I'm trying to determine the cause of, and a solution to the Black Screen of Death on my 6,1 Macbook Air (Early 2014, 11").
GOALS:
- figure out what is broken and replace it
- if data recovery is possible, recover data, but not a priority
SYMPTOMS BEFORE FAILURE:
- The computer was complaining of limited free space before it BSOD'ed one day.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE AT STARTUP NOW:
- when I turn it on, I hear startup chimes, but get "black screen of death"
- apple logo at back lights up at startup indicating screen is active
- i think screen is working, because I got "need to charge" logo to appear
DIAGNOSTICS I HAVE TRIED:
- Booting while holding cmd+R; booting while holding option. -> Neither does anything, still displays BlackSOD
- remove SSD, place in external enclosure, try to view files from secondary computer -> SSD is not recognized by operating system (therefore cannot mount it). This leads me to conclude ssd is probably broken/corrupted somehow
- tried booting from external flashdrive with macOS sierra bootable (aka have flashdrive in computer, press power+option to try booting) -> Cannot get to screen where I can choose volume to boot from, just get to same BlackSOD
MY CONCLUSIONS THUS FAR:
- If it won't boot from flashdrive, is something deeper than ssd broken? I thought bios would let it boot from flashdrive...
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UPDATES:
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I pressed option+cmd+shift+R + power and waited about an hour, and the internet recovery globe appeared on the screen! ( I then selected my wifi network, and reached the 4-option recovery patition screen, e.g. restore from time machine, reinstall osX, get help online, or disk utility)
I can see the recovery partition and my bootable macOS install flashdrive in Disk Utility, but not the main SSD partition
Does anyone have any ideas about how to repair the main partition if I can't see it in disk utility?
