Macintosh HD is not visible on boot but is can be detected using Recovery on an installation USB I've transplanted the SSD drive between two identical MacBook Air's - both are 13" Early 2015 models - as one of them had died. Upon moving the SSD from the dead MacBook to the other one, booting the computer presents me with the folder and the question mark icon.

Holding down ⌥ Option on boot only gives me the option for network recovery. I created an installation USB using the same OS that is on the SSD (High Sierra) and booted into it. Here I can see the disk in disk utility and everything appears normal. I ran first aid on the disk and no major errors were found, only a few permission errors were fixed.

When selecting the Startup Disk option, I have the option to choose the SSD however upon reboot it cannot be seen again, only the installation USB is detected. (See below pictures)




How can I get the "new" MacBook Air to boot from the "old" SSD?

If there is anything I missed, please let me know!
So as it turns out, there was nothing wrong with the SSD or any boot parameters.

The SSD that used to be in the MacBook was running Yosemite, however the one that I was putting into it was running High Sierra.

I solved the issue by putting the original SSD back in, upgrading that to High Sierra then putting the other SSD back in, which was detected immediately and booted instantly.



My best guess is that there may be some form of OS protection built into the system that detects when an older/newer OS is present and acts accordingly. It would be nice to know exactly what's going on there, but for now this has solved my problem.