2015 MBA: Internal SSD Is Locked and Can't erase/update

[steve20016]

Have Early 2015 11" MacBook Air, with original 128GB SSD installed. Running High Sierra 10.13.6

Filevault has never been on.

Computer crashed, and upon reboot, progress bar gets about 3/4 of the way through, and then screen just goes dark.

Am able to boot into all the various recovery modes, but in none of them is DiskUtility able to reformat the internal SSD drive, as it is showing as not writable. I created a boot USB with High Sierra 10.13.6, and can see the internal SSD drive and copy files off the drive, but it is not writable.

Any idea what's going on, and what I can try?

Here are some various diagnostics:

diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         121.3 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         121.0 GB   disk0s2



/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +121.0 GB   disk1

                                 Physical Store disk0s2

   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            90.7 GB    disk1s1

   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 37.9 MB    disk1s2

   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                515.1 MB   disk1s3

   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk1s4



/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *61.5 GB    disk2

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                60.7 GB    disk2s2

   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3

And some more info:

steves-MacBook-Air:~ sjs$ diskutil info disk1s1

   Device Identifier:        disk1s1

   Device Node:              /dev/disk1s1

   Whole:                    No

   Part of Whole:            disk1



   Volume Name:              Macintosh HD

   Mounted:                  Yes

   Mount Point:              /Volumes/Macintosh HD



   Partition Type:           41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

   File System Personality:  APFS

   Type (Bundle):            apfs

   Name (User Visible):      APFS

   Owners:                   Disabled



   OS Can Be Installed:      No

   Booter Disk:              disk1s2

   Recovery Disk:            disk1s3

   Media Type:               Generic

   Protocol:                 PCI-Express

   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Volume UUID:              0FF5AACE-E455-36E2-9940-5C536F1E3D7E

   Disk / Partition UUID:    0FF5AACE-E455-36E2-9940-5C536F1E3D7E



   Disk Size:                121.0 GB (121018208256 Bytes) (exactly 236363688 512-Byte-Units)

   Device Block Size:        4096 Bytes



   Volume Total Space:       121.0 GB (121018208256 Bytes) (exactly 236363688 512-Byte-Units)

   Volume Used Space:        100.0 GB (100016209920 Bytes) (exactly 195344160 512-Byte-Units) (82.6%)

   Volume Free Space:        21.0 GB (21001998336 Bytes) (exactly 41019528 512-Byte-Units) (17.4%)

   Allocation Block Size:    4096 Bytes



   Read-Only Media:          Yes

   Read-Only Volume:         Yes



   Device Location:          Internal

   Removable Media:          Fixed



   Solid State:              Yes

   Hardware AES Support:     No

Attempt to erase:

steves-MacBook-Air:~ sjs$ diskutil eraseVolume APFS Untitled disk1s1

Started erase

Preparing to erase APFS Volume content

Checking mount state

Erasing APFS Volume disk1s1 by deleting and re-adding

Deleting APFS Volume from its APFS Container

Unmounting disk1s1

Deleting Volume

[ \ 0%..10%..20%..30%..40%..50%.......................... ]

diskutil: diskmanagementd (Disk Management daemon) failure

And attempt to verify:

steves-MacBook-Air:~ sjs$ diskutil verifyVolume disk1

Started file system verification on disk1

Verifying storage system

Performing fsck_apfs -n -x /dev/disk0s2

Checking volume

Checking the container superblock

Checking the EFI jumpstart record

Checking the space manager

Checking the object map

Checking the APFS volume superblock

Checking the object map

Checking the fsroot tree

error: (oid 0xa007) apfs_root: btn: dev_read(500805, 1): Device error

fsroot tree is invalid

The volume /dev/disk0s2 could not be verified completely

Storage system check exit code is 0

Finished file system verification on disk1

 

[CalvinNismo]

Try Parted Magic, you’ll have to pay for it (cheap) and create the bootable Linux USB on another computer. It’s a handy utility to have lying around though. It will tell the SSD to empty all of its blocks with its ‘secure erase’ function.