Hard drive disappeared from Disk Utility in macOS Recovery after 'delete operation' and reboot

Hi,

I have a Apple Macbook pro from 2016 from new (1TB SSD), I have never moved the laptop off my desk, it has been is very well treated, about 2-3 years ago, I could not boot up in the morning. I tried recovery mode, but it could not see the HD. I took it to a repairer, who charged me a small fortune £££ to replace the drive with a 256GB SSD. After I got back home, I remember thinking that he did not return the original hard drive and I wondered if this was because it was still fine and they just bagged a working 1TB drive.

Today I decided to wipe the machine down as I will be selling it. I went into MacOS recovery, and did a deleted data command (not the 2GB partition one) but the secondary one the main drive. I then rebooted, and tried to install the original OS (osX) from internet recovery but it could no longer see the drive.

I have since gone back into recovery mode and disk partition and it does not see the drive. (it still sees the 2GB system one)

I am very reluctant to shell out another few £££ to get a new drive or to get this fixed, just so I can then sell it (that will halve its value) I now believe that in both cases there is some kind of factory defector apple software defect going on with this laptop.

I have checked all the forums and all I see is that if you can't see a drive in recovery mode, then they say the drive is toast.. but how would a delete data command from disk utility toast the drive? That's some kind of fault in the Apple software or machine.

If you have any ideas on how to get this drive back online let me know.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Mar 11, 2024 3:16 AM

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HWTech

Level 9

69,758 points

Posted on Mar 11, 2024 7:46 PM

If you are booting into the macOS 10.13+ installer, then you may need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the physical SSD appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. If you are booted into the macOS 10.12 Sierra installer, then I believe the physical drive should already be shown on the left pane of Disk Utility. Maybe try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to boot to the macOS 12.x Monterey online installer in case that makes a difference.

Unfortunately the SSD in the MBPro 2016-2017 non-touchbar model has an extremely high rate of failure. However, it would be surprising if it failed and you were not having any problems with it prior to erasing the SSD. Most of the SSD failures would occur at power on or when waking from sleep and would usually result in Kernel Panics before completely failing.

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HWTech

Level 9

69,758 points

Mar 11, 2024 7:46 PM in response to Bob7184

HWTech

Level 9

69,758 points

Mar 12, 2024 5:20 PM in response to Bob7184

No, that is probably one of the macOS installers' virtual volumes.

While booted to the macOS installer, launch the Terminal app from the Utilities menu on the menu bar. Issue the following command to show the internal physical drive and any volumes on it. This command will filter out all of the installer's virtual volumes.

diskutil  list  internal

Bob7184 Author

Level 1

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Mar 12, 2024 1:07 AM in response to HWTech

The 2GB system drive is that not part of the SSD just a partition? I had no issues whatsoever prior to this or Kernel issues.. I do not understand why there is no help article on how to recover the drive, this is really poor from Apple. I just spent £££ on a new drive, its had what 50 hours of use? Whas I supposed to perform an action immediately after the erase? like a format? or something? why has it disappeared?

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Hard drive disappeared from Disk Utility in macOS Recovery after 'delete operation' and reboot