2011 macbook air loads half way

I brought my MacBook air home from school cause I got a new charger shipped to my house. I plugged it in and then opened my MacBook. When it turned on, there was a grey folder with a question mark flashing. I figured out how to get around that. It loaded one time and then I tried to do a restart and now it will get to my account and password, then load half way and stop. Eventually it turns itself off. Is my ssd going out? I can verify and repair it in disk utility.

Repair in Disk Utility is completely useless. Flashing folder means that it is not finding a hard drive or not finding an OS X. Since its partially loading, either your drive is going out or your OS X is corrupted. If you have a USB with the install DMG, reformat the drive and reinstall OS X. If that doesn't work, then your drive is probably failing.

If you don't have a USB stick with the OS X installer you might be able to enter the recovery mode. From there you should be able to attempt to verify/repair the disk or reinstall OS X.


Hard to be more specific without knowing which OS X version you're running.

Yea I think I was running Yosemite but idk for sure. I have never had a drive fail on my so I didn't really know what was going on. It let me log on one time after the flashing folder but I didn't know enough to back stuff up or check what was going on. I took it to BestBuy and had them look at it. He said it gave him an error but he didn't say what the error was. He basically told me the drive was failing. I was thinking of getting the 240gb ssd from Transcend. Hopefully that will fix what is going on.

Sounds like you have things well in hand. If the drive was failing, which it sounds like it was, replacing ti should fix the problem.

Did you have a backup in place so that you can restore your data?

no I did not have a backup. I guess wishful thinking is that my drive will never fail. The files i had on it were not that important though, nothing i can't easily replace

boostkid said:

no I did not have a backup. I guess wishful thinking is that my drive will never fail. The files i had on it were not that important though, nothing i can't easily replace

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Ouch. Been down that road before. Not a pretty sight. Which reminds me I need to do a backup.

Do consider setting up some kind of backup strategy. When you're ready to do that I'm sure we can provide suggestions.