No Recovery HD or Macintosh HD - Restoration Error

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Okay so I have been looking everywhere for a solution to what is going on.

While booting off of a Lion USB restoring my MacBook Air 13" mid-2012, the installation encountered an error and stopped, I then rebooted my computer. Immediately I noticed that both the Macintosh HD and Recovery HD were gone and when I boot into recovery off of the USB, neither can be found in Disk Utility.

The other threads online say that if this ever happens, the hard drive would have failed, however if only the Macintosh HD is not appearing but the Recovery is.

So as you can see, I'm in a real situation. I have run out of ideas. My hard drive is not broken, it has not failed but is not appearing and I am running my $1500 mac off of an $8 USB so I need help, and quick.

Thank you.
 
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Hmm. Being an Air makes it slightly harder to diagnose as you can't pull the drive and hook it up to another computer. Two questions:

1. If you boot the computer in Firewire disk mode (not sure if this is actually possible with an Air) does it mount on another computer? Based on what you said, I'm guessing it won't.
2. Are you still under AppleCare warranty?
 
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Hmm. Being an Air makes it slightly harder to diagnose as you can't pull the drive and hook it up to another computer. Two questions:

1. If you boot the computer in Firewire disk mode (not sure if this is actually possible with an Air) does it mount on another computer? Based on what you said, I'm guessing it won't.
2. Are you still under AppleCare warranty?

I'll check to see if firewire disk mode is possible.

2.) No unforutnely I am not. I don't even have technical over the phone support anymore.
 
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Hey I really hate bumping but I really need help now or I will throw my grandfather down a flight of stairs.
 
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Time for a new hard drive alas.
 
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Time for a new hard drive alas.

It can't be the hard drive though, it has to be the software. If it was the hard drive then the Recovery HD would show up and I wouldn't have to use this bootable USB as a recovery. This has to be software based doesn't it?
 

chscag

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It can't be the hard drive though, it has to be the software. If it was the hard drive then the Recovery HD would show up and I wouldn't have to use this bootable USB as a recovery. This has to be software based doesn't it?

Where did you get that idea? If neither the OS X partition nor the recovery partition are showing up, it's a good bet your SSD has gone south. If your recovery partition was visible then I might tend to agree that it could possibly be salvaged.

You very likely need to replace the SSD with a new one. Since you stated your Air is no longer under Apple warranty, you'll have to foot the cost to replace the SSD. OWC sells some of the best SSDs and has detailed instruction videos on how to replace it. The only thing left is your data. Do you have backups?
 
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And SSD's do fail alas. Tossed out both a Kingston and G.Skill Falcon in the last 12 months.
 

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