mac boots 2/3 way then prohibitory sign (circle w/ slash)

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Level 2

387 points

mac boots 2/3 way then prohibitory sign (circle w/ slash)

The saga of my daughter's MBP...

After my daughter's 2012 13-inch macbook pro failed last fall, I gave her mine which I bought refurbed last July. Then in mid-January she interrupted it while it was upgrading to High Sierra. (She thought that it was just downloading.) It seemed really hosed -- could not boot off the recovery partition. Because I didn't have a firewire cable to connect it in target-disk-mode via firewire, I pulled the disk and put it in a sled and hooked it up to my work macbook pro. I wiped the disk and did a fresh install of High Sierra, plugged the sled into her computer, it booted up, great. Then I put the drive back into the computer, and I got a circle with a slash through it. Went a few rounds, consulted my research assistant Mr. Google, and read that some MBPs were having problems with 6GB drives and High Sierra, and the drives would only boot the computer if they were external. So I got the 750GB drive which was original equipment and put it into the machine, plugged in the sled, installed High Sierra on the 750GB drive, all seemed good. I sent it back to her, and a week later she reported that it was making an odd very soft clicking noise. A few hours later it crashed and came up with the circle-with-slash.

Yesterday I got my hands back on the machine, and it has failed hard. I have an external USB3 hard drive that is my personal mac. (Long story short version: In a new job I was given a 13" macbook pro to use. Carrying around TWO mbps was killing my back, so I cloned my personal disk onto a USB3 drive, which I now use to have a dual-personality laptop. Boot off the internal drive, it's a work laptop, boot off the external drive, it's my personal machine. I bought a hard-shell case and put a strip of velcro on it to hold the external disk on the lid of the computer, so it's a quite workable laptop. For those of you who can't afford a mac with a large enough ssd, this is a better alternative than using duct tape to tape a large cheap spinning disk to your mac that Apple refuses to sell with a large cheap spinning disk.) This boots my work mbp just fine, and it is in fact the computer I am typing this on.

So when I plug my working personal external USB3 drive into my daughter's MBP and option-boot, it comes up and shows only two bootable disks -- the main partition and the recovery partition on the external drive. There is no sign that the internal drive is there at all. But this is more than a broken internal disk, because when I boot off of either of those partitions on the external drive it starts to boot, and the progress bar gets about 2/3 or the way, and then it goes to the gray screen with the slash and stops. This is with a known good disk which boots a different MBP just fine. If I boot the broken MBP into target disk mode and use a firewire cable to connect it to my working mbp, there is no sign that my working MBP sees anything at the other end of the cable. Nothing appears in DiskUtility.

Any ideas as to where to start with troubleshooting this? I'm thinking that I will start by physically pulling the drive completely out and trying to boot off my external drive that way, and also try to boot off DiskWarrior. Is there anywhere else I can look for clues? When I examine the /var/logs/system.log on my external disk where the boot appears to start and the progress bar goes 2/3 of the way across I don't find anything in the file. So clearly that is failing before the point where it writes BOOT_TIME in the system log.

Posted on Mar 5, 2018 9:17 AM

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Answer 1

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,217 points

Mar 5, 2018 9:52 AM in response to cathy fasano

10.11 should not have an issue with a drive that can be formatted to Apple Extended (Journaled). A 6TB drive would not be able to fit an installed image so the issue you found with google is here-say as to who said what those factors were. If the internal drive failed you should replace it with a working drive and the installer should be run on the computer that will be running the OS, not a build from another computer. Additionally if the drive is failing and your boot is getting stuck its likely the drive is hosed. Until the broken drive is replaced with a working drive then the behavior may be expected.

see also

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5931

In the mean time

Shut down then disconnect all external devices

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

repeat 2/3 times

Reset the nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM)

(OPTION+COMMAND+p+r at Startup)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

repeat 2/3 times

Then use safeboot (SHIFT at Startup)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

If the device boots then then reboot normally with devices disconnected.

if that fails check the drive with disk recovery

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

If Disk Utility does not see the drive then select Show All Devices under the view drop down.

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Answer 2

doubr

Level 1

99 points

Mar 5, 2018 10:05 AM in response to cathy fasano

I would do this:

Start up from the built-in Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnosticsutility, depending on your Mac model. Or use Option-D to start up from this utility over the Internet.

Start up from the built-in macOS Recovery system. Or use Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet. macOS Recovery installs different versions of macOS, depending on the key combination you use while starting up.

Command-D helped everytime in my few problems with Macs.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

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Answer 3

cathy fasano Author

Level 2

387 points

Mar 5, 2018 11:21 AM in response to cathy fasano

cathy fasano wrote:

Went a few rounds, consulted my research assistant Mr. Google, and read that some MBPs were having problems with 6GB drives and High Sierra, and the drives would only boot the computer if they were external.

I garbled that point badly... What I am talking about is not a 6GB drive or 6TB drive, but a 6G (6Gb/s) drive, and the problem is described here: OWC DIY Kit: Data Doubler + 500GB Mercury Electra... at MacSales.com

Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 and 2012 MacBook Pros (Model ID 8,1; 8,2; 8,3; 9,1; 9,2)... PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed.

This laptop is a 9,2. When I first got it last summer, I put it into service by taking the 1TB drive out of my 2009 MacBookPro that I was retiring and swapping it with the 750GB drive that was original to the machine. At the time, it was running 10.9, and I upgraded it to 10.11. (That 1TB drive replaced a 500GB drive which replaced the original 320GB drive on the 2009 MBP). According to these notes on OWC's blog, the 2011 & 2012 came with 3Gb/s drives, and have problems with the twice-as-fast 6Gb/s drives. My 1TB replacement drive -- which worked great in my 2009 MBP and this MBP until January, says clearly on the case that it is a 6Gb/s drive. So in January I returned the 750GB original drive to the computer, and now the computer can't find that original drive, either.

Thanks for the tips about how to get DiskUtility to show devices it may be hiding...

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mac boots 2/3 way then prohibitory sign (circle w/ slash)

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