Mac No Entry Sign (Missing Harddrive in Recovery Mode - Disk Utility)

[patneligan]

Hi there,

Just quickly thank you for even taking the time out to read this - all help is appreciated.

My mac is a Apple MacBook 12 Retina 2016 Core m5 1.20GHz 8GB 500GB SSD Silver Mojave. My mac crashed with a question mark sign followed by a no entry sign.

I restarted to be met with the 'no entry' sign, booted it into recovery and my 500gb harddrive is not there, it is only showing Apple Disk Image (macOS Base System) which is 2.01gb. The 'macos base system' appears to be OK when running first aid.

I have tried looking into reinstalling the operating system but with no harddrive listed, that is not possible.

What has happened to the harddrive? Why has it failed? I have not damaged it, I have a lot of files on it with it nearly at capacity most of it is backed up elsewhere but right now I cannot even access it or see it being listed by the macbook.

Any advice or experience here? Next steps?

Thank you!

 

[ferrarr]

The SSD drive has most likely died. Or, if it is too close to capacity, it will stop operating.

Do you have an external drive you can boot up from?

Do you have a bootable USB macOS installer?

Unfortunately, in that MacBook model year, the SSD drive is not replaceable. If you can boot up from another drive, you may be able to salvage your data?

 

[patneligan]

The SSD drive has most likely died. Or, if it is too close to capacity, it will stop operating.

Do you have an external drive you can boot up from?

Do you have a bootable USB macOS installer?

Unfortunately, in that MacBook model year, the SSD drive is not replaceable. If you can boot up from another drive, you may be able to salvage your data?

Thank you for replying to this.

OK, I do have an external harddrive which i guess i could plug in and use that to reinstall MacOS? Are there any steps online you suggest or recommend to do this safely and not recklessly.

With that would I be able to get into the SSD drive somehow?

Again much appreciated ferrarr

P

 

[ferrarr]

I'm not positive if the Recovery partition installer, will allow you to install to an external drive, but it's worth a try. Here're Apple's instructions on installing macOS from Recovery, How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support. Do you know which version of macOS your MB is running?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

You are outside of the warranty period and if the SSD has indeed died, then that would require a logicboard replacement to get it back working again. If you can use an external drive for everything you might be able to function that way instead.

 

[patneligan]

Thank you both of you.

It was Mojave (i was trying to avoid updating to Catalina). When I look at the reinstall of MacOS on Recovery Mode, its giving me Catalina now though. Will that be an issue if I update it as Catalina?

Ill have a play around with the external harddrive and see if I can power it up through that and see if I can get to the SSD that way. I may have been operating it a bit too close to capacity.

I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Being at capacity wouldn't prevent the SSD from being visible, it would make booting and operating macOS hard since the OS needs a bit of free room for its files. The dreaded no entry symbol is more indicative (from the spinning media days) of a failed drive. While SSDs do not have spinning mechanical bits that can go wrong, it is still possible for the hardware to fail.