Erased Macintosh and made my monday a little worst

Hey The_reuss!

If it is also slow to load on a fresh OS install on an external drive as well, then yes, it could be a HW issue..

However, as you have already erased the disk, and have had a newer OS installed before, I may try reading/reinstalling an earlier OS onto the internal HD.

Start your Mac while holding Shift Option Command R, let go once you see the globe icon, then connect to your network if asked.

I would then again erase the SSD.

As it should be trying to install Sierra or High Sierra, I would choose Mac OS Extended Journaled, (HFS+), as the format, then erase. If High Sierra, the format would automatically update itself to APFS, the newer format.

I’d then Reinstall the OS. Set it up as new. Although this may make it functional again, the real test would be upgrading from High Sierra to Big Sur again.

I’d say, if you still haven’t yet transferred data, and it’s still not functioning right, and considering installing it on an external drive, it may be a hardware issue that requires service.

If it’s fine, then I would probably manually restore your data from a backup as opposed to migrating everything from a backup.

Another option would be to reinstall using a bootable installer instead of the Mac recovery partition or internet recovery:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Hope that you find the path of least resistance and this makes sense and helps!

Try erasing the whole physical SSD which is the "Apple SSD SM0128...." item. Erase it as GUID partition and APFS (top option) before installing macOS.

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.

It is possible your SSD is beginning to fail. If the Apple Diagnostics do not report any issues and if erasing the whole physical drive doesn't help to finish the macOS install, then I can provide instructions to use a Linux boot disk to attempt to check the health of the SSD. Unfortunately Apple SSDs don't always provide a lot of useful health information, but it may be worth a shot on the off chance it shows something.

Another option is to install macOS to an external USB3 drive to see how things go. If it installs & boots to the external drive Ok, then most likely the internal SSD is failing.

Sometimes it is possible to reset the SSD to factory defaults using the SSD's built-in hardware secure erase feature which can sometimes fix issues with an SSD, but this requires using a Linux boot disk and utility (again I can provide instructions if necessary). At least with a 2017 model you can install a third party SSD if the original Apple SSD is failing. OWC provides a drop in replacement, otherwise you will need a Sintech Adapter to allow a standard M.2 SSD to work in the Mac since Apple uses a proprietary PCIe SSD connector. With most third party SSDs you will be restricted to only using macOS 10.13+.

What is the exact model of your MBAir? You can get this information by entering your serial number here:

https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

When you boot the macOS 10.13+ installer launch Disk Utility. Within Disk Utility click on "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. If the SSD does not show up on the left pane after doing this in Disk Utility for the macOS 10.13+ installer, then most likely the SSD has failed.

What problems were you having before you erased the SSD?

The_ruess wrote:

Hello again HWTech sorry for not updating lately but the college & work are destroying my free time so as my hopes, any way. Thank you for the easy to follow instructions I installed this " Linux KNOPPIX" at the site you told, and It's a curious & interesting operative system which I would like to try a little more but I have unexpected results from this "GSmartControl" programme,

Knoppix is mainly meant to be used to boot computers that you want to test, or to run apps without touching or modifying any of the drives connected to the computer. So Knoppix is filled with a ton of apps (sometimes with dozens of similar apps).

The only issue I notice with GSmartControl in your pictures is the final picture showing you started another self-test on the SSD before the first self-test completed. Typically the short self-test takes just two minutes to complete, but sometimes it may take longer. The health report of the SSD looks good.

The other thing with the app " konsole" I might been writing it all wrong , I don't know how to put the wi-fi connection of mine

There is a network icon on the lower right hand corner of the Taskbar. If you right-click on the network icon you should see the available WiFi networks. It should be as simple as selecting your WiFi network and selecting the encryption method (usually WPA2) and providing the WiFi password. If you have a hidden SSID, then things can get a bit tricky so a wired Ethernet connection would be easier.

so I wrote it , and I have some difficulties with that, the first one "sudo  lsblk  -f | grep  -i sd "show me results and I think it's the "sda1" the one that says "vfat32" but with the second comand "sudo  hdparm  -I /dev/sdX | grep  -i model" it gives me a command not found.What should I do?

Using the information from your pictures of GSmartControl your Apple SSD's drive identifier is "sda". So the "hdparm" command becomes:

sudo  hdparm  -I  /dev/sda  |  grep  -i  model

If this doesn't work, then take a picture of the command you entered as spacing can be very important. Of course if you can get Knoppix to connect to the Internet you can easily copy & paste the information in the Terminal/Console app here (use the "Code Insertion" tool with the icon that looks like "<>". Use the Edit menu of the Terminal/Console app to copy the highlighted text.

Out of curiosity which version of Knoppix did you download? If you are using v9.x, then perhaps something has changed which I will need to test.

It looks like the hardware secure erase was successful. Good job!

You should now be able to use Disk Utility to erase the drive and install macOS. Boot to the macOS installer (online or USB stick) where you will need to launch Disk Utility to erase the SSD as GUID partition and APFS (top option) before selecting the "Install macOS" option. If you still have problems, then you have a hardware issue most likely with the SSD.

Make sure you formatted properly as APFS in macOS Recovery

Hey again! No worries, we’ll worth a shot anyhow, sorry that didn’t work out, maybe the SSD needs replacing, or logic board, hope that’s not the case but maybe. One more thing I try to check is:

If you look on the Find My app on your other devices, do you still see this Mac showing there? If so, I might remove it and try again, best of luck!

Instructions continued:

If the lines above show " supported" and "not frozen", then you can proceeded to trigger the built-in hardware secure erase. First we need to temporarily enable the SSD's ATA security mode using this command:

sudo  hdparm  --user-master  u   --security-set-pass  Eins  /dev/sdX

If there are errors double-check you entered the command correctly and used the correct drive identifier. If you cannot determine the error, then take a picture of the command and error message to post here (you may want to post pictures of the output of the other commands as well).

It there are no errors, then you can perform the secure erase:

sudo  hdparm  --user-master  u   --security-erase  Eins  /dev/sdX

This command can take anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes or even 15 minutes to run (varies by size and model of SSD). If the command completes without any errors, then the SSD should be reset to factory defaults and should be completely empty (full of only zeroes). If there were no errors, then the temporary security mode on the SSD should have been automatically disabled, however, if there were errors or the process was interrupted, then you will need to manually disable the temporary security mode before you an OS will be able to see the SSD.

You can run this command again to check on the status of the SSD's security mode:

sudo  hdparm  -I  /dev/sdX  |  grep  -iE  '^security'  -A5

Check the output to make sure the fourth line shows "not enabled". If this line instead shows " enabled", then you can disable the security mode using this command:

sudo  hdparm  --user-master  u   --security-disable  Eins  /dev/sdX

Once the secure erase is successfully completed or once you manually disable the temporary security mode, then you can reboot the laptop. If your health report or self-diagnostic showed issues, then you can launch the GSmartControl app again to run the long/extended selftest again and also save a new copy of the SSD's health report.

This may look overwhelming, but there really are only a handful of steps. Much of this post is just explaining the steps. If you have any problems just let me know by providing the exact command & error message (best with a picture).

Good luck.