NVRAM reset

timasus wrote:

so my mac (pro 13inch w/ touch bar, 2016) today decided to stop working and it kept flashing the folder with a question mark symbol so i followed NVRAM reset from apple support pages. next came this:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/f83b1a1a-da3a-4113-bc99-13d48b84ea89

i am not sure what happened however i did not have my data backed up on an external device (i have icloud i wasnt too worried) but whenever i press to reinstall macOS this shows:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/9021d714-c628-4531-97e3-ba618323abaa

it is not giving me an option to install the OS on the hard drive and so my mac is stuck in this position. does anyone know what to do now?????

Boot into Internet Recovery (Option Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina/Big Sur) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices The best sequence is —

• Volume level

• Container level

• Parent drive

Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

If your Mac starts up to a question mark

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204323

Did you see the physical SSD when you followed @leroydouglas' instructions?

If the physical SSD is seen and First Aid doesn't show any errors (especially when manually looking through the report) yet the installer still does not allow you to choose the "Macintosh HD" volume (default name unless you changed it), then you have one of these issues:

• SSD has Filevault enabled, but you did not unlock the volume as I mentioned in my other post
• SSD has Filevault enabled, but Disk Utility would not unlock the volume (requires a clean install by first erasing the SSD -- all daa will be lost if you don't have a backup)
• There may be a partition or filesystem issue which requires a clean install by first erasing the SSD -- all daa will be lost if you don't have a backup

If the physical SSD is not seen, then the SSD has most likely failed requiring you to have Apple or an AASP examine the laptop to provide you with a repair estimate. You will most likely lose your data if you don't have a backup, but you could have a professional data recovery service attempt to recover data from the SSD.

At this point the only thing that matters is whether Disk Utility can see the physical SSD. If so what are the results of First Aid when following the instructions provided by @leroydouglas? And is Filevault enabled?

From now on make sure to have frequent and regular backups of the computer and any external media which contains important and unique data if you don't want to risk losing your data.

FYI, it is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied due to how SSDs work. Plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs. In addition most Apple USB-C Macs have no way to recover any data from the SSD if there is a hardware failure although the MBPro 2016-17 is the exception. Some SSD failures and some Logic Board failures on 2018+ models may have permanent data loss where even an expensive professional data recovery service will be unable to recover any data due to the use of hardware encryption which requires a functioning Logic Board to access the data on the encrypted SSD. Some macOS updates have been known to corrupt the T2 security chip which holds the encryption keys which is another way to permanently lose access to your data if you don't have a backup.

Edit: If your drive is encrypted with Filevault, then you may need to launch Disk Utility and manually unlock the Filevault using Disk Utility. If Disk Utility unlocks the Filevaulted volume/drive, then you can run First Aid on the physical drive and the hidden Container. Even if First Aid reports everything is "Ok" on the Container click "Show Details" and manually scroll back through the report looking for any unfixed errors. If there are unfixed errors you will need to erase the physical drive which destroys all data on the SSD before restoring from a backup or clone. If there are no unfixed errors, you can quit Disk Utility to try the "Reinstall macOS" option again.