Morning all, long, LONG term listener to the macgeek gab podcast here! Haven’t logge in for ages and couldn’t find my old details so set up a new account.  Anyway, my sons MacBook Air had an update to Catalina last night. This morning I checked it and it would not turn on. Now I’ve had this before, I tried a PRAM reset, all the usual stuff. In the end I had to take the back off, disconnect the battery, reconnect and voila, the system starts.

so, I did the same again as usual today, but this time, it can’t see the hard drive once it boots ( flashing question mark folder icon). I did an internet recovery, went into disk utility and no hard drive showing ( it’s a 128gb SSD).

So, power down, disconnect battery, remove SSD, use compressed air to clean contacts and connector, re seat, power up, still no hard drive.

the machine is about 5 years old, is it kaput? I am annoyed that it was fine yesterday and can not understand how a software update can kill the hardware!

Any ideas guys? Pulling my hair out! I have a full backup but I would prefer to save the machine if possible! Thanks!