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MBA SSD Failure...then it works again...??

Last night I was working on my MBA (the one I am now typing this on) and all of a sudden, spinny little pinwheel of sadness and a totally unresponsive computer. I had to to a hard power down (hold power key until it cried uncle) and then attempted to boot it up again....white screen....for about several minutes. Powered off again and powered on again....white screen....for a few minutes...and then a big flashying folder with a question mark on it. After staring at it another few minutes in disbelief, I powered down and attempted to boot again with the option key, hoping that it was just "confused" about where the boot drive was.

At this point, it goes into "Remote Install Mode" (which is pretty freaking awesome, unless you think you just lost your hard drive) asks me for a wifi password and downloads the installer from Apple servers and brings me into what is effectively an OS installation screen. I choose disk utility to have a look at my hard drive to see what is going on and low and behold....no hard drive....nothing...only the disk image that was downloaded from Apple.

If there was any greater sadness than the spinny pinwheel, this was it. I am asking myself how a flash hard drive just stops working - I mean...nothing moves - its just happy little dancing bits moving around (ok, fine, the bits move...but nothing else.) So I schedule my appointment with the local genius bar...from my iPad...and go to sleep.

Fast forward to next morning (bypassing nighmares of failed backups and weird little munchkin people stealing my hard drive) and I am waiting for my oil to get changed at the local garage. Being ever hopeful, I fire my MBA up in the waiting room and 7 seconds later, there is my login screen.

And now here I am typing this question to the community wondering what just happened. What would cause the hard drive to simply disappear as though it died, and then reappear the next morning again as though nothing had happened?

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 17, 2012 4:20 AM

22 replies

Jan 7, 2014 8:56 AM in response to JamMan19

@JamMan19

A firmware update was released in October 2013 to fix this issue. A limited number of MBAs could NOT be fixed by the firmware update. If that was the case, you were prompted by the update to take your MBA to an Apple store to have the SSD replaced.

See this knowledge base article: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1690

You will likely have to get the drive replaced at Apple, and then restore from a Time Machine backup.

This happened to 3 out of 4 MBAs in my house and 2 of those had it happen twice before the update came out. 1 of 3 could not apply update and had to have drive replaced at Apple. In all situations, when the SSD failed it had to be replaced. The issues occured from June 2013-October 2014 on MBAs purchased from June 2012-October 2012.

No issues since the update applied/drive replaced in October.

There is nothing that can be done to retrieve the data on those failed SSDs. Time Machine full restores recovered all the data in all cases for me.

Jan 7, 2014 9:14 AM in response to ScalaEnthusiast

As an FYI, my MBA is the Mid-2012 that is the subject of the firmware update.

@JamMan, when mine exhibited the issue, I could let it set for a while and then it would boot again. Try that and back it up if you can. Otherwise, you'll need to take it to an Apple Store and have it looked at. Turn around for me was about 3 days.

It is most likely this firmware issue, but you'll need to be able to boot to run it (obviously.) You may be able to boot it off of another [usb] drive, if you have one available.

JamMan19

Level 1

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Jan 7, 2014 9:37 AM in response to MansterRock

I was hoping it wasn't darn thanks!

JamMan19

Level 1

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Jan 7, 2014 9:38 AM in response to ScalaEnthusiast

If it's out of warranty roughly how much do they charge for a new drive?

Jan 7, 2014 10:26 AM in response to JamMan19

I am not sure on what it may cost. You will need to take it to the Genius Bar, let them look at it and tell you. Since it is a known problem, it might be considered a warranty issue, even if the warranty is expired, but I can't speak for Apple.

You just need to make an appointment at the Genius bar and let them have a look. They have some special diagnostic tools there that go beyond most things available to us mere mortals. Once they run those on the laptop, they can tell you what will happen - the visit itself won't cost you anything.

Jan 7, 2014 10:29 AM in response to ScalaEnthusiast

I believe that Apple covers the repair under the "MacBook Air Flash Storge Drive Replacmeent Program"

http://www.apple.com/support/macbookair-flashdrive/

Jan 7, 2014 10:41 AM in response to MansterRock

While their replacement program only identifies the 64G and 128G drives, my failure was with the 256G drive.

MBA SSD Failure...then it works again...??