I'm in the middle of nowhere and my MBP is dead.

[Eug]

I am in Eleuthera, Bahamas right now which doesn't have all the amenities of home, including computer shops on every corner.

My 120 GB Samsung 840 (non-Pro) endowed MacBook Pro was hanging over the last couple days, requiring hard resets and today it just wouldn't boot. I get a flashing folder with a question mark in it. I think the answer is I'm SOL but is there anything else I can try to get this going again? I tried booting into safe mode with no luck.

P.S. Could my loading up of files on the drive caused this? It was working perfectly fine before I left. Before that point it had about 70 GB free. Then I loaded up a bunch of video files for the plane, and then some videos and pix from our trip so far, leaving me with under 20 GB left.

 

[KeithP]

Did you try recovery mode? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

-KeithP

 

[Eug]

Thanks. I did forget to try that but I did just now and I get the same error. (I had tried holding down the option key, which also should give the recovery partition option, but that didnt work either.)

I'm not sure if I left the recovery partition on the SSD actually, but I think I did.

 

[ViRGE]

Could my loading up of files on the drive caused this? It was working perfectly fine before I left. Before that point it had about 70 GB free. Then I loaded up a bunch of video files for the plane, and then some videos and pix from our trip so far, leaving me with under 20 GB left.

No. That's still ~10% free, on top of the standard over-provisioning space. Without further details this sounds more like a spontaneous failure than something you drove it into.

Regardless though, sorry to hear about your MBP.

 

[jonesthewine]

did you bring your Time Machine backup drive with you? If so, and if it is the same size/form factor, try to swap it out for the faulty drive.

 

[manly]

the missing advice is to enjoy your vacation instead of posting here in ATA.

 

[Rottie]

the missing advice is to enjoy your vacation instead of posting here in ATA.

This…. just enjoy your vacation.

 

[midwestfisherman]

the missing advice is to enjoy your vacation instead of posting here in ATA.

This!

 

[Oyeve]

Send me tix to bahamas and I will fix for you.

 

[Eug]

Haha. It is great. We're on Eleuthera which is poorly developed but that means all the beaches are empty. It also means they have nothing here. There is a lot of down time here. We brought our infant daughter, so we can't stay in the sun too long, and we don't go out partying either. No nightlife here anyway.

The point of my bringing the laptop was not only to watch some video, but more importantly, was to edit all my vacation pix and video while I am here.

Without the laptop it means I have no backup for the camera memory cards either. Luckily for our initial batch of photos and videos, I had backed up to another memory card.

 

[Eug]

Back in civilization.

MBP boots perfectly fine off USB. Takes forever though from the old Seagate Momentus 5400.6 platter drive over USB.

The SSD is completely invisible. Disk Utility can't even see it. Even if I had left the recovery partition there, it would have been useless. Luckily I still have the receipt.

I'll try swapping in a drive just to confirm it's not the drive interface that's gone, but I'm pretty sure it's the drive itself.

 

[BuCkDoG]

JUst enjoy your vacation and forget about your computer for now. Worry about it when your back home and then we will help you!

 

[joshhedge]

Back in civilization.

He is home

Hope there is nothing else wrong with the MBP.

 

[ViRGE]

Since you killed an 840 in a Mac, you should shoot Anand an email or something. He might take some interest in that since Samsung is one of Apple's regular OEM suppliers.

 

[vailr]

Maybe you were using a wall outlet that was 50 Hz, instead of 60 Hz?
Could that be a reason?

 

[Eug]

Maybe you were using a wall outlet that was 50 Hz, instead of 60 Hz?
Could that be a reason?

No, it's 60 Hz there too.

Since you killed an 840 in a Mac, you should shoot Anand an email or something. He might take some interest in that since Samsung is one of Apple's regular OEM suppliers.

I will, but don't drives die all the time? I wouldn't think that would be that interesting, unless it was a common problem.

I can see the drive via USB. It is correctly recognized as "SAMSUNG SATA SSD MEDIA", but with only 1.01 GB (1,006,260,736 Bytes).

Well, maybe the problem is more common than one might think. I just googled "samsung 1.01 gb" and the first hit is for a Samsung 840 dying with that same 1.01 GB amount of space left. It was in a MacBook Pro too. Hmmm...

Here is the screen grab from 10.6:

P.S. That machine boots up fine with the same 5400 rpm platter drive from the previous post installed internally, so it's not the drive interface.

---

Update:

Disk Management in Windows 7 (Acer laptop) sees the drive as an uninitiated drive of unknown size.

---

There is also this Apple Support Communities thread that mentions it, for the 840 Pro:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5203271?start=0&tstart=0

Apparently it's a known issue, and MIGHT have been fixed in the May 2013 firmware.

 

[Eug]

Got a response today already from Kristian at AnandTech, who says he's seen a few people with this problem, and as I mentioned in a Storage thread, he thinks it could be caused by the sudden power loss issue previously reported for SSDs in general.

I'm curious now which drives have backup capacitors, and if stock Apple SSDs have them, or if not have any better protection for this through design.

P.S. I fired off an email to Samsung USA yesterday for an RMA. BTW, I'm in Canada, and they have no Canadian RMA site, but I see from other threads that the US support site will handle Canadian RMAs, and should pay for all costs, even for cross-border shipping. Hopefully that's still true.