Backup when hard drive won't start up

Last night my computer froze when I unattached the external monitor, and has not been able to reboot successfully since then. WHen it froze, I held the power button to turn the computer off, and then turned it on again. The computer acted as if it were starting up, chimed, and the grey apple came up with the wheel underneath, but never left that screen. Today I tried restarting with the Disk Utility, but there weren't any disks that showed up to repair in the disk utility. Now, I have a blinking question mark when I try to start up the computer.
My biggest concern right now is that I have files I need to get off of the computer. I am a wedding phototgrapher, and have about 1,000 pictures I took this weekend that I need. My question is, is there any way to back up the hard drive onto my external hard drive, even though I cannot boot up the computer properly? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!
Thank you.

This doesn't sound good, especially if Disk Utility on the boot DVD can't see it.
Many people recommend the program Disk Warrior (about $100USD, I think) to try to recover the drive.
2 long-shots might be to try Target Disk Mode if you have access to another Mac. This starts your computer as if it were an external Firewire drive, and the other Mac may be able to access the data this way. It may be possible to remove the drive, put it into an external drive case, and access the data from another Mac. It depends on why the drive isn't currently being "seen" by your computer.
Lastly, there are drive recovery services; I understand they are not cheap. I hope you are doing data backups and just got caught between backups on this job.

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My tx2 hard drive won't start!!! HELP!!!!

My laptop is a a Tx2z-1000 is 2 1/2 years old. For the last 9 months or so its had this problem when booting up. My laptop will turn on but the hard drive won't turn on with it. O can hear the fans running and the rest of the computer trying to start up but the hard drive light stays dark. My monitor stays dark or sometimes will light up and stay black. My laptop will eventually shut itself down. I would like to know how to fix this problem because I'm pretty sure it's not good for my laptop. Also, I want to note that my laptop also has an overheating problem which could be contributing to this problem, I'm not sure. Any help would be lovely. Thanks!

Bummer! But when I looked this drive up, it seems like it's a current model, so I'm assuming it's fairly new?
Unfortunately, I'm not really an expert on external drives, but I'm thinking that if the drive is relatively new, and still spins up, then it should eventually be possible to access it again. Maybe if you could clarify the circumstances of the crash a bit, it will be possible to get this sorted out. I'm not entirely clear on just what happened.
First, could you describe the crash--what exactly did the drive do? Was a cable bumped or anything like that? Or did something happen just out of the blue? And does the drive still spin up?
I am assuming that you checked the obvious things like making sure the USB port was working and the cable itself was OK. I gather that Disk Utility can see the drive, but all the options are grayed out so it can't do anything? Is your PC a different computer, not just Windows on your MBP? I gather that the PC can also see the WD drive, but can't mount it? I know nothing of PC's so I don't know any PC troubleshooting.
One thing that might be worth trying is calling Western Digital and talking to their tech support people. I believe that WD has a 3 year warranty on their drives, and I expect they would be most familiar with the drive and what the problem with it might be. For example, it might be that some component in the enclosure went south and is keeping the drive from mounting. It could be that the failure of some component in the enclosure is what caused the original crash. It might even be worth trying the drive in a different enclosure.
Good luck!

New hard drive won't start.

My I mac started to act weird.So I went to the Apple store and they said I have to replace the hard drive. Because it was so expensive at Apple I went to Bast Buy and bought a new 1.5TB hard drive and payed to Geek Squad to replace the hard drive.I picked uo the computer today and when I turned it on it has a file with a question mark blinking on the screen.I tried to turn on with the C button hold down a few times and nothing.I am so disappointed and don;t know what to do.Any one has any idea?

Hey Janos,
How early was your first contact with Apple.
I taught it is pretty easy to install the OS but i guess I was wrong
It is. Just put a new 500GB hard drive in a 15" MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz, installed Snow Leopard and transferred all the client's applications, documents and settings from the old 160 GB hard drive tonight in a few hours.
the Apple guys told me that that was fixed by Apple with no charge to me.
When was this done? Wasn't there a guarantee? Should have been at least 6 months if not a year.
Of course taking it to the Geeks would confuse this situation.
Richard

New larger, copied hard drive won't start up Mac Pro

I have a 250 GB hard drive that is almost full. I copied this drive onto a 1TB drive using disk utility.
(I have a 1TB drive in bay 2 and 1TB in bay 3 set up as a RAID 0). I tried to select this new larger drive as my start-up disk and I get a grey screen with "cannot find the driver for this platform" amongst other comments. I switched the new drive over to bay 1 with the same results. I tried selecting this from system preferences>startup (.....it shows up as a choice to pick) and with holding down option while starting up (shows up there too).

With internal drives, you don't need to worry or manually change format option.
If you click on the raw unformatted drives (WDxxxx etc) it will do everything for you.
Clicking on the drive (not the volume) will show in the status field at the bottom.
Click on WDxxxx and going to the PARTITIONS tab and a second window to change it from the DEFAULT GUID to another format (Master Boot Record for Windows, or older PPC format Apple Partition) use to be but isn't required or necessary.
I wish they would change ERASE for just VOLUMES and use INITIALIZE or FORMAT for when using ERASE to prepare a drive the first time. But no one listens.

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The Time Capsule drive won't boot. I unplugged it, and when I tried to re-boot got a yellow light then it does dead again. Any thoughts?

Unfortunately, this sounds like a power supply failure inside the Time Capsule.
Suggest that you take the device to an Apple store...if you have one in your area....or contact Apple directly to discuss your options.
http://www.apple.com/support/contact/
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External Hard Drive won't start or load

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obvious trouble shooting steps such as maybe trying it on another machine, pc or mac
does it mount or does it not mount, can you see the drive just not write to it??

After installing snow leopard my external hard drive won't show up on screen or backup

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Try going to finder preferences, general, make sure show these items on desktop external disks is clicked. You can also go to sidebar (same pane) and click it there so it will show when you open your HD. Time Machine>system preferences>time machine>turn it off click select disk, make sure the correct disk is selected, the turn TM back on. Hope this helps.

Acrobat Pro 9 for mac won't launch, reloaded from disk when hard drive needed to be replace. It's in applications folder but there is an X on the Acrobat Reinstall icon. What should I do.

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HT1436 I have two hard drives on my G5(2004). How do I get to choose which hard drive is the start up disk when I turn on the computer? Is it the shift key I hold down?

I have two hard drives on my G5(2004). How do I get to choose which hard drive is the start up disk when I turn on the computer? Is it the shift key I hold down?

depending on which model of G5 and OS installed will depend on whether a key command will work
alt at start up may work, if it does not, use the start up disc setting in;
apple menu > system preferences > system > start up disc
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External Hard Drive Won't Mount- Need to recover files

Hello Everyone,
I am hoping that one of you fine mac experts may be able to assist ~
Problem: External Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB external hard drive
won't mount on desktop=ie: no access to my important files.. Please Help!
Details:
External seagate freeagent 500 GB Desktop USB HD ( only 2 months old)
(using for document / file backup-not as a startup disc)
on my Mac G3 350 MZ Blue & White Tower /768 ram/ running OSX 10.1.5 & OS9.2~
~
Problem: Started using the external 500 GB HD 2 months ago -with no problems-until this morning. Tried to double click to open it to access files
and got the "beach ball of death" and needed to restart.
My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
trying different a/c plugs/ different USB ports , ran disk utility..called
seagate -not much help . Seagate said to try the HD on another mac-which I did-
a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
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mount.please use disk utility to check the disk"
~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
restart:" you have inserted a disk containg no volumes that mac osx
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~
( I really need access to these files- and do not want to re-initialize the HD!!)
I ran Disk Utility /first aid "verify & repair , the following info came up:
Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
still comes up when re-running disk utility...Hard drive would still not
mount on desktop-even after restarting .
~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
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1st time-they disconnected me after being on hold 10 minutes-2nd call
I was put on hold for 40 minutes ..Finally spoke to someone ( they are not mac users or mac experts!)and he said I would need to send it to Seagate's Data Recovery-... for a fee of course!
~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
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what version?
Thank you very much!
L

Will zapping the PRAM be of any use in getting the external to mount on the desktop?
Your external Hard drive is already recognized. But it cannot be mounted on the desktop due to its directory damage. You can certainly Zap the PRAM, and it will not hurt anything, but I am skeptical that it will change the situation.
Do you think the Disk Warrior 4.0 cd will even work on my G3 350MHZ running Mac OS 10.1.5?
If you boot from the CD and run it from the CD, absolutely yes. If you attempt to INSTALL it from a download or a CD, probably not.
Have you ever used Disc Warrior and is using it complicated?
I own and use Disk Warrior. You select the drive to be rebuilt, it builds a proposed new directory from the information and file fragments available.
When complete, it will provide a list of problems encountered, tell you what files have been placed in the "Rescued Items" folder, and allow you too look at your drive using the proposed new directory. Your only decision is whether the new directory seems to be an improvement over the old \[in your case, hopelessly corrupted] directory. You then tell it whether to replace the old directory with the proposed new directory, or to abandon its work and leave your Hard Drive unchanged.
Is there a good chance that the ext HD will still have my files on it- or do you think from what I've described that they are gone ?
From what you have described, your files are very likely to still be there. Sometimes in a situation like this, a handful of files cannot be recovered.
My other thought was to take the external HD there and have them try to recover the files.
Make sure you completely understand the costs involved. File recovery using a service like DriveSavers can run into many hundreds of dollars. They are prepared to disassemble your drive in a clean room and replace controller boards and read/write heads to achieve success. Your drive has serious, but not fatal, Directory damage. The Hardware, and most of your files, are likely just fine.

Hard Drive Won't Mount After Repair by Second Computer

I have an G4 Cube with OS 10.2 on the internal hard drive (which is full) and OS 10.4 on an external La CIe hard drive (that I use as my main OS). The external hard drive accumulated serious damage that couldn't be repaired by Disk Utility on the internal drive. My copy of DiskWarrior X would not run under OS 10.2 (10.4 was required) and it wouldn't boot from the CD either So I connected the external hard drive to my second computer, an iMAC running OS 10.5. (Unfortunately, I disconnected the external hard drive when the computer was off instead of ejecting the drive by dragging it to the Wastebasket.) The external drive mounted and DiskWarrior easily constructed a new directory, defragmented the files, and eliminated all of the damage on the external hard drive visible to Disk Utility. However, when I reconnected the repaired external hard drive to the G4 Cube, the drive wouldn't mount. Privileges were repaired on both computers with the external drive connected without helping. Being repaired while connected to a higher OS or perhaps simply being connected to a higher OS seems to have left the LaCie external hard drive in a state which couldn't be mounted by an earlier OS.
Following this hypothesis, it booted the G4 Cube from the OS 10.4 Installation CD while the LaCie external hard drive was connected. When I cancelled installation of OS 10.4, I was asked to choose a start-up disk AND OS 10.4 WAS NOW MAGICALLY AVAILABLE ON THE EXTERNAL DRIVE. Simply starting up from a more advanced OS allowed the hard drive to mount.
Shockingly, when I restarted from OS 10.2, the external hard drive was still mounted. Whatever was preventing the drive from mounting was a TRANSIENT STATE, not backwards incompatability.
POSSIBLE LESSON: If a hard drive won't mount on computer A after being connected to computer B, consider booting computer A using the OS on the installation disk from computer B.

If you need to repair a hard drive with OS X installed on it, you must use that same version of OS X to perform the repair. Using another--in this case, newer--OS can cause quite a bit of trouble, as the directories/permissions may be dealt with differently between the OS's.
Seems you've learned this lesson--and luckily you didn't lose anything!
~Lyssa

What does a file folder with a question mark in it mean when the computer won't start?

What does a file folder with a question mark in it mean when the computer won't start?

There are four general causes of this issue:
1. The computer's PRAM no longer contains a valid startup disk setting when there aren't any problems with the disk itself. This can be checked for by pressing the Option key and seeing if the drive appears.
2. The internal drive's directory structure has become damaged. This requires usage of an alternate bootable system to perform the repair.
3. Critical system files have been deleted. This requires usage of an alternate bootable system to reinstall them.
4. The internal drive has died or become unplugged. This is the most likely case if the computer took a sharp impact or there are unusual sounds coming from the hard drive's location.
(68976)

Lacie Hard Drives won't mount

My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running Tiger. They were fine on my G4 iMac running Panther. I've tried using the Lacie Update Tool but the drives aren't recognised. I've tested the firewire cables on another drive that works and they're fine, so it's not cables.
Both drives power up okay and whir into action, but just aren't talking to the G5.
Lacie d2 HD 80GB FW DV
Lacie 40GB (no model number, "DESIGN BY F.A.PORSCHE", no model number).
Any ideas much appreciated.

Reply
This happened to me with a LaCie external drive as well.
The problem is that LaCie formats the drives as PC-based
and not Mac Extended, so unless you reformatted the
drives to Mac when you started using them, your access
to them on any Mac may result in a failure to mount.
Once that happens retrieval of data is made more difficult
because of this formatting incongruity.
There is no way you can get the data once your G4 quits
mounting them. If you can get the data off of the drives,
back it up and then reformat the drives using Mac's Disc
Utility. Then you can reload the data and I suspect all of
your Macs will then mount the drives via Firewire.
Good Luck!
My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running
Tiger. They were fine on my G4 iMac running Panther.
I've tried using the Lacie Update Tool but the drives
aren't recognized. I've tested the firewire cables on
another drive that works and they're fine, so it's
not cables.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

MAC PRO HARD DRIVE won't boot

HARD DRIVE won't boot past APPLE ICON, grey spinning wheel on grey screen. Tried using install discs, no go past the icon.
Replace small battery inside? replace chips? Logic board replace as last resort. Can't take it away from work at this point to an apple tech.
Had just installed updates to snow leopard and was successful...but went to restart it...and this crap happened.
Thanks for any help.
MT1111
< Edited by Host >

I'll try that tomorrow. Thinking it could also be:
1) The PRAMM battery. found info on that they can wear out close to 5 years. This MAC PRO is close to that now. And I use a lot of power on it.
2) MAC PRO is plugged into a SURGE PROTECTOR, instead of right into the wall outlet.
3) Been doing a lot of FORCE QUITS and HARD BOOT -- unplugging it directly when it wouldn't shut down soon enough -- lately this past year.
I just assumed that this MAC PRO with the XEON QUAD CORE etc., was a heavy duty enough NLE,
that i wouldn't have these problems. It's not fully loaded with all the chips it can carry...and I don't have near enough external terabyte hard drives for storing video and audio files to edit. I've been storing wayyy too much
on the internal hard dives and just have to stop that.
I noticed these past few days that much of the LETTERING for hard drive icons and folders' titles
were starting to look in OVERLAPPING of the lettering. That was my first hint that something was up.

Time Capsule can't backup external hard drives connected to it. Got that.

Hello Apple Support Communities! This is my first post. Hope this finds you all well My first year as an Apple user. I bought a 2-Tb TC and am running my first backup to my MacBook as I write this.
Problem statement: TC can't backup external hard drives connected directly to it, but the ones connected to the Macs that are connected wirelessly to it. Duly noted. However, the Spotlight will reindex the hard drives connected to the Mac and that will take hours; the whole backup will take days. Thus, excluding the hard drives at "System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab" will probably help reduce the time of backup, or just ejecting them will do too. That itself has not proven effective coz it's still taking forever (50Gb in 2 days, still going).
Questions:
1) Do I wait until my first backup to my MacBook's internal hard drive is done before I connect my hard drives to my MacBook and attempt another backup? If yes, how do I go about the excessive time Spotlight reindexing takes if I intend to backup my hard drives connected to my MacBook?
2) Is there any other way of speeding up the first-time backup?
*Note: All versions of OS and firmwares are up-to-date. TC is connected to an external wireless router. TC is intended to be used as backup device and / or file server only.
P/S: Apologee if this has already been discussed before, thus, a link to previous discussion thread would highly be appreciated)
- Shook Hashem, Malaysia.

How do I backup the externel hard drives connected to my MB. I was under the impression that that has already been done, because I've read it somewhere in a discussion that said it's done automatically unless I exclude it from a backup, which I didn't. So it's supposed to backup the external hard drivestoo because I had them connected to my MB the entire time during the backups.
By default an external drive is excluded.. the list is odd.. if I plug a drive into the mac.. it immediately is listed as excluded.
This is not the list of included.. this is the list of excluded.. remove it from the excluded list to include it.
It is kind of reverse polish notation in backups.
If I want to enter the Time Machine, should I enter it with the TM turned on or off?
Not sure what the question means. If you use the star wars display and want to recover files then use TM off.. but read up pondini.. how to do restore etc.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
15A in particular on the how to use TM.
When do I uplug the ethernet and use the wireless connection instead?
Once you have finished the main backup you can go back to wireless. The incremental backups are mostly very small.

Backup when hard drive won't start up

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