Macbook Air 2012 mid SSD sudden death

There's been no widespread reports of SSDs malfunctioning - there have been some reports yes, but given how popular the MacBook Air is, that's to be expected. What we don't see here are SSD failure threads with hundreds and even thousands of 'me too' posts - like the ones we see about WiFi problems with the new 2013 model. At this time I'd have to suspect that you are one of the unlucky ones - just like I was unlucky to have an IBM Travelstar drive die many years ago at the time they were very highly regarded.

BTW - since an SSD is not mechanical how you treated your computer isn't nearly as much of a factor as it would be with a mechanical drive. The key threats to an SSD would be water and electric shock.

Do you have the system disk/stick? Have you tried to boot from the system disk?
With the machine off, Insert the stick to your machine's USB port.

Start machine while holding down the "C" key.
Continue holding the "C" until the grey Apple appears, then release.

The first screen you will be presented with is a language dialog screen, "Use English for the main language" is highlighted.

Bottom right of the window, see an arrow symbol/button, Click it to continue.

Then you'll see a window with a fuel guage saying, "Preparing installation". Don't worry...let it do its thing.

Next you'll be presented with a window, "Install Mac OS X"...ignore this but see the Apple menu bar.
Click on "Utilities".
A sub menu will drop.
Select "Disk Utility"
In the Disk Utility window select a disk, volume or image.
In the left column of the window is a list of your machine's disk and its volumes.
Select the first item. This is the base level of the SSD hardware in your machine.

Then the utility will work to display the info for this device. And that info is displayed at the bottom of the Disk Utility window.

This is where you will learn if the SSD is good or bad.
If it displays info and show S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified, I would venture that there is a chance to fix your issue.

If the utility is successful and displays the disk info...
See the buttons, "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk"
Click either. I short step it and run "Repair Disk".

There is a window that displays the details of the repair tool.
If the run ends with green colored text saying disk is OK...I'd re-boot the machine, it should recognize your disk.

If you succed in the re-boot, I would back up your disk. preferablely I would make a bootable copy This copy would enable me to restore back to my machine's disk.

Then I would re-boot with the system stick again. And go to the Disk Utility again and use the Erase tool to wipe the machine's disk and then Restore from your bootable backup.

Otherwise, after you Erase you would Quit the Disk Utility and Install OS X, from your system disk.

I know this is a lot to do, but I've had system drive/Macintosh HD failures and through these steps I've saved myself by myself.

I'll check back to see if you update this thread.

Ok. Good luck with the new SSD.

Do yourself a big favor, learn a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy.

It's not hard once you wrap your head around the concepts and the steps to do it.

I also keep a diary/small notebook of the backups I make. Believe me, then there is no need to remember.
All your steps are written down the first time you do it, then you'll follow the same procedure the next time you backup. Once a week, once a month, you get the idea.

Your system drive is 128GB. I'd buy a 500GB external USB drive. Then partition it (divide into 4 sections) using the Disk Utility we talked about. You'll create three partitions at 128GB each and the fourth will be 116GB and you can keep that as an Auxilary for simple copies of photos, music, documents, whatever. The other three will become bootable partitions of your machine's system drive. And bootable means, you can boot (start) your machine from these partitions.

So if, one day in the future, your machine disk starts to act funny or won't boot up...Start the machine while holding down the "Option" key and that gives you the Start Up Manager and it displays all bootable partitions from which you can choose.

I learned all this with the e-book by The X Lab. I've used these books since 2005 for my first PowerBook and Power Macs.

The author has books for each specific Mac operating system (OS).

I just got a copy for my Snow Leopard 10.6.8 MacBook Air.

I buy a single-user license and keep a copy, specific to the machine's OS, on each machine I have.

Dig through his website, you find what I'm talking about.

http://www.thexlab.com/

amychohw: I have the same problem. My Macbook Air died on me less than a month after my warranty expired. Just curious to know how much it cost you to get it fixed, if you don't mind sharing. Thanks in advance!

Thanks amychohw! I got lucky as well.. They replaced my SSD for free as a one time exception since it was hardly a month out of warranty. I did lose my data though. But, am not complaining. Could have lost $280 + the data 🙂!

Just adding a mine too! Two weeks after warranty expired.

My MBA just went to the white screen question folder last night. I've tried everything to restart it. What's this system/stick? Mine is a mid 2012 and didn't come with one. I do have an external dvd drive. Any suggestions? Otherwise, I have a genius bar appt for in the morning.

This is great timing. NOT! I have mid-terms this week! So, now I'm seeing they take weeks to replace whatever it is that's screwed up? This is so not cool. I'm out of warranty with no apple care. Perfect, huh? *pounding my forehead on my desk* (It's not working either).

Any other suggestions?

With the external dvd drive you could run your system disk and do some diagnostics. Do you have a system disk?

I don't have a Lion system disk, just a snow leopard system on disk. I've done the internet recovery and it can't find my hard drive. Downloading Lion now to another hard drive thunderbolted to my MBA. Download time: 83 hours. Really?

Did you have any backup?
Internet recovery? I'm not familiar.

Forget Lion for now.

Use the Snow Leop disk. If it boots, Go to Disk Utility. Follow my directions above. If the utility sees the drive, run the disk repair. Then backup all the files you want to keep. Then erase the drive. Then do a clean install of Snow Leopard.

Then you will at least have a working computer.

I keep comprehensive backups of my computers to recover from just this sort of thing.

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