After I login to my macbook pro 2014 every freezes up after a couple of minutes.
So I thought to try and reinstall mac OS but in recovery mode I can't find macintosh HD.
In disk utility I can only mac os base system and that's only 2gb where as my ssd is 256gb.
Is my ssd dead or is there another problem here?
I'm think I'm running high sierra or catalina I'm not 100% sure
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
If you booted to an older macOS installer, then it may not be able to recognize a Catalina partition/drive. Try booting the laptop into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to try to access the online Catalina installer which should allow you to run Disk Utility First Aid in an attempt to repair the volume or to allow you to reinstall macOS over top of itself. Sometimes Internet Recovery Mode doesn't always boot to the proper online installer.
If you want to perform a clean install, then you may need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. For older versions of macOS you want to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). If you are installing Mojave or Catalina, then erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option).
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065
If you still cannot see the physical drive, then launch the Terminal app from the Utilities menu and run the following command to double-check if the internal SSD is visible:
diskutil list internal
If nothing is displayed, then you either have a bad SSD or you have a third party SSD installed which requires the use of macOS 10.13+ in order to see & use the SSD.
Erasing the drive will destroy all data on the SSD so make sure you have a good backup first.
If you booted to an older macOS installer, then it may not be able to recognize a Catalina partition/drive. Try booting the laptop into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to try to access the online Catalina installer which should allow you to run Disk Utility First Aid in an attempt to repair the volume or to allow you to reinstall macOS over top of itself. Sometimes Internet Recovery Mode doesn't always boot to the proper online installer.
If you want to perform a clean install, then you may need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. For older versions of macOS you want to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). If you are installing Mojave or Catalina, then erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option).
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065
If you still cannot see the physical drive, then launch the Terminal app from the Utilities menu and run the following command to double-check if the internal SSD is visible:
diskutil list internal
If nothing is displayed, then you either have a bad SSD or you have a third party SSD installed which requires the use of macOS 10.13+ in order to see & use the SSD.
Erasing the drive will destroy all data on the SSD so make sure you have a good backup first.
can't find macintosh hd in disk utility