or instructions that tell you how to prepare a Mac to be sold. If so, then please post the links to those items. For example, there's an Apple article here:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Reset your Mac to factory settings to prepare it for a new owner.

support.apple.com

I found that by typing the search terms prepare mac for sale into DuckDuckGo.

 

[wren1700]

hello - apologies for lack of information. i don't know terminal commands, just a command here and there that i have picked up on other threads. following are images of term diskutil list and what i see in disk utility

looking at the photo - i guess i put a 128gb ssd in there...not a 512...

 

[chown33]

Thanks for the added details.

The screenshot of diskutil list is probably showing the SSD at disk14. The ones before that are parts of the Recovery boot process, and can be ignored for this purpose.

The info shown for disk14 shows a GUID partition scheme with 2 partitions. The EFI partition looks normal, but the other one (disk14s2) appears to only have a GUID (Globally Unique ID) and is an unusually small size. This suggests to me that it was never correctly formatted, or if formatting started it didn't finish correctly. The conclusion I draw from this is that there are no usable disk volumes on the disk14 device.


The screenshot of Disk Utility seems to be in the "Show only volumes" View mode. It needs to be in "Show all devices" View mode.

It also looks like an older version of Disk Utility, so the instructions here:

View all devices or only volumes in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, change the view setting to display all devices or only volumes.

support.apple.com

about where to change the View may not apply in the exact way described.

Since the menubar doesn't appear in the photo, I can't tell you which menu to look under for a menu item to switch the view. If there's a View menu, look there first. Otherwise look under all the other menus.

Choose "Show all devices", and the SSD should appear, above the horizontal line that's currently above the "disk0" item shown in the list. At that point you should be able to click on it and Erase it. If not, post again and show the Disk Utility window with the SSD selected, including the menubar.

Before erasing the disk, I recommend reading the entire procedure linked in post #5 about preparing your Mac for sale. Obviously, you won't be able to do any of the things that you should do before erasing the disk, but you should still read through the entire procedure for how to erase the disk and reinstall the OS.

 

[wren1700]

i have looked everywhere in disk utility but there is no option to view all. it allows me to configure the toolbar, and there are no additional icons for view. looking through all the menus and options, there is no view all option or anything similar to view.

trying to understand what you posted, does the fact that i do not have a stock drive have anything to do with why i cannot see it? are there terminal commands to effectively do the same erase and reformat via gui?

 

[chown33]

What version of Disk Utility? Menubar > Disk Utility > About Disk Utility

A non-stock drive should have no bearing on anything. It worked previously, so it should be usable again, unless it somehow happened to malfunction right around the time you were first erasing. That's not a completely unlikely situation, as it appears the earlier formatting failed to complete.


There are terminal commands that can erase and reformat. The diskutil command can do this, but its sub-commands vary across OS releases, and I'm not sure what OS version is running in your Recovery mode. The unexpectedly older-looking Disk Utility may imply an OS version that's closer to what the Mac originally came with.

Please post the output from just the diskutil command by itself. With no sub-command, it should list all its available sub-commands.

It may also be useful to see the output of this command: diskutil info disk14

 

[wren1700]

the main menu says restore os x, i think you are right, it is on the original factory os x recovery tools. disk utility is version 13 (606).

so i think i have a bigger problem. earlier screenshot that showed a disk14, that was a usb drive that i had plugged in. now when i do a disk util, it only shows drives 0 - 13, no disk14. i'm assuming since i have no drive showing up in diskutil that the drive may have fried at some point? anyway to verify i have a dead stick? or should i go about starting to take the thing apart and put a new drive in?

 

[chown33]

Under the Utilities menu you first use to run either Terminal or Disk Utility, look for a menu item named "System Info" (or similar). Choose that.

There are only a few things under the Utilities menu, so if you're not sure what to choose, post a photo. And if I'm wrong about the menu name, i.e. you don't see any Utilities menu, then post a photo of your menubar.


In System Info, a window should appear summarizing some very basic system info. On the left is a hierarchical list, with Hardware, Software, and maybe some other things as top-level "headings" with a sub-list of elements below each heading.

Under the Hardware heading find a SATA item and click it. Post a photo of what it shows. It should show every device connected to the SATA bus.

If there are other items under Hardware that might have an SSD under them, click each one and look.

I have no direct experience with this MB Air model, so I'm guessing what might show up in the Hardware list, and where an SSD might be listed.


Click the Software heading itself. It should show various OS version info. Post what the System Version number is.

I suspect the System Version will be in the 10.10.nn range, as your Early 2015 model shipped with 10.10 Yosemite as its OS.


If your SSD doesn't appear at all under diskutil list, the drive may be dead, or a cable may be malfunctioning, or possibly a cable connector.

It's possible that the builtin diagnostics can identify disk problems, but I don't know because the capabilities tend to be specific to a model, and I have no direct experience with this MB Air model.

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

The only other way I know of to find out if the SSD is dead is to take the computer apart, put the drive in a known-good enclosure with a USB or Thunderbolt interface, and try it that way. If the drive works, then it's likely a cable or connector problem. It's also possible that more than one thing has malfunctioned, e.g. a dead cable and a dead drive.