Problem with internal drive

[allan53]

I have a 2013 Mac Pro running 10.13.4. The internal ssd (1TB) suddenly stopped booting. Luckily I have a clone which is only 2 days old. The internal drive will not stay mounted.
If I do a cold start I can boot off the ssd but after using it a few minutes the drive unmounts. I can boot from the clone. The ssd shows up but after several minutes it unmounts - I get the message saying it was not ejected properly.
I tried disk utility after booting from the clone. It freezes up while doing first aid. I try to erase it but I either get an error saying it cannot unmount or else nothing happens and I finally must force quit disk utility.
I can't try disk warrior as it is an APFS disk. I can't try clone back from clone to ssd as it won't stay mounted.

I could buy another ssd but a 1 TB costs almost a $1000 and I am not sure sure if that is the problem. Any suggestions?

 

[Fishrrman]

Was the internal 1tb SSD an Apple factory-installed option?
It sounds like it's failing on you.
It -might be- a loose or marginal connection (works ok when absolutely cold, but as the Mac runs and heats up a little, the connection becomes intermittent).

This is one reason why I advise AGAINST folks paying Apple's high prices for large internal SSD's. If they fail, you're out a lot of cash, and a factory-compliant replacement will (again) be ridiculously expensive.

The following might work, but probably WON'T "make a difference" if the SSD itself is ok but the CONNECTION to the motherboard is problematic:

Since you already have a recent cloned backup that is bootable, I would try to ERASE the internal drive, and then test it.

If the internal SSD can be erased, run DU's "repair disk" on it and see what kind of results you get.
IF you "get a good result", REPEAT the repair disk test five or six times in succession.
Do you get "a good report" each and every time?
If so, I'd restore from the backup and see how that goes.

But I'd also be keeping my cloned backup updated FREQUENTLY -- at least every couple of days, just-in-case the internal SSD goes flaky and doesn't want to be revived.

Having said that...
IF the internal SSD won't even handle the "erase" procedure, I'd consider it "failed" and just leave it "dead in place".
I'd "move over" to the external cloned drive and make that "my external boot drive".

Is your cloned backup on a platter-based HDD or an SSD?
The 2013 has USB3, quite fast.
You could get an external SSD (DON'T spend a lot of $$$ on it, 500gb might do), clone over the backup to it, and then boot and run from the external SSD.
It won't be quite as fast as booting from the internal drive, but it will be much, MUCH faster than booting from an HDD.

 

[allan53]

The drive was the problem. It did not handle erase.
I did spend about $600 to buy a new 1 TB drive from OWC. It is expensive for a drive but all is working well now.

I put the old drive in a case. it opens fine - shows the files - unmounts after 4 minutes or so. Can't be erased.

 

[hobowankenobi]

The drive was the problem. It did not handle erase.
I did spend about $600 to buy a new 1 TB drive from OWC. It is expensive for a drive but all is working well now.

I put the old drive in a case. it opens fine - shows the files - unmounts after 4 minutes or so. Can't be erased.

Thanks for the follow up and explanation. Good to know.

 

[allan53]

You're welcome.