Folder with question mark keeps flashing on startup

I was using the internet on my macbook pro 13 ich late 2011 model this morning while a youtube video was being streamed and it suddenly froze. the cursor was moving though and i thought this must be an issue with the amount of heat the mac was accumalating and i switched it off by pressing the power button.
When I restarted it, the screen was white, it chimed and after a few seconds, a folder with a question mark in it kept flashing.
i Looked up some forums whuch suggested i press option on startup and it only took me to internet recovery mode whilst not detecting a hardrive. i pressed command+R and it took me to internet recovery mode.
finally i called a mac engineer over and asked him to take a look at my computer. he first opened it and checked the connections. he then booted it up, smae problem. after that, he inserted a pen drive with OSX mavericks on it and booted it while option was pressed and this time, disk utility came up, but in disk utility, there was no sign of my hard disk at all and only the USB storage was displayed.he then went on to tell me that my hard disk has crashed and i should get a replacement. But i dont understand why the mac didnt indicate i had any problems with my harddisk at all because i know macintosh to be very meticulous. i've tried everything except for an internet recovery and dont know what to do. the startup manager is also not displaying
please help me as i do not want to want to change my harddrive without my system telling me theres something wrong with it and because i think this guy is trying to fleece me. Please Help. is there anything I can do to fix the problem?

The hard drive or cable is bad.
The system does tell you....well sort of. There's a monitoring system named "SMART" or self moniitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) but it's not really all that good at predicting as the following will tell you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
It's supposed to monitor your system, but a Google study some years ago on a large number of drives found it's ability to predict wasn't that great.
If it's of any help, the following link provides a list of all drive related utiltiies (or most of them, anyway) for Macs, ranging from the free (like Disk Utility) to open source, to some of the most expensive. It's a good link. Some of the sites associated with them have self help and info pages.
Here's the link:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1544280
My advice would be 1) KEEP GOOD BACKUPS and 2) Use a tool to periodically scan the drive for errors or developing errors.

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Hello there , i have a problem with my mac pro.
The problem is that every time i start up the mac it can't find my startup disk and then gives me the Folder with ? mark in it.
Some times just do a start up for the second time helps but most of the time i will have to hold the alt button pressed, and then some times i get to choose my start up disk from there but most of the time it then starts up from my boot disk.
When it has started up and i then go to the pref's , select my boot disk and lock the prefs so basicly it would not be able to chance that disk without my password, i find the next time i start it up, with all the same problems, the lock is also no more activated in my prefs.
I tried several things already, resseting power management, pram , Applejack, combo update 10.5.5, repare permissions ...., until now nothing helped solve the problem.
My Mac Pro 8 core, was just back from the dealer to get a new raid card battery and it worked fine for a while.
The startup disk is disk 1 in JBOD on the raid card by the way.
I feel that this problem started occuring after the 10.5.5 and java updates
but since those 3 things came very close together i'm not 100% sure.
I hope someone here can help me out with finding a fix for this problem because i have run out of ideas and i wanna avoid a reinstall of my system .
Thank you for your help ,Data from the Netherlands.

I tried several things already, resseting power management, pram , Applejack, combo update 10.5.5, repare permissions ...., until now nothing helped solve the problem.
I am not ready to say Applejack is as safe as it use to be.
I can say that making a backup with SuperDuper is essential; as is having OS X "EMergency" boot partition or drive (FW, someone said that used 8 or 16GB SDHC memory card).
And use Disk Warrior along with Apple First Aid to repair your drives.
Anytime you zap pram or SMC you have to reset the startup disk, and it sounds like your disk or NVRAM is a problem.
Personally, I like a single fast dedicated boot drive; or, a stripped RAID (and instead of mirror better off keeping a good backup image cloned).
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Repair your boot drive with Disk Utility and Disk Warrior (or TechTool Deluxe/Pro).
If you think 10.5.5 may have caused it, roll back to 10.5.4, that is what backups and making a clone of your boot drive are good for. And always make a backup before you even begin to upgrade the system.

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Was on internet, the macbook froze,couldnt do any thing, then pressed to switch botton, but when it turn on again th white screen came up, after a while a folder with questio mark keeps flashing with the white/graysh screen at the back.
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Here is what I know so far.
- The computer was powered off by pushing the power button without shutting down.
- The computer was then restarted and it was coming into the white screen with the Apple logo in the middle, but i noticed that it was skewed slightly (like someone took a 4:3 ratio screen and stretched it to a 16:9) and then it would show a circle slash icon and then the flashing folder with a question mark on it.
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Thanks for your help guys. I managed to get the computer started by holding down C at the Start Up with the Install Disc 1 in the computer. The disc was really kindof unnecessary, as the newest version of Mac OS X (10.4.10) became available via the hard drive.
I then found out that the battery was not installed, so I reset the management system by removing the A/C power, the battery and pushing the power button for 5 seconds, and then reconnecting everything. It did not help, the battery is bad i guess, so I am going to call AppleCare and get a new battery.
Thanks for your help.

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Try starting up your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.
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About 6 months ago I first encountered the flashing folder with question mark on startup. I fixed the issue myself by unplugging the mouse and keyboard and rebooting. I also did the cmd S fsck -fy before that and all was well.
The other day I had the flashing folder again...I got it going a couple of times but it happened again. Right now I seem to be in deep trouble. Please read the following:
1. I booted up from the leopard dvd and no hard drive was there to run a disk utility on
2. Booted up again from the dvd and hard drive was there. Ran the disk utility and everything was fine...for about 5 minutes. Then the computer froze and I had to hard power down. Rebooted to the flashing folder.
3. Did command s and fsck but at the end I get the message failed to issue comm reset after 3 attempts.....failing....
4. I powered down, vacuumed out the vents, sprayed compressed air to make sure it wasn't over heating from dust buildup as I read somewhere.
5. Booted up...worked for about 5 minutes again.
6. Now I can't get to the hard drive from the install dvd at all...I tried 100 times. Cmd s won't work at all!! So it looks like I am out of options. Does anyone have ny radical solutions that i can try to fix this. There are some very important things on my hard drive that I would be very upset about loosing.
Please reply

Sorry to bear bad news, but most likely the drive is already dead or dying. I hope you backed up everything when the first symptoms appeared.
There are data recovery services, but might be very expensive.
EDIT: Some (a few) people have had success putting the drive (sealed very well in a plastic baggy) in the freezer overnight and then quickly putting it in an external enclosure and getting the data off it that way.
Message was edited by: WZZZ

Folder with question mark keeps flashing on startup

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