Can't find hard drive at startup and disk utility!

Please help! When i try to start up my mac, i get a clicking noise...once it does this it goes to the flashing folder icon with the question mark. I have done all the reboots, holding down shift, the alt and command with p and r. I have inserted the startup disk and when i try to start up, it cant find a location and the only options in the disk utility is the cd!
This has happened twice before and its managed to come back to life with everything intact. This time i have tried everything and nothing is happening.
I have got as far as being able to get into the installer menu with the CD, but with no hard drive being found i am stuck!
Hope someone can help me, i love my mac!
thank you!

But, since it's an iSight, you'd do well to take it in for the drive replacement, it's not an easy task on iSights. But here's a [link|http://www.jimwarholic.com/2008/07/how-to-repair-apple-imac-g5.php] to some instructions.
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Can Time Capsule hard drive be accessed with Disk Utility? I'm having issues...

How does one mount , inspect , verify , and possibly repair a Time Capsule hard drive with Disk Utility ?
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I'm sorry , LaP , but " Time Capsule become too full " is not the cause of my problem .
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The TC informed me it needed 235 Gb of space but only had 34 Gb available. That 235 Gb needed is totally in error. My problem more resembles corrupt hard disk directories . Maybe Permissions ? which is why I asked about using Disk Utility.
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If the drive is listed in Disk Utility do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Complete the OS X installation.
When you are installing Windows via Boot Camp the Windows installer needs to format the Boot Camp partition. Be extra careful to select only the partition you created with Boot Camp. The XP installer should label the partition "C:", and you should recognize it by its stated size.

Can't find hard drive!!

A while ago my laptop (macbook pro 2011, 13") stared to lag, so i turned it off using the power button. When i truned it back on all that appeared was a white screen and a folder with a question mark on it. After doing what i call research i found that it was my hard drive that was not working. So.... i bought a new one (scorpio black 750gb 7200rpm) and put it in. when i trun it on, same thing happens. So then my dad takes it in and the say that they will fix it for $230, take my old hard drive out (which was my new on because it was sill in there) and put in a new on that was only 500gb and 5400rpm. They also told my dad that why it did not work with the new drive was because it has to have so special software already on it so that it could find the disk and use it to boot. So basicly i could not use any hard drive that was not installed by apple. Earlyer on when i was doing my so called research, i found may people that had said that they put in this hard drive (scorpio black 750gb 7200rpm) and it worked fine for them. So i thought that there must be a way to fix it. So i borrowed an external hard drive, installed osx and booted my lap top off of it. It worked fine! but i did not want to carry around an external hard drive with me every where so i thought that i could now open disk utility and find the new drive that was in the computer, NOPE! was not there. so i took the hard drive out and put it in the casing for the external hard drive, pluged that into my other computer, found it there in disk utility and made it a bootable drive with GUID. Opened up my laptop put it back in and....... still did not work! took the hard drive that i had used in the external hard drive to boot up before, i put it in my laptop and same thing happened. So long story short my computer can not find my hard drive and it is not the hard drive that it broken! SOME ONE PLEASE HELP!!!

After a while of procrastenating I want into a local (unautherized) apple teck guy. We tried booting it off a disk this time with having the computer start up then do 3 slow beeps repedidly. Thinking it was the ram we replaced that and still did not work. Tried a bunck of other stuff like safe book etc and did not work. Finaly i decided to order the early 2011 SATA 3 cable wich i got here http://www.ifixit.com/MacBook-Parts/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-Unibody-Model-A1278-Earl y-2011-Late-2011-Hard-Drive-Cable/IF163-026. Finaly after all that my computer now works. It is running off of the new hard drive and is much faster now glad I finally fixed it! Thanks for the help!!

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Iomega external hard drive not appearing in Disk Utility

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Create a data recovery, undelete boot drive
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Mac's with OS X 10.6.4 or earlier can't read exFAT, so if it was formatted with that (or OS X Extended J) ) and the other Mac is running 10.6.4 or earlier or is even older, it can't read the exFAT format or HFS+ format, perhaps only HFS.
You'll have to settlle for FAT32 (MSDOS) with a MBR Partiton map to be fully compatible with all computers, but you can't have over 4GB sized files with FAT32.
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Cannot get brand new hard drive to work. Disk utility states operation not supported when I try to erase or partition?

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You probably have too new a hard disk. Contact the hard disk manufacturer and ask what jumper setting is needed to drop to 1.5 Gbps SATA speed.
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Note formatting is key as well:
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IMac 2007 freezes after sleep and then can't find hard drive after reboot.

I'm having a problem where my mid 2007 iMac (2.4 GHz core duo w/ 6 Gb of ram) freezes after sleep. It seems to happen only when an application was open at the time of sleep. The freeze manifests as the cursor turns into the spinning wheel, but the computer can't do anything. Command-option escape doesn't work. Most of the time after I reboot, the iMac can't find the hard drive. If I leave the computer off for 15 minutes then it will reboot ok. Is my hard drive going out or do I have another problem? I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.5. I've repaired permissions, verified the hard drive and reset the NVram but I still have the problem.

Here is the console right before the time of the crash.
11/10/13 10:02:13.069 AM SyncServer[18050]: [0x7fe02140bde0] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.Mail sync alert tool path /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/MailSync does not exist.
11/10/13 10:02:13.912 AM com.apple.time[177]: Interval maximum value is 946100000 seconds (specified value: 9223372036854775807).
11/10/13 10:02:16.947 AM iCalExternalSync[18051]: [ICalExternalSync ]Encountered exception: *** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 207 beyond bounds [0 .. 205] withStack: (
          0   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010186ca60 iCalExternalSync + 125536
          1   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010185bac9 iCalExternalSync + 56009
          2   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010186b694 iCalExternalSync + 120468
          3   libdyld.dylib                       0x00007fff8abf17e1 start + 0
          4   ???                                 0x0000000000000005 0x0 + 5
11/10/13 10:02:16.948 AM iCalExternalSync[18051]: [ICalExternalSync ]NSException name:NSRangeException reason:*** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 207 beyond bounds [0 .. 205]
11/10/13 10:02:16.959 AM SyncServer[18050]: [0x7fe02140bde0] |Server|Warning| lost connection 0x7fe021496b30 to com.apple.iCal
11/10/13 10:02:31.511 AM com.apple.time[177]: Interval maximum value is 946100000 seconds (specified value: 9223372036854775807).
11/10/13 10:02:32.786 AM iCalExternalSync[18053]: [ICalExternalSync ]Encountered exception: *** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 207 beyond bounds [0 .. 205] withStack: (
          0   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010618ba60 iCalExternalSync + 125536
          1   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010617aac9 iCalExternalSync + 56009
          2   iCalExternalSync                    0x000000010618a694 iCalExternalSync + 120468
          3   libdyld.dylib                       0x00007fff8abf17e1 start + 0
          4   ???                                 0x0000000000000007 0x0 + 7
11/10/13 10:02:32.787 AM iCalExternalSync[18053]: [ICalExternalSync ]NSException name:NSRangeException reason:*** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 207 beyond bounds [0 .. 205]
11/10/13 10:02:32.797 AM SyncServer[18050]: [0x7fe02140bde0] |Server|Warning| lost connection 0x7fe021434b60 to com.apple.iCal
11/10/13 10:04:21.138 AM com.apple.usbmuxd[29]: _SendAttachNotification Device f0:d1:a9:1b:e1:0b@fe80::f2d1:a9ff:fe1b:e10b._apple-mobdev2._tcp.local. has already appeared on interface 5. Suppressing duplicate attach notification.
11/10/13 10:04:46.805 AM iTunes[15640]: Entered:_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:48
11/10/13 10:04:46.805 AM iTunes[15640]: Entered:__thr_AMMuxedDeviceDisconnected, mux-device:48
11/10/13 10:04:46.806 AM iTunes[15640]: tid:16dcb - Mux ID not found in mapping dictionary
11/10/13 10:04:46.806 AM iTunes[15640]: tid:16dcb - Can't handle disconnect with invalid ecid
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11/10/13 10:11:17.664 AM com.apple.time[11]: Requesting maintenance wake [Backup Interval]: <date: 0x7f8ac9627660> Sun Nov 10 10:47:04 2013 PST (approx)

HELP! Macbook suddenly can't find hard drive

Hi all. I think I may be looking at a gone hard drive but I wanted to check here in case there's a less bad solution. Our white macbook (running the latest leopard) froze this morning, and when I restarted, it couldn't find a system folder (blinking "?" icon.) I restarted from my Leopard DVD hoping to reinstall but it turns out it's an upgrade DVD, and since it couldn't see a 10.4 it wouldn't run.
So I restarted with a 10.4 CD and it runs -- but doesn't see a drive to install the OS on. I also tried starting up over the network, but the other mac in the house can't find the macbook on the LAN, even though I could get the macbook to join the network (using the leopard startup dvd.)
Disk utility (using both leopard and tiger OS disks) could not see a hard drive.
So is that all she wrote -- gonzo hard drive -- or is there another possibility?
Thanks.

Hey man, recently just happened to me after updating OSX. I had left the MacBook in hibernate, when I can to the office the next day I opened it up and went to launch FireFox - started to launch then everything froze, system wouldn't respond so I shut the whole thing down pulled out the battery etc. Turned it back on and got the flashing folder icon with the question mark. Hard drive was indeed dead. When I took the drive out to look at it you could hear something rattling around inside.
Moral of the story is, its the only thing that's ever gone wrong with my MacBook but it was a big pain, I've never had a drive fail on me before. I went out and bought a WD Scorpio Black 320GB and its really fast, noticeable improvement. Been working great ever since.
I went through all of the same steps as you did though - in the end the drive was dead
Good luck man!

Macbook pro can't find hard drive!

I'm using a 13" Macbook Pro on Lion OS and yesterday I was working on my thesis and I opened up Pinterest for what must have been thirty seconds before I was met with the pinwheel of death. I waited five minutes, and then I decided todo a manual shutdown. and then when I started it up again all I could see was a flashing folder with a question mark on it.
So i restarted it holding the option key, and my only option is the internet recovery. So I went there, and when I attempted to reinstall the Mac OS, I realized that it couldn't find my hard drive as a destination to download it. So I went to my local apple reseller store here in Norway and ofcourse they had no idea what to do withnit because they've never seen the problem before - they offered to help, but They would need to take it in for 2-4 weeks! and I don't think my exam period can handle that.
So i left it alone for a night. In the morning I tried to restart it, but the same thing Happened. what should I do? Is my poor hard drive dead?

It could be that your hard drive IS dead or it could be something as simple as a faulty SATA cable - hard to diagnose from a distance (and I'm quite surprised that an AASP would be baffled by something that MAY be something simple).
Since you didn't find the Lion Recovery partition when you booted up whilst holding the option key, I'm assuming that the drive is dead or that the SATA cable is bad.
Assume the drive is dead - the best thing that you can do is get a replacement hard drive, an external enclosure for your 'dead' drive and then use something like DiskWarrior to try to recover your most important data (which would be your thesis - and I'm assuming that you don't have a backup scheme in place?).
I'm not sure that you should take your machine back to the same reseller - are they an Apple Authorized Service Provider? Go here -> https://locate.apple.com/no/no/ - and see if there's an AASP near you. They should be able to actually diagnose the real problem, before you go through the agony of replacing your hard drive.
Good luck,
Clinton

24" iMac 2008 3.06ghz - Freezes/Beach balls/Sometimes can't find hard drive

Hi All,
Recently i've been having alot of issues with my 24" iMac. After reading countless discussions, none seem to have had the same answer as everything i have tried just doesn't seem to have worked?! Hoping you can give me a few more ideas and help narrow it down a little. (Fingers crossed solve it!)
General Issue:
The computer has mood swings - good days and bad days. On a good day it boots in a couple of minutes and on a bad day. I get the flashing folder unable to find a hard drive. Since my last clean install ... i haven't had that folder touch wood! But i do still however get the big bug.
After 10-15 minutes of using the iMac at normal speed whizzing around just doing general things on safari...thats it! its had enough.
Out comes the beach ball and the whole thing freezes apart from the cursor.
Launching a program will make it freeze, currently i launched the app store and its been frozen for a good 20 minutes with nothing.
Cant bring up force quit, either i wait sometimes 10 minutes sometimes an hour...or it has to be powered down by force.
Current state:
Clean install, no additional software, 500gb harddrive, clean as a whistle!
Things i've tried:
Smart status, verify disk, repair disk, check disk etc..all the usual disk utility bits.
fsck check.
memtest.
clean install of mountain lion.
-probably a few other bits i cannot think of.
System specification:
-I cannot paste the actual details from about this mac as its..you guessed it! FROZEN!
From the serial number this is its spec: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP485?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
10.8.3 OS
500gb HDD
3.06ghz Processor
4gb RAM
Let me know any other details you might need. Hope i've posted correctly as this is my first time on the forum. Fingers crossed someone has an answer or had a similar issue and resolution. Thanks, have a great day!
Jack

does the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive return an OK verification?
Does anything show up during hard drive tests that indicate that your iMac's hard drive maybe failing?.
How many applications do you run simultaneously in the background while working in another application?
Do you run any antivirus software on your Mac? Antivirus software can slow down the normal operation of OS X.
Do you run any "crapware" like Mackeeper or any other type of so called hard drive "cleaning" apps?
Also, have you considered installing more RAM?
Your iMac model can take a max. RAM amount of 6 GBs
OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 use more and more CPU, GPU, RAM and hard drive resources.
OS X 10.8, alone (no other third party applications running) can use between 2-4 GBs of RAM, easily.
Correct and reliable Mac RAM can be purchased from online Mac RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (macsales.com).
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/6400DDR2S6GP/

Macbook can't find hard drive

I was happily watching some videos on youtube when suddenly the screen froze and the fan was slowly getting ready for take off, getting louder and louder. After a few minutes of trying to manually close the application I decided to shut it off the easy way before the mac burned a hole in my table.
Anyway, long story short it never recovered and couldn't find my harddrive anymore. The little file icon with a question mark appeared upon startup. It couldn't find the harddrive either when i tried to re-install OSX through a WiFi connection. Since I had a deadline comming up the next morning (talk about timing) I was desperate to recover my HD, so I took out the drive and placed it in a friends mac. Luckily the drive was still working and i managed to recover my files. So I'm pretty sure it's not the drive itself that is broken.
Now my question is; is it safe to assume it's the cable connecting the drive to the mac that's faulty? and if so is it easy to repair this myself (for example if it's simply unplugged for some reason)?

Thanks for the reply Matt.
I actually used my own hard drive to boot OSX on his mac. I replaced his drive with mine, on his macbook. Everything worked perfectly fine that way so I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue. Thing is, when the hard drive was in my own macbook i couldn't even reinstall OS X or repair anything as the macbook simply could not find a drive to repair or install OS X on.
All the files that I needed are recovered so I won't have to worry about that anymore. I learned the hard way and won't make the mistake of not having a backup again.
Since I'm pretty sure it's a hardware problem, I made an appointment with the nearest mac store for repairs.
The main reason I made this topic is to see if it might be a simple issue like a disconnected SATA cable that I could replug myself, since I'm a bit worried that Apple repairs might take a while and I desperately need a working mac within the next week.

Can't find hard drive at startup and disk utility!

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