Resolved Disabled SIP to grey scr of death to failed disk

[tomzorz]

About a few hours ago I disabled the SIP (System Integrity Protection) of my mid-2009 MBP (just to fix some ruby and openSSL stuff under the hood which is not important to this matter). This disabling of the SIP ought to be no big deal, but as soon as I did it and got back out of recovery mode to start up my mbp, the launching of the system after I logged in went very laggy. A minute or two of this lagging and I got the grey screen of death.
So I pressed the power button again but about halfway the launch bar my mbp just blacked out and powered off. It does this every time now when I press the power button - status bar halfway, black screen and power off. In safe mode same thing, only the status bar goes a little further.

In recovery mode it says my disk is unmounted, and repairing it gives the following error (I ran it in disk utility, single-user mode, and in terminal in recovery mode):

It's a 6 months old SSD drive...

Does anyone know how I could fix it? Or am I down to an erase and clean install..?

 

[haralds]

Do you have another Mac that could mount this disk in target mode?
I suspect, you need to wipe and restore.

 

[simonsi]

I'd suspect the drive cable given the age of the SSD (although early life failure is a thing). By definition almost, hardware failures occur when you are doing <something> so I wouldn't yet put much store by the disabling of SIP as a factor IMHO...

 

[tomzorz]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't have another mac to use it in target mode, and even simply erasing doesn't work. Selecting the parent drive and clicking Erase with the settings you specify gives me the error 'Couldn't unmount disk' and fails.

I also booted from the original install disk and opened up Disk Utility there, but no more luck with the First Aid or Erase tab... First Aid gives me this:
"The volume Toms Mac SSD could not be repaired after 3 attempts.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
And the erase attempt comes up straight away with the error "Operation timed out."

The Disk Utility from bootable disk does give me the S.M.A.R.T. Status of the disk, and it says 'Verified'. That means the hardware should be good, right?

What else can I do to erase or fix the disk?

 

[maflynn]

What else can I do to erase or fix the disk?

What @simonsi posted, it may be the drive cable.

I think its coincidental that you disabled SIP and now it's dead. I mean you can re-enable SIP from the install disk correct? If it was SIP related, re-enabling would fix your issues, SIP and drive failure is unrelated. Its possible the drive is dead, but I think it may be the cable.

 

[chrfr]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't have another mac to use it in target mode, and even simply erasing doesn't work. Selecting the parent drive and clicking Erase with the settings you specify gives me the error 'Couldn't unmount disk' and fails.

You won't be able to erase the disk fully from the recovery partition because the recovery partition is on the disk you're trying to erase. The 2009 doesn't support Internet Recovery so you would need some other way to boot in order to erase it.
The built in disk repair tools are not especially robust and will often fail for reasons that have nothing to do with hardware. Do you have access to something like DiskWarrior from Alsoft?

 

[tomzorz]

You won't be able to erase the disk fully from the recovery partition because the recovery partition is on the disk you're trying to erase. The 2009 doesn't support Internet Recovery so you would need some other way to boot in order to erase it.
The built in disk repair tools are not especially robust and will often fail for reasons that have nothing to do with hardware. Do you have access to something like DiskWarrior from Alsoft?

I also tried First Aid from the original bootable Install dvd, but same fail there. No DiskWarrior no... but it may be the drive cable anyway... ->

What @simonsi posted, it may be the drive cable.

I didn't want to believe at first, but it seems very likely now that it is down to the drive cable indeed... Since I just unplugged my ssd and placed it in an external usb enclosure, and successfully booted and launched my system from that enclosure as we speak.
Also ran a First Aid check from that boot and now there seems to be no issue whatsoever with the drive...

I will recheck soon by putting the ssd back in the unibody once more, but I'll better start ordering a new drive cable I guess.

 

[maflynn]

The older macs do have a history of the cable failing and you could, unbeknownst to you weakend it by replacing the drive 6 months ago.

 

[tomzorz]

I will recheck soon by putting the ssd back in the unibody once more, but I'll better start ordering a new drive cable I guess.

So I placed the ssd back in the unibody once more and tried to start it up, but no luck.
Instead of the loading bar going half way and then powering off, it now went till the end but got stuck there while the fans went crazy - each time I tried. Slightly different symptoms, but still no way passing the boot so I guess same problem in the end.
I also ran First Aid again from original install dvd and again, it failed.

I placed the ssd back in the usb enclosure now and successfully booted from it again.
So I ordered a new drive cable couple of minutes ago... I will post the results here as soon as it has arrived and tested.

Thanks all! And creds to @simonsi for pointing in the (probably/hopefully) right direction straight away.

 

[simonsi]

Fingers crossed as its a fairly easy fix for not too many $$$.

When mine failed about 3 yrs ago the CRC errors visible under DriveDX was the final indicator, it was incrementing like mad, the drive went into read-only mode. Once replaced all good and no more CRC errors. When you get the system working it worth taking a look at the Smart data to see what was going on.

 

[tomzorz]

As often is the case with these things – I was too ecstatic as soon as the new drive cable fixed my issue and put my MBP back to life, that I forgot posting here that the fix worked.
So it did, so thanks again for all the help guys!

@simonsi I'm not sure how to check the de Smart data on my dead drive, but that's probably also not that interesting anymore...