Macbook won't boot on primary hard drive

i have a white macbook 2006 i believe, i installed a 500gb hard drive into it about 4 months ago, and just now it stopped working. it won't boot at all from the hard drive. i got it to boot from my external hard drive that was the original 120gb that came with the macbook. After booting from external it continues to freeze when i open i-tunes or the internet. Don't know if it is just the hard drive because getting problems with the other one as well. don't know what is wrong. any advice would be helpful.

I got a new hard drive recently 500gb seagate. I followed the directions on this page http://www.ehow.com/how2063795format-hard-drive-mac-os.html , Mine was a little more complicated since i had 2 partitions windows and mac on mine. Initially the process took a day and it started getting to the same thing as yours where it would get to the mac logo and not find the hard drive. I reformatted several times before i got to the point where i could boot up.Eventually I just figured out all the info was there the drive was formatted i could boot into windows 7 but not mac. So i put old hard drive back in the computer booted up with that. Attached new hard drive via usb in external case i was trying to put in the mac. I was able not to boot up but it would show the drives that have been formatted into the new drive and i simply copied my existing Disk by dragging it onto the new hard drive. Than turn off your mac keep your hard drive plugged in. Press and hold the option key in start up and you should see the 2 seperate hard drives and be able to boot into the new one. Was a long process for me took several complete deletes of the new hard drive and reformatting before it would work. once you get to the mac logo and spinning wheel its just saying mac cant find your boot up disk though. Sorry its confusing a bit any questions email me.

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MacBook won't boot from new hard drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive, but my macbook will not boot to the new hard drive. I have erased and cloned the hard drive about three times now, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. It won't boot while it is in the macbook and it won't boot from an external hard drive case. All I get to is the screen with the mac logo and the spinning wheel. I have made sure the drive is GUID formatted, but it still doesn't work. When I put the new drive in an external case and plug it into the USB port of my macbook I can see and access everything on the drive. Can somebody please tell what I am doing wrong?
By the way the new hard drive is a 500gb western digital Scorpio blue drive.

I got a new hard drive recently 500gb seagate. I followed the directions on this page http://www.ehow.com/how2063795format-hard-drive-mac-os.html , Mine was a little more complicated since i had 2 partitions windows and mac on mine. Initially the process took a day and it started getting to the same thing as yours where it would get to the mac logo and not find the hard drive. I reformatted several times before i got to the point where i could boot up.Eventually I just figured out all the info was there the drive was formatted i could boot into windows 7 but not mac. So i put old hard drive back in the computer booted up with that. Attached new hard drive via usb in external case i was trying to put in the mac. I was able not to boot up but it would show the drives that have been formatted into the new drive and i simply copied my existing Disk by dragging it onto the new hard drive. Than turn off your mac keep your hard drive plugged in. Press and hold the option key in start up and you should see the 2 seperate hard drives and be able to boot into the new one. Was a long process for me took several complete deletes of the new hard drive and reformatting before it would work. once you get to the mac logo and spinning wheel its just saying mac cant find your boot up disk though. Sorry its confusing a bit any questions email me.

MacBook Won't Boot When External Hard Drive is Plugged In

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500Gb external hard drive. When I have it plugged into my computer through the USB port. When the computer is off and I turn in on with the external plugged into the USB port, it will not boot. It just chimes over and over. I have to unplug the external then restart to get it to boot.
Anybody know how to get my MacBook to boot with the external plugged in so I don't have to unplug it every time?
Thanks

The problem is probably the drive. I have several of these drives and have no trouble booting with any of the computers I use.

My mac won't boot from the hard drive

Hi Everyone
Yesterday, I tried to dual boot my mac using the Bootcamp Assistant. The hard drive partitioned fine & then started the Windows setup. About half way through it found a corrupt file & cancelled the install. It went back to OSX absolutely fine & was working perfectly. I deleted the partition that had been created & then noticed that the amount of free space on my hard drive was missing the 20GB that I had partitioned off for Windows. I used OnyX to try & find the missing 20GB; it finished & then I tried to open Safari & received an error message. I tried again & received the same message so tried to restart the mac & ever since it hasn't wanted to boot using the hard drive.
It will boot from the CD & I can use the Disc Utility to see the hard drive (which makes me think that the mac is seeing it) & can verify & repair both the disc itself & the Disc Permissions but if I click Startup Disc I only get 2 options: The DVD itself & Network Drive. I also can't re-install OSX onto the Hard Drive as it comes up with an exclamation mark & wont let me go any further in the process.
I'm hoping that someone will have an answer other than erasing my hard drive & starting again (which isn't that big a problem as I backed up all the important bits before starting any of this!)

Why did you wipe the drive?
Were you having problems?
If you were those problem may be related to a failing hard drive and that is why the TM backup could be restored.
In you topic header you say the system won't boot from the SL DVD, But it di for you to wipe the drive. Then it should again boot from the SL DVD.
Insert the DVD and reboot, hold down the Option key and select the Optical drive, SL DVD, as the Boot source.

MacBook Pro won't boot with new hard drive, but a different MacBook Pro will

So here are the details. My friend and I both have 13-inch Mid 2010 MacBook Pro's. Same processor and specs since they were purchased at the same time, but originally had 250 GB hard drives. His hard drive failed and needed a new one. Put a 500 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.6 in his computer, and tried using a flash drive with "Install OS X Mavericks" on it to install Mavericks on his new hard drive. No matter what, it wouldn't install. I finally was able to install OS X 10.9.4 on it by connecting the new hard drive to my computer with a USB hard drive enclosure. I put the hard drive back inside his computer and it wouldn't boot (stuck on the gray screen with apple logo and a spinning wheel). I then attached to the hard drive to his computer externally with the USB enclosure, and then it booted and worked perfectly.
So, it seemed like the problem was with something inside his computer, but then I switched our drives, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I put my original hard drive into his computer, and his new hard drive into my computer, and they both booted and worked perfectly, so I have no idea why his computer will not boot with the new hard drive internally.
To summarize, his computer boots with: 1) new hard drive connected externally (won't work if it's internal), and 2) my hard drive internally
but my computer boots with: 1) new hard drive connected externally AND internally, and 2) my hard drive internally.
Both hard drives have OS X 10.9.4 installed
If anyone has any idea what's causing this and how to make his computer work with the new hard drive internally that would be greatly appreciated.

So after switching the internal SATA cables from each computer, now we have
His computer, with my SATA cable:
1) Worked with every hard drive!
My computer, with his SATA cable:
1) Works with 1 TB Toshiba hard drive
2) Works with 500 GB Seagate hard drive
3) Works with my original hard drive
4) Flashing folder with question mark with his old hard drive
So it turns out you were right! Definitely had something to do with the SATA cables. But it's still strange that mine was able to boot with all the hard drives except the one that was originally in his. So it seems like it was some combination of his SATA cable and something else, since when his SATA cable was in his computer only 1 hard drive (my original) worked, and when it was in my computer, 3 hard drives worked. But at least its working, and I'm just gonna keep our SATA cables switched since that seems to work out fine

Match on Macbook won't play songs on hard drive???

Been browsing this discussion group for a while and can't find a similar case... Here is the setup:
My ripped songs, some mp3, some AAC, are on my macbook's hard drive. They have been matched in iTunes Match. When I try to play many of the songs, they won't play. I even tried to go to the file itself in Finder and "preview" using the spacebar and they don't play. I tried to get as much info in this screen grab to provide information...
If this image is too small, it is also here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1l36tgu3omqacot/screenshot.png
In this example, I try to play the song entitled "Word Problems." Initially I get the "thinking beachball" and then it starts to play the bottom song "I Remember." Same thing happens with all the other songs by this artist. Somehow it doesn't recognize the songs or something. I brought up the "info" box for the "Word Problems" song to show that iTunes knows where the song is (on my hard drive) and doesn't have to get it from the cloud. I also enable the "iCloud Status" column to show that the status on all songs is either "Matched" or "Uploaded." Also, the iCloud status "cloud" in the top left for Music looks like it is good to go (even though at this point the Movies and TV shows status icons are animated which I believe means they are trying to contact the server).
Based on other problems I have seen in this discussion group, I have de-authorized and then re-authorized my macbook and I have also turned off iTunes Match and then turned it back on again. Neither of these fixed the problem...
Any ideas would be greatly appreciate

Message was edited by: dfromc

Windows xp won't boot after cloning hard drive to a bigger drive

I have a HP Pavilion Dv4170us laptop added some new upgrades to it.. max RAM 2GB... a new battery... and I bought a 160GB samsung IDE drive to replace the origional 100GB drive...Using EZ Gig II software and usb drive adapter I successfuly cloned the smaller hard drive but when I swaped them out it won't boot windows xp.. just a black screen with the blinking curser at the top left corner... using my windows xp pro disc.. i ran the system recovery and tried first fix mbr command... then I tried fixboot.. I also looked for the boot.ini file which is not in the C: root drive...I only found a back up copy of it in the windows/pss folder... this is on both drives.. so the cloeing copied it all... but the origional drive will boot and the new one won't... I even tried reinstalling XP as a repair installation...still nothing... any ideas??

wsev1955 wrote:
I have a HP Pavilion Dv4170us laptop added some new upgrades to it.. max RAM 2GB... a new battery... and I bought a 160GB samsung IDE drive to replace the origional 100GB drive...Using EZ Gig II software and usb drive adapter I successfuly cloned the smaller hard drive but when I swaped them out it won't boot windows xp.. just a black screen with the blinking curser at the top left corner... using my windows xp pro disc.. i ran the system recovery and tried first fix mbr command... then I tried fixboot.. I also looked for the boot.ini file which is not in the C: root drive...I only found a back up copy of it in the windows/pss folder... this is on both drives.. so the cloeing copied it all... but the origional drive will boot and the new one won't... I even tried reinstalling XP as a repair installation...still nothing... any ideas??
Hi,
Can you see the new hdd in the BIOS?
Dv6-7000 /Full HD/Core i5-3360M/GF 650M/Corsair 8GB/Intel 7260AC/Samsung Pro 256GB
Testing - HP 15-p000
HP Touchpad provided by HP
Currently on Debian Wheeze
*Please, help other users with the same issue by marking your solved topics as "Accept as Solution"*

Macbook will not boot. Locked hard drive. Blue screen when booting

Hi, my little brother decided he wanted a few files off of my mac book, so he went to settings>sharing>file sharing and added my only hard drive to the list and tried removing everyone but his name and password thinking it would only effect people trying to log into my hard drive, not actually me on my computer alone trying to boot mac osx from it.
He came crying to me telling me he paniced because he saw a locked icon on my hard drive and couldn't do anything, so tried to restart the macbook and now i just get a blue screen and nothing happens when i try booting it.
Right now i'm thinking i gotta archive and reinstall from booting the osx disk, but i'm affraid it'll just apply the same settings again and keep me locked out. I need files off of my hard drive since i'm in school and have several assignments that i have not backed up at all.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

after searching the forums deeper i found the solution. it's now working. you may delete this thread.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2087835

Panther is installed but won't boot from iBook hard drive

Hello,
I made a similar post in the iBooks colors section of Discussions on this topic not quite knowing whether this was a hardware or software issue. I finally got Panther to install after using Disk Doctor to check for and fix errors on 9.2.2 (I would never use with OSX) and also rebuilt the directory while booted from an OS 9 CD and running Disk Warrior from a floppy and taking out the airport card. The Panther CD told me to restart the computer after installation. During the OSX start up from the hard drive I saw a gray screen and the dark gray Apple logo with the spinning gear then the computer crashed and a message appeared that I needed to restart the computer. After restart, the same sequence of events happened again. I have tried to restart from the OSX using the full retail CD used for intallation and the computer also crashes. I cannot start up from the Disk Warrior CD either. I have also tried make a Safe Mode start up and the iBook again crashed with the restart message appearing again. When I restart in OS 9 everything works perfectly, OS, airport and applications. I did have Jaguar installed on this iBook until five months ago, but incounterred issues with it and decided that more RAM would solve my problem. I then decided to initialize the hard drive and reinstall OSX after purchasing 256 RAM. The 256 stick of RAM was bought from ifixit.com and a guy there told me he thought that the logic board needed to be replaced. I explained to him that the computer works perfectly fine in the OS 9 mode, but he said that 0SX is more demanding and 9 can get by on less than perfect logic board. I also reinstalled the 128 MB RAM that was in the computer when Jaguar was running on it, but that didn't help either. I have scoured the iBook and Panther OSX sections of Discussions for any others having a similar problem, but not such luck.
I would appreciate any information or suggestion that you might have as to what may be causing this issue on my iBook.
Thank you.
Greg
iBook Mac OS X (10.3.5) 300 mhz 320 MB RAM

Greg:
You have probably already tried this, but the first thing I would do is reset the PRAM.
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.
Also, check out this Apple article Your Mac won't start up in OS X.
Good luck.
cornelius
PismoG4 550, 100GB 5400 Toshiba internal, 1 GB RAM; Pismo 500 OS X (10.4.5) Mac OS X (10.4.5) Beige G3 OS 8.6

Mac Pro won't boot when a hard drive is in drive bay 1

I have a 2006 Mac Pro with a slight issue.
Whenever I put a drive in bay #1, the system will no longer boot.
I've removed all of my hard drives except my boot disk.
Placed it in drive bays 2,3 or 4, and it boots no problem.
When I place it in drive bay 1, the system won't go past the grey screen.
When I hold down the option key when booting with the drive in bay #1, the arrow pops up like I will have a choice of selecting the boot disk, but then no choices appear.
It's super strange. The computer is still working great, it is just a little annoying that one of my drive bays is no longer functional.
Any ideas?

It seems the problem is not with the hard drive(s) since they work in another bay. So the thing to check is the power and SATA cabling from the bay to the motherboard. The SATA cables from the bay plug into the motherboard and perhaps has come loose, gotten dirty, or tarnished. Likewise the connector on the drive bay may be dirty or tarnished.
So my only suggestion is to check the cabling and connections.
Tom

My PB G4 won't boot from any hard drive..stucked in apple icon..

At first, it didn't boot from the internal hard drive...
I could see the apple icon with grey background, but the little runing icon under apple icon didn't appear. There is no sound from the hard drive either...
I tried removing and replacing the RAM, didn't work either...
I have the powerbook CD with apple hardware test, I ran it. It went though a detail test and showed no errors or problems....
And then I tried to start up from the powerbook CD, it works and I was able to go to disk utility. However, I cannot complete verifying disk permission because of a lot of problem, sometimes it said "communication error with disk manager" and sometimes it got frozen and sometimes it just simply stop moving (not frozen, but just not moving, the disk is quite also too).
then I tried to boot from my USB external hard drive, I had my backup in it. However, it is the same as booting from internal drive, no running icon below the apple icon. Also, the external hard drive did not make any sound.
I have never experienced this problem... please help...

Have you added any hardware or new software recently?
Have you tried a safe boot? Hold the shift key while you boot - this does some disk maintenance and doesn't load login items. If this works, try booting normally.
If you can't run Disk Utility verify permissions from the OS X CD did you also try to verify or repair the disk? If this won't work due to errors, you may want to consider a program like Disk Warrior to attempt to repair the hard drive. You can find it at http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Won't boot from USB hard drive?

Hi, all. My daughter has a brand-new Aluminum Macbook a week old, with all Apple software updates applied and everything running smoothly. She has a Seagate FreeAgent Go external USB 2.0 hard drive divided into two HFS+ Journaled partitions using the GUID partition scheme: a large partition on which to back up her internal drive, and a small partition for use as an emergency boot "disk." We've used the latest version of SuperDuper to make a bootable clone of her internal drive on the large backup partition, and I've just begun installing Leopard from her MacBook installer DVD onto the emergency boot partition as I write this (using my own computer). After 25 minutes, the installer DVD is still being "checked for consistency"; I hope things will finally begin to move along faster when the installation actually starts.
We'll see what happens when that installation is done, but before I began it, I checked to make sure the SuperDuper clone on the backup partition would boot the MacBook. To my dismay, it did not, although I held down the Option key during startup, selected the backup partition in Startup Manager, and clicked the arrow to proceed with booting from that partition. The MacBook booted from its internal drive anyway.
You'll note that I'm not a Leopard or Intel Mac user myself, so I'm not familiar with any issues that may be more familiar to regular users of that OS or of Intel Macs. Can anyone tell me whether SuperDuper has problems creating bootable USB clones that work in Leopard or on those machines? Is there something else I should be doing to boot from the clone we made, instead of using the Startup Manager? Any other thoughts on why this hasn't worked?

I have noticed that the start-up disk appears just about anywhere except in the upper right-hand corner. I too, was convinced once that I was booted from the wrong drive. However, I have implicit faith in SD and since it has never let me down, I searched and found the boot drive hiding amongst some files littering my desktop.

IMac 24 Aluminum won't boot from USB Hard drive

I just got an iMac 24 from the Apple Refurb store. It comes with Snow Leopard, but I need to install a Leopard partition for my wife to ensure 100% compatibility with Photoshop CS3, among other things. I created a partition just for Leopard, so that's good to go.
I can choose the boot partition on my Leopard install drive when starting by holding the "alt" key, that's no problem. However, after I choose that USB drive, it reboots... over and over and over and over. To be sure it isn't the drive, I tested it with my Macbook Pro, and it booted up just fine. I tried another USB drive, same exact problem.
I don't have a Firewire external that I can repartition for the purpose of installing Leopard. I only have it on hard drive. Then I tried making a DMG with disk utility and burning it to a DVD+R DL, but it tells me the disc isn't large enough, even though it's 8.5GB and the image is 7.6GB.
Pulling my hair out here guys! Is this refurb a lemon?

The Leopard install DVD I used to make the image is not available, it got stolen along with laptop bag it was in last Spring.
Is it this "image" (clone) of the installation disc that you are trying to boot from a USB drive, or a full installation of Leopard? If it's a clone of the installation disc on a USB drive, there are a few considerations.
First, what type was the original Leopard disc (the one you lost)? Was it a retail disc (the type sold separately in a box) or one that came with another Mac model, such as a MacBook Pro. If it's the disc from a MacBook Pro, it will not work because your iMac is a different model. Those included disc usually only work with the model it came with.
If it's a retail disc, the other consideration is the version on the disc. If you look at that everymac.com profile page, it says that the (earlier) pre-installed version of Mac OS X is 10.5.6 (9G2030). If that retail Leopard disc was earlier than 10.5.6 (such as the original 10.5.0 disc), then it will not boot that iMac because, as I said in the first reply - +Macs can generally boot the version of Mac OS it came with, or LATER (up to hardware limits), but NOT earlier.+
If that USB drive you are trying to boot the iMac from has a full installation of Leopard, please post back.

Hard drive crash in G4 - won't boot from 2nd hard drive

Hi,
My G4 has 3 internal hard drives: 2 on the ATA bus and one on a SCSI card. The main drive crashed yesterday. At least I assume it crashed: the first error was not being able to store a CD imported into iTunes, followed by a system crash and a request to restart. On restart it failed to boot, showing a floppy icon with a ? and repeatedly beeps twice. In an attempt to fix this I booted from my OS X software install CD and installed OS X on other ATA hard drive, however it refuses to boot from the second drive and shows a broken folder icon and is still doing the double beep thing. All suggestions gratefully received!
Thanks,
Andy

I do indeed. Here's what happened when I ran the extended test:
No Airport present. Logic board, mass storage and RAM all passed. I couldn't see if the modem test completed, but somewhere between the end of that and the video RAM test the screen was filled with a multi-coloured grid. Eventually there was a default catch:
code=300, %SRR0: 00000020, %SRR1:00081010
with the option of mac-boot or shut-down.
mac-boot also caused a default catch:
code=900, %SRR0: 01c10ffc, %SRR1:00003030
mac-boot then brought an alternate happy mac / folder with a ?
A reboot from there finally brings up the broken folder. All of these icons are very small OS9 style icons in the centre of the screen.
Phew!
Bearing in mind your suggestion about a blown stick, I have tried a swapping out each stick (1x512, 1x256) and rebooting with the same results. I also tried them in different slots and that made no difference either.
Blown video RAM perhaps?

IMac won't boot after replacing hard drive and restoring from Time Machine

I was having problems with my iMac but upgraded to Lion when it came out. Had a few good days and then my hard drive died.
I had the drive replaced and the repair people put Snow Leopard on the new drive.
I then tried to restore everything from my Time Machine backup. At first when I tried to log on the computer wouldn't accept my password (i know it was right).
I decided to reinstall again using the snow leopard dvd i had. This time, the computer booted up (didn't ask me for a passord) and looked like it was in the process of setting things up. But Mail kept saying it was going to import messages but then quit and restarted a few seconds later. When i quit it it just came back again and again. I could see Chrome open behind it with my bookmarks in the toolbar and see other restored things, but the overall look was grey and not everything was there.
When i restarted from the HD and not the dvd i could never get past various shades of grey and the circling progress indicator. Never booted up at all.
I read about Lion having some restore hd functionality but it doesn't show up when i restart with option key. Am I in limbo between operating systems?
Any advice as to steps to take? I don't know much about this stuff.
Thanks for any help.

Yes, if you picked a Snow Leopard backup, that's what you got.
You could pick a Lion backup, and it would restore it, but that wouldn't create the Recovery HD, which you will need, sooner or later. See Using the Recovery HD. You'll need to re-download Lion for that to be created.
When you do that, after downloading but before installing Lion again, you might want to do this: Making a Lion Install disc or partition. Then if you need to reinstall Lion again, you can do it from that, instead of having to download it again.

Macbook won't boot on primary hard drive

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