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MBP with EFI Problem does not boot

Hi everyone,


I have a huge problem with my computer.


After upgrading my iPhone to iOS 7.1 via iTunes i wanted to disconnect my iPhone from my Mac which produced a beachball. I have almost no beachball issues with my Mac since I upgraded to an SSD. After disconnecting the iPhone (beachball still spinning) my computer froze so I had to push the power button until it shut down immediately. After a restart it used it just minutes and it froze again and showed the beachball again. I shut it down with the long press on the power button again and did this several times, what made the problem even worse. After a few restarts I booted into recovery mode and tested the harddrive with disc utility which found a fail, but couldn't fix it (the fail was something with EFI and it sId it couldn't fix it because it can't work with this file format [filevault encrypted HFS+?]). After a restart my Mac didn't boot (and still doesn't) and just shows a blinking folder with question mark in it.


Because I have two USB-sticks with OS X on it (1 with lion and 1 with mavericks) I booted with them and tried to install a backup and even tried to install a new copy of OS X, but I doesn't find the SSD to install it on there. Just a recovery partition.


I have no idea how to fix this without another computer. Maybe I could delete the SSD with another computer, but is there a way to do this with my hardware?


My system:

13" MacBook Pro early 2011, Samsung SSD (840 Evo 500 GB), 8 GB RAM. The hole harddrive is encrypted via filevault 2.

OS: 10.9.2, backup (also encrypted) available.


I would be very thankful for every help and advice you may have.


Greetings,

Jonas

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2), encrypted SSD via filevault 2

Posted on Mar 11, 2014 1:45 PM

Reply
2 replies

Mar 13, 2014 12:12 PM in response to Jonasschoen

Hello Jonasschoen,




As the issue that affects your Macintosh HD is not one that Disk Utility can repair, you'll need to boot to internet recovery (by holding Command + Option + R at startup). Here, you will need to use Disk Utility to repartition your hard drive by changing the Partition Layout to 1 Partition. Once you've set up a functional volume, you should be able to successfully reinstall Mavericks or restore from your backup.


OS X: About OS X Recovery

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718


Disk Utility 12.x: Partition a disk

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5845


OS X Mavericks: Recover your entire system

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14185




Cheers,

Allen

Mar 13, 2014 12:27 PM in response to CarlAVII

Hi Allen,


thank you for your reply. I booted into internet recovery but forgot to mention it. Sorry for that. But there I also couldn't find the SSD. Yesterday I removed the SSD from my MBP and connected it to a friend's Mac via SATA to USB-cable. The SSD didn't show up there, too. So I think this is an hardware issue with the SSD and I contacted the Samsung support. My old HDD still works in my Mac so I formatted it and used my backup.


Thank you for your help again!


Greetings from Germany,

Jonas

MBP with EFI Problem does not boot

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