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A1708/EMC 3164 — Released June 2017, this entry-level MacBook Pro retains its traditional function keys (as opposed to the OLED Touch Bar).

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MacBook Pro 13″ April 2017 Hard Drive not recognised

Hello,

I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, 2 TBT3) purchased in April 2017. Its hard drive is not getting recognised during booting.

Have tried various options to boot the Macbook viz. using

  • DiskUtility. Booting using Option+Command+R etc.
  • Installed MacOS Monterrey - thinking its a good old stable version for this old Mac - on a USB drive and used the USB drive to boot the Macbook. It only shows the External USB Drive but not the Internal HDD.
  • Installed Linux on the USB drive like above but the result was same.
  • Used a thunderbolt cable to connect to a working Macbook. Though, I bought this cable on eBay and not on Apple store but has the thunderbolt symbol and looks genuine. After connecting, the non-working Macbook shows a thunderbolt symbol on the screen but on the working Macbook Finder, no sign of the HDD as an external drive in Location

Hoping its not a hardware failure but possibly a firmware issue. And hoping against hope that I will able to recover the data on it.

When the last time I was successfully able to boot the Macbook, the HDD was very close to being full.

Any guidance and help to resolve this issue is much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

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Here's the location of the custom SSD drive Apple uses in your system as well in Step 12 MacBook Pro 13" Function Keys Late 2016 Teardown.

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You may want to create a bootable external drive so you can boot up under it to do a full wipe and install onto the internal SSD as that's about all that's left if the boot blocks are damaged. Otherwise it's time for a new SSD. Luckily OWC produced a pin compatible drive 13-inch MacBook Pro non-Touch Bar (2016 - 2017)

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Thank you Dan.

I tried with bootable USB drive and the Macbook boots with it but then does not list the internal drive.

Main problem is the data. I really really would like to recover it. I am desperately hoping that the internal drive itself is not damaged and may be its the firmware and may be fixing the firmware would do the trick of recovering data.

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Also, is it possible that because the SSD is completely full, the workflow demand is not met? may be not enough space for cache etc.?

Will a big Apple store do something about it? or any of their authorized repair vendors?

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@devavratt - If you are able to boot up the system via an external drive that’s a good sign the system it’s self is healthy. Only leaving the drive it’s self

So, is the version on macOS the same as what the system is running? As Apple did make a sizable change moving from HFS+ to APFS file systems which won’t allow the older Sierra 10.12.x (or older) to read the newer High Sierra 10.13.x or newer volumes.

At which point the internal SSD it’s self is damaged. You could try getting a good drive recovery App like Drive Genius but you’ll need to run it from a sizable bootable drive as it will need the same amount of space free as what your internal drive is. That is if it can recover the data.

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Unfortunately, I don't recall what the macOS version was installed on the Macbook the last time it booted normally. The 64GB USB drive had Monterrey first and later tried with ubuntu as well and the system booted successfully.

I also have a 1TB external drive. Will try to Drive Genius using it.

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Your MacBook Pro (13", 2016) likely has an SSD hardware failure, as it's not recognized by macOS, Linux, or Target Disk Mode, despite all recovery attempts.

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