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Macintosh HD Disappeared from Disk Utility

My friend tried to turn on their Mac when the screen just went dark and it wouldn't turn on, so they put it in recovery mode and realised in Disk Utility Macintosh HD (the internal hard drive) is no longer there? Only Apple disk Image Media shows which is extremely strange. Obviously, they can't use their computer right now so I'm using this.


If you guys could help that would be great!

Posted on May 15, 2020 6:15 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 16, 2020 10:14 AM

With recent versions of macOS and Disk Utility Apple hides the physical drive from view. Within Disk Utility click on "View" and select "Show All Devices" to see if the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility. If it does appear, then erase it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496


If the physical drive does not appear, then the SSD has most likely failed. Is this a 2017 or earlier MBAir? If it is and since Apple uses a proprietary PCIe SSD connector your best choice for a third party replacement is an OWC Aura SSD. Third party SSDs require that the laptop has already had macOS 10.13+ installed before using the third party SSD.


You could try an SMC reset followed immediately by a PRAM reset (hold the PRAM reset for at least three chimes).

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 16, 2020 10:14 AM in response to MacUser482

With recent versions of macOS and Disk Utility Apple hides the physical drive from view. Within Disk Utility click on "View" and select "Show All Devices" to see if the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility. If it does appear, then erase it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496


If the physical drive does not appear, then the SSD has most likely failed. Is this a 2017 or earlier MBAir? If it is and since Apple uses a proprietary PCIe SSD connector your best choice for a third party replacement is an OWC Aura SSD. Third party SSDs require that the laptop has already had macOS 10.13+ installed before using the third party SSD.


You could try an SMC reset followed immediately by a PRAM reset (hold the PRAM reset for at least three chimes).

Macintosh HD Disappeared from Disk Utility

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