PCIE SSD Not Showing in Disk Utility After Failed Restore

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PCIE SSD Not Showing in Disk Utility After Failed Restore

I was having a problem with my OS freezing after startup - tried everything to fix it but nothing worked. This is on an older, Mid-2010 5,1 Mac Pro. I decided to restore from a recent backup, but the darn machine went to sleep in the middle of the restore! :-(

Now the drive doesn't appear anywhere...not even in Disk Utility on the alternate drive from which I was running the system restore. (I had a second drive with Mojave installed which I'm currently using as the startup disk.)

Any thoughts on how to get the drive to appear?

Mac Pro

Posted on Nov 19, 2022 5:56 PM

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Answer 1

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waiguoren Author

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Nov 20, 2022 7:57 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Wow - so I unplugged the machine, removed the SSD and reinserted it, then powered on and voila! - it's showing again. So odd.

Now the big question is; Can I complete the restore from backup without it going to sleep? Is the 'caffeinate' trick in Terminal still the best way to keep it from sleeping?

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Answer 2

Nov 19, 2022 6:25 PM in response to waiguoren

a drive that will not tell Disk Utility its make&model and a reasonable non-zero size can not be repaired or used for any purpose.

If it is powered and cabled correctly, that drive has died.

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Answer 3

Nov 19, 2022 6:58 PM in response to waiguoren

Drives can fail at any time, and SSD drive failures generally leave no survivors (i.e., no salvageable data at all).

You can try restarting and SMC resetting and stuff like that, but I suspect it will make no difference.

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Answer 4

waiguoren Author

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Nov 19, 2022 6:55 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for your response!

I thought it was just a result of the failed restore due to the computer going to sleep. Can it be purely coincidence or is it likely the restore from backup caused the drive to fail? It was visible in Disk Utility before I began the restore process.

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Answer 5

Nov 20, 2022 10:21 AM in response to waiguoren

Going to sleep while performing an update or restore is not typically a problem. 'Going to sleep' does not derail the update or restore (but 'having the drive drop out due to being defective' might.

If you are concerned, use the Energy saver control panel to set computer-sleep = never.

DON"T add third-party software and expect into perform better than Apple software.

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Answer 6

waiguoren Author

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8 points

Nov 20, 2022 2:33 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Totally agree. I regularly back up the SSD on an external drive, have a clone of it on another drive, and additionally back up all my important documents /photos on two other drives, just in case one or even two fail. ;-)

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