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So I have a MacBook Air from late 2010 i think, and a couple months ago, I was exploring disk utility, and I think I did something I shouldn’t have done. I forgot what it was but it has something to do with partitions. Basically now if I try to boot my Mac, I literally can’t do anything and it just shows the bricked icon (x icon). I’ve tried opening disk utility, recovery mode, nothing works. Just shows the bricked mac icon.
MacBook Air
Hi Devilbager,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
We understand that you're unable to start your Mac because you see an X icon when you start it.
Check out this article which will help us to isolate this behavior further: If your Mac doesn't start up all the way
If you run First Aid on your drive, is it able to repair it?
We look forward to your reply.
Cheers!
If you are trying to save your files, the put the laptop into Target Disk Mode and connect it to another Mac. You can also remove the drive and connect it to another Mac using a USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure.
You can try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R. If you can boot a macOS installer, then you can install macOS to an external USB drive which you can boot to so that you can try to access the data on the internal drive.
If you have access to another Mac capable of running macOS 10.11 or 10.13, then you can create a bootable macOS USB installer.
You use a retail version of OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard to install to an external drive, then upgrade to 10.13. It is dangerous to get a Snow Leopard .dmg online since you never know if it is complete or if it may also contain some nasty surprises. Apple never provided Snow Leopard in .dmg format.
If you are installing macOS 10.11+, then you will need to erase the physical drive before installing macOS. If you are installing macOS 10.6 to 10.10, then you need to partition & format the whole physical drive.
If you ended up erasing the SSD, then your data is gone for good unless you had a backup.
If you value your data, then you should always have frequent & regular backups. FYI, it is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs (even a brand new SSD). Plus with the 2018+ Macs it is very difficult to impossible to recover data from a 2018+ Mac if anything goes wrong with the Mac.
This is the main problem, I can’t . all it shows when it boots up is x. I can change drives to boot from but all it shows is recovery, which obviously doesn’t work. I have two options, use a recovery usb for snow leopard which will also make it so I loose all my data, since the main drive on my Mac is probably corrupted, or I can fix this issue and save my files. And I’d rather save my files which is why I am here
Devilbager wrote:
Like before, I was on Mac OS 10.6.8 which doesn’t have internet recovery or recovery mode, anyway I fixed this issue but thanks for replying anyway
Like you say OSX 10.6 does not have Recovery Mode, but if the laptop ever had macOS 10.12.6+ installed, then the laptop's firmware would have been updated to access Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R which is detailed in the "Internet Recovery Mode" link I provided in my earlier post.
I'm glad you were able to sort it out.
I have fixed this issue with a software reinstall usb
Like before, I was on Mac OS 10.6.8 which doesn’t have internet recovery or recovery mode, anyway I fixed this issue but thanks for replying anyway
Fix Mac hard drive error
