Do I have dead SSD - pls help with quick yes/no sanity check - MacBook Air

Qwerelt · May 9, 2021

Hi. First post here looking for quick sanity check. Hope someone will answer.

I was asked to "repair" crashing MacBook Air 2011 (yes 2011). So I cleared it's drive, uninstalled some useless apps friend downloaded over the years, basically same thing I would do with my PC as regular maintenance. After a week my friend told me that it keeps crashing. So I said to myself "let's go nuclear" and I tried to reinstall it's OS what every its called (El capitan).

I created bootable USB with help from a friend from college who also has Mac bcs I could get it done on my windows not even on my manjaro setup (I could be dumb but in any case ... thanks apple). When I plug USB in I can start the installation but after 20ish minutes it stops and asks for installation to be restarted. After restart the intern ssd is no longer showing up and it takes 2-4 reboots to show up again. Tried this whole process like 5 times before I gave up.

Btw before reinstall Mac kept getting these questionmark folders on boot. I found out that it means that Mac cannot find bootable drive.

So I'm asking for sanity check. Is this a SSD failure? I already kinda ruled out the RAM and CPU since from bootable USB it works just fine (I also had few crashes even in recovery menu booted from ssd). So does it sound like SSD failure to you?