Internal Hard Drive Not Detected in Disk Utility

Just unpackaged an early 2016 silver Macbook (Model A1534). A software update notification came up and I gave it a go ahead.

I rebooted and I got a flashing question mark folder. Tried again and again, couldn't boot and still had the question mark folder.

To summarize my whole story: the internal hard drive couldn't be detected, even in Disk Utility. OS Installs didn't have a disk to install. I was really scratching my head; my google searches led me to finding it was not an uncommon issue on older computers where it was the result of a bad cable from the hard drive to the mother board, but this model's HD is directly soldered to the MB I believe.

Based on this apple resource: Startup key combinations for Mac - Apple Support, I tinkered around and briefly got my internal hard drive detected. Here's a summary of what I did:

• Reset NVRAM (Hold CMD+,OPT+P+R) - Seemed to take a little while longer than normal than my 2011 MBP, but was successful in getting the second chime
• Ran safe mode (Hold Shift key on startup) - Didn't work, question mark folder still flashing
• Ran verbose mode (Hold CMD+V on startup) - Didn't work, question mark folder still flashing
• Ran Startup Manager (Hold Option on startup) - Did not give me the typical option to boot from Hard Drive. Instead gives a black screen with the wifi selection, which of course sets me up with internet recovery mode.
• Ran Recovery mode (Hold CMD+R on startup) - This got me to the typical 4 option boot up menu when installing OSX. When I go into Disk Utility to try and repair, my internal drive is not listed at all. The only drive that is listed is the drive for the Internet Recovery OS install.
• Booted from Thumb Drive (Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support) using the Apple USB C AV Multipart Adapter, but I still had no internal disk showing up to install the OS on in the installation menu. Disk utility also still shows no internal hard drive.
• Ran Apple Hardware Test (Hold R on startup) – This showed a passing ADP000 reference code

The next time I was in disk utility, I could finally see the internal hard drive. I verified it, ran repair, and choose it as the Startup Disk. Rebooted, and it was running good. For about another 30 minutes, came bake to a frozen screen. Force restarted and was having the same issues.

Another 20 tries of doing everything above, in no particular order, with and without anything connected (bluetooth, USB C, thumb drive with installer, etc.) the internal hard dive was detected again. This time I checked for the software updates to see if they had been corrupted but it indicated that they had been installed. No more updates to install. The internal hard drive was being detected so I decided I was going to do a fresh OS install.

Rebooted into Startup Manager with my Thumb Drive - erased the internal drive that was still detected - and was able to successfully run a fresh install. It finally booted but unfortunately to the recovery installer window. I restarted, and the flashing question mark folder came back.

I ended up returning the computer at that point to Big Blue, but am going to try my luck with the same model in space grey. Hope it works better!