MacBook Air hangs on startup progress bar

I can’t speak on the quality of Mechrevo 512GB SSD. Most of the time when I see this series the SSD’s have failed! But its not the SSD’s fault! Its us! Not understanding how to use them properly.

Unlike a HDD which can rewrite a given block over and over again, SSD’s have a limit of number of rewrites. To offset this SSD’s controller move more worn block areas to less worn, but there is a problem here! Lets say you have 95% of the drive full that only leaves us 5% of the drive free for the OS to do Wear-Leveling.

So what happens as your drive is a boot drive it needs to use the SSD for Virtual RAM, Caches & Indexes which are constantly changing! So this small space wears out! So then your drive dies!

So can you salvage your drive(s)? I doubt it. Once they get to this point they are not worth saving. Hopefully you’ve been good on backing up so you can get going again.

Now you need to think though what is your best direction moving forward, Getting another SSD for your system, or look at getting a newer system (new or used). I would recommend getting a OWC SSD and you may want to get a larger drive if you have a lot of stuff that you just can’t move off your system. Also keep in mind the newer systems have their SSD’s soldered to the logic boards, so instead of a simple replacement of the drive you need a full logic board swap out ($$). I do recommend taking out the AppleCare+ contract if you get anything new. I would make the effort to find a used system that still has a removable SSD.

In any case you want to change your habits, Try to leave 1/3 of your drive unused, don’t drop below 1/4.

Here’s a good reference: The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs