Macbook Won't Recognize Internal Hard Drive

When my Macbook starts up I either get a grey screen or a flashing folder with question mark. It will not recognize the internal hard drive. After researching, I'ved tried everything out there. Opening in safe mode, reseting NVRAM, booting from Lion install USB flash drive. The internal hard drive just will not show up anywhere, even in disk utility. Answers I've found:
1. A key is stuck pressed down
Slap the keyboard a bit to dislogde any keys
2. Test Internal HD
Test by taking to genius bar and they will test HD for you
or test yourself by getting SATA cable to USB and connect to another Macbook. (Make sure you get the right cable, mine is SATA3 to USB 2.0).
3. If Internal HD is Dead
Buy new Internal HD (Solid State or SATA) - Crucial seems to be the best website. Note, you'll most likely have to do a fresh install of your operating system.
Installation tutorials are online, it's really easy.
4. If internal hard drive is not dead, then it could be a bad SATA cable.
I recomend getting someone else to replace this although there are tutorials online.
5. Top Case may need replacing (see #1) Not very likely, but very easy to do yourself, you can find them online around $120
I'll have an update tomorrow. Oh, and a screw is also stripped so it may take awhile to get out.
My specs: Macbook 2.16Ghz Part No.MB158LL/A (Black)

When a hard drive fails to appear in Disk Utility that usually means the drive has failed. I really don't understand the purpose of the rest of your post. I don't even know what the question is, but I'm guessing you want to know if the drive should be replaced. The answer would be, "Yes."

Similar Messages

Macbook won't see internal hard drive sometimes

I've got a core duo macbook that's been giving me trouble for awhile. The original hard drive crashed and I replaced it, then the new hard drive crashed and I had some issues with kernel panics, etc. I can boot off my firewire drive and it seems to work fine, but I put in a 3rd hard drive today to give it another chance, and it won't mount when I boot from the installer disk. I booted from the external hard drive, and initially the internal hard drive did not mount. The second time I opened Disk Utility, the hard drive was there, so I tried to format it, but I get the pinwheel and nothing happens. I'm running OS 10.5 with 2GB of ram. I'm thinking it's a logic board issue as I was getting kernel panics at one time, but haven't seen any lately. Any help?

When a hard drive fails to appear in Disk Utility that usually means the drive has failed. I really don't understand the purpose of the rest of your post. I don't even know what the question is, but I'm guessing you want to know if the drive should be replaced. The answer would be, "Yes."

Macbook won't recognize external Hard Drive and issues with Time Machine

Hello everyone,
I have just bought a new Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion and I am currently having problems with Time Machine.
The issue begun in Snow Leopard: Time Machine was taking too long to backup, and would often not finish the backup because the external hard drive would be unwillingly ejected.
Now with Mountain Lion I have reformated the drive (Mac OS Journaled) and about a third of the way through had the same issue: the drive was ejected before the backup could be finished. I restarted the machine and it happened again. However, now the computer won't even recognize the external drive when I plug it in. I have also tried to power off/on the drive itself to no progress.
I have tested the USB port with another drive and the port is fine. I have also tested the usb cable and it is fine. And Disk Utility does not recognize the drive (even when I try the >diskutil list command in terminal).
Now, I can hear the drive humming normally when I turn it on, and it is not usb-powered (my electricity current does fluctuate).
Could the interrupted backup procedures have damaged the drive? And if so, wouldn't the computer recognize it anyway?
It is a 4 year old WD 1 TB that is used exclusively for TM and has never left the house.
Thank you for your time reading this and let me know if you need any more information that could help out.
Cheers!

From your description, I'd suspect a failing drive. Maybe time for a new external, especially as you've already re-formatted and it's still playing up.
I had a similar problem with one of my clone backups a few weeks ago - it failed, I erased it, re-cloned, worked a couple of times and then it failed again. Disk Utility didn't throw up any errors after re-formatting. I guess all disks die at some point.

Macbook won't recognize new hard drive tried a lot of things and need ideas

My MacBook rececently froze up and when i shut it down it just loaded with a folder question mark. I went through a lot of different discussions, and came on the conclusion my hard drive died! I bought a new one on ebay and i put it in myself. I tried loading software on it but it would not show my hard drive being there. I tried the PR+AppleOption but it still didn't show. I then went to disk utility and notice that the hard drive appeared there, but it wouldn't let me do anything with it. My warrenty is up and i was hoping i wouldn't have to take it in to the apple store, but i will at the end of the week if needed!

New drives need to be prepped before use:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must 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. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
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.

Macbook won't recognize external hard drive

I installed a new hard drive and then installed Snow leopard and my computer can't seem to find my external hard drive. I'll plug and unplug and nothing comes up. The USB ports both seem to be working fine with my thumb drive. Help- trying to salvage what I can from my time machine after a hard drive crash!
Please help!
Thanks,
Heather

External drives don't show up on Desktop by default. First, connect the external drive, and then, open a Finder window. After that, you should see your external drive in the Finder's sidebar, under "Devices". If you want to show it on Desktop, open the Finder menu (on the menu bar) > Preferences > General, and tick "External drives"

Hi, since i put some mp4 video or DVD files on my external hard drives final cut prox won't recognize my hard drives, i move all the video files and the problem still exist. somebody have the solution

Hi, since i put some mp4 video or DVD files on my external hard drives final cut prox won't recognize my hard drives, i move all the video files and the problem still exist. somebody have the solution

Did the back and forth between PC and Mac file systems screw up my files somehow?
Yes. Unfortunately the move has almost certainly caused the loss of the resource data that would have been (invisibly) attached to those files.
By adding a specific .mov extension after the fact you will have helped the Mac correctly identify the file type / asscoiations but also significantly you will have physically changed the filename eg from "clip" to "clip.mov". This means that when you come to reconnect the media in FCP , then FCP will be looking for files that no longer exist at the given path eg when specifically looking for our example clip called "clip" of course it won't find it.
Try this as a test... first remove the ".mov" extension from one or more of the clips, select those clips and press Cmd-Opt-I to open an Info window for the selection. You'll see an "Open with:" popup and in that popup you should choose QuickTime Player (if its a Unix Executable then it will initially list Terminal as the appropriate app, you have to choose Other... then in the open dialog choose Enable > All Applications and then navigate to and select the Quicktime Player app as the appropriate app). After you've done that restart FCP and see if you can now reconnect to those clips.

Migration Assistant Won't Recognize External Hard Drive

I have a PowerPC G5 and made a bootable backup of the computer's content to an external firewire hard drive. I tested the backup to make sure that it booted and everything was fine. So, I then did a clean install of Leopard to the machine. After the computer restarted, I reconnected my external drive and it mounted fine. However, when I went to use Migration Assistant to bring over all of my applications, it would not recognize the hard drive as an option to migrate files from.
The hard drive is formatted as Apple Partition Map, and works fine as a bootable copy. Does anyone know why Migration Assistant will not recognize it?
I recently did a clean install of Leopard on my Macbook this weekend using a different external drive with a bootable backup of the drive (GUID formatted) and then used the migration assistant to move all of my files and everything worked just fine.
I can't find any reason that I shouldn't be able to get my applications through migration assistant from the external hard drive but maybe someone knows how to fix this or of a workaround.

Very curious, indeed.
Welcome to the Apple forums where we do try to sort things out
Your delineation of the problem and comparison to your MBP is perfect.
I migrated my G5 from a second internal disk, but actually used the setup assistant when Leopard came alive.
You might see what happens if you eject your external HD and then do what you need to to connect it back (turn off/on - unplug/plug, etc.)
Are there any errors when Migration assistant runs?
It is perhaps that Spotlight is doing its thing and the drive is not available until it is indexed?
I would remove the external HD temporarily from the SpotLight indexing list and then see what happens.
I recall that there were some odd issues with external drives taking up to 1/2 hour to be recognized by Leopard, but I don't recall why.
I am not sure these things will help, but they will eliminate some of the possibilities, and when we have eliminated the probable, what is left is where the answer lies
I wonder if Leopard is confused by the external drive not being GUID?
Try this - - connect the GUID external drive to your G5 and see if Migration assistant sees it. Obviously do not migrate anything, but if you can see that one, we may have a solution.
Keep us posted.

Macbook No Longer Recognizes External Hard Drive

Recently I bought an external hard drive (Toshiba Automatic Backup Portable Hard Drive) to backup my Macbook (Mac OS X 10.6.8). I found that in order to have my Mac recognize the hard drive, I needed to partition it by formating it to MS-DOS (FAT). I had no problems after that and began to back up my computer. However, the next day, I plugged my external hard drive back in and the icon no longer shows up. I went to Disk Utilities and found it there, but it said that it was not mounted. Then I went to System Profiler to see if it was under "USB" but it did not show up. I have tried shutting down and restarting my computer a few times but each time is no different. I even added a USB 2.0 Hub but even that didn't work. Is there anything else that I could do? I have files already on there and some I do not really want to lose. Is there any uncomplicated way that I could be able to make my mac recognize my hard drive again?

ellybook7,
In OS X you can read from an NTFS disk but not write to it - at least not without thrid-party software such as Paragon's NTFS for Mac.
I'm not sure what was working FINE in Mountain Lion that wouldn't work in Mavericks.
Clinton

Wont recognize internal Hard Drive

About a month ago, I ran CleanSweep on my wife's Powerbook G4. Big mistake! I started having all sorts of problems that hadn't occurred before that. I had to format the drive and reinstall Mac OSX Leopard. Last week we setup the Powersaving settings for the computer to stay awake because in the middle of watching movies on our Apple TV, the computer would go to sleep and the movie would stop playing. The next day I woke the screen from sleeping, but the screensaver was frozen. I had to do a hard reset (hold down the power button). When I tried to startup the computer, the startup disc was not found. I booted from the CD, but didnt think to fix permissions, or verify disk. I decided to restore her from Timemachine. We had an appointment to go to, so I left the restore running. When we got back I noticed that the restore froze at 36.9gb. I had to do another hard reset. I then decided that it needed a clean reformat, and complete Leopard install. I had to go to work so I left the install running. When I got home I noticed that the computer was asleep. I thought the install was complete. It wasn't! I couldn't wake the computer up, so I had to do another hard reset. Now its the weekend, and I can devote full attention to the install, but the computer wont bootup from the Leopard CD. It dosent recognize its own hard drive, so during the bootup the apple appears, then a caution sign (circle with a line in the middle) I just sits there after that with the gear turning under the caution sign.
Here are some things that I know its not.
Crashed Hard drive - My MacBook Pro recognizes the harddrive when I firewire over to the Powerbook via the disk utility , It can even format it and write to it.
PMU Reset - Tried that
Bad Leopard Disc - Ran the Disc on my PowerBook when it was Firewired to my MacBook Pro.
Optical drive on the Powerbook - The Macbook Pro can boot from the Leopard CD when it is in the Powerbook, and firewired over.
Hard Drive Cable - Same as first issue. The MacBook recognizes the Hard Drive so, if the cable was damaged, this would not be the case.
Has anyone experienced this, and can anyone help?

Oh, I also formated the hard drive from my MBP. I wrote 0's on the entire drive. I don't mind doing any formating because I have a TimeMachine backup.

Will not recognize internal hard drive

I have a strange problem with a 2009 MacBookPro. It started acting "strange" for the user over the past few months. By "strange" I mean it would freeze, or fail to boot, or sometimes even restart without any reason. Now, it gets even stranger. Tried the standard things, RAM reseat, replace, check for loose connectors etc. It would fail to boot when the hard drive was connected internally. Then it would give a kernal panic and fail to even recognize a hard drive as being installed. Did a PRam reset, SMC reset and even the power off/control key to try to reset the open firmware. No sucess with anything. This is a suystem with an internal battery.
Yet, when using this exact same hard drive on an external USB drive connection, it would boot fine. Next tried it in Terminal mode to boot up another MBP. Failed to boot. When the 2nd MBP was booted from its internal drive and the suspect machine was plugged in as a Firewire (Terminal mode on "strange" computer) an External Firewire Drive appeared on the desktop, then a few seconds later, an identical copy of the first Ext FW drive appeared. This went on with evenbtually six copies of the one single Terminal booted hard drive appearing on the desktop of the second computer. None of the six drives would open or even allow any indiccation of what they contained.
Tried to partition the hard drive when it was put back into the internal slot but it would not unmount and failed to partition. The same thinmg happened when trying to erase it. Connected the hard drive via USB to a Windows 7 machine and used it to erase both the Recovery and Main partitions from the ard drive. Both were erased but the EFI partition could not be erased or cleaned. Put this same hard drive, as an external USB, into a very old XP machine and there the EFI partition was removed when a "Clean" command was sent via command line.
I then took the, now totally erased hard drive, and put it back into the computer as an internal drive and booted the computer from a 10.8 USB stick so I could partition the now empty hard drive. The drive was not even recognized as being present. Did the same thing, but using the USB external connection for that same hard drive. It partitioned and then formatted with 10.8.1 (what was on the USB stick). After the OS was installed, the computer would boot using this newly created OS when connected as an external USB drive. Put the drive back in as the internal drive. Got a Kernal Panic. Forced shutdown and retried. Noi kernal Panic but drive was not even recognized. Pulled the drive from internal and put it back into the external USB and tried booting. System would not recognize the drive as even being present.
I then erased and cleaned the drive in the XP machine again and then, using the USB connection on the second computer reinstalled 10.8 from the USB. When I tried the now newly created software again, the same thing happened as listed above. 2nd machine booted fine on the drive as a USB, "Strange" machine booted fine using the drive as an external USB, Kernal Panicked then would not be recognized in the "Strange" machine.
It appears that when the drive is connected internally. it not only does not have the OS software recognized but will rewrite something in the drive that makes it impossible to be recognized by any Apple. My first thought was that the EFI partition was corrupted somehow so that was why I tried cleaning the EFI partition along with the other two partitions. But even with a new EFI and other partitions, the drive was not useable once it was used to try to boot as an internal drive in the suspect computer.
Now here I am dropping into speculation mode. My guess is that something in the very basic ROM (Pram?) that recognizes a hard drive is in the internal slot and tries to get to the EFI instead fails and in the process it screws up the EFI (or maybe even an address table?) in the hard drive. If it recognizes that there is no internal hard drive, it will happily boot from either a USB stick, a USB connected external hard drive or a Firewire/Terminal mode computer connected to it.
Sounds like a motherboard problem but I am wondering if it is possible to "flash" the very basic ROM that is at the start of the process back to factory default or maybe just replace the chip if it is the same one used as part of the Firmware password protection system.
Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts about possible solutions or at least a way to definitely identify what the problem's cause?

Answer has been found. The internal drive SATA cable was replaced and the system is now working correctly.

Does macbook have to have internal hard drive to boot?!

As i'm having partition problems with the aftermarket hard drive installed in my macbook, I am resigned to re-partitioning it to install SL and restoring from time machine.
However, the old stock hard drive I have is in a caddy, I kept it as a backup incase anything ever goes wrong, then I can just boot straight back into a copy of OSX 10.5, last night I managed to install SL on this drive etc,
So i'm wondering is it possible to boot the macbook from the USB Snow Leopard drive, then at the same time in a seperate caddie, re-partition the other hard drive so I can perform a fresh installation?
Complicated I know, but i've looked into other areas and it appears this is going to be the only way!
Comments, advice and suggestions welcome

I can confirm that the macbook does not need a internal hard drive to boot, I booted using the factory hard drive in a USB caddie, and then installed Snow Leopard via another USB caddie
thanks for the help Matt

IMovie Won't Recognize External Hard Drive...?

Hello,
Yesterday, I upgraded to a new Macbook Pro using OSX 10.9.4 (Mavericks) and I'm working with iMovie 10.0.2.
On my old Macbook, I had an external hard drive which held all of my raw video footage, and instead of filling my hard drive with iMovie Projects and videos, I just kept them saved on the hard drive and edited projects from that.
Theoretically, this should be possible with this newest version of iMovie, right? However, when I open iMovie, I cannot find the hard drive. It is connected to my computer, and I can see and access it on the desktop, but there is no "Devices" icon listed in iMovie. Isn't it supposed to automatically display? I have two external hard drives, both formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and I tried both of them, but why don't they display in iMovie?
Is this a strange problem or am I just completely missing something really basic........? I've looked online, and it seems like they should display automatically.
I'm stumped and am totally unfamiliar with this version of iMovie.
Thanks so much for your help!

It might be really basic, but what was the solution? It eludes me....
== ==
Okay, quick edit, the answer is to double click on the .imovielibrary file you want to import. I still think that is not obvious, you'd think there was something you could do inside iMovie that would work, or, that it should simply recognize it automatically...

Disk Utility won't recognize new hard drive

Hello,
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
The original hard drive (80 GB) went bad, so I replaced with a new 160 GB Western Digital one. I formatted the hard drive using Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Disk. It worked the first time I booted into Leopard (I just booted up to make sure the OS loaded...didn't install any new software and/or hardware).
Then I shut it down and started it back up, and the computer didn't recognize the hard drive. I inserted the Mac OS X disk and ran Disk Utility, but the hard drive was not recognized.
So now I'm thinking the new hard drive was also bad. So, I ordered another one (Seagate 160 GB) and it to was not recognized when I ran Disk Utility from the Mac OS X disk.
When replacing all of them, I followed directions I found here and other websites. They all said to do it the same way, so I'm assuming the directions for replacing a hard drive in a laptop were correct.
I searched Google and found several posts suggesting using an application called Disk Warrior, but from my understanding, you cannot run it from a disk, it needs to be installed, which is obviously impossible since the hard drive isn't recognized.
Then I ran Open Firmware and did "devalias" from the prompt. From what I can tell in the list of hardware, the hard drive is recognized, but I am not sure. I took a picture of the screen printout but do not see an option to attached it to this post. Therefore, I'll just tell what it said for now and will create an image hosting account so I can add a URL for it later.
In the list, "hd" is in the left column and in the right column of the same line is "/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/disk@0" (without quotes).
If anybody has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
I've replaced a few hard drives, and in instances where it's not recognized, it's either been a cable connection issue or I've seen others with a jumper issue. Either the hard drive to logic board cable isn't properly set, typically on the logic board side, or a jumper was left on the drive, where typically you can just remove it. I haven't personally had the cable fail, however, that's possible too.
When you pulled the large plug from the back of the original hard drive, did you do it very carefully? It's not like a desktop hard drive plug that you can just pull out ... it needs to be wiggled out, gently. I have a hard time believing two new drives would be essentially DOA, although the first one worked for a bit, which leads me to wonder about the physical connections.
Since you have your original OS X disks, you could try running the Apple hardware test to see if it gives you any error message(s).

? MacBook won't recognize external disc drive

My MacBook's internal disc drive quit, so I'm trying an external Samsung SE-208 slim portable DVD writer.   It worked once, but now the mac won't recognize it. I tried a DVD switcher app - no luck. The Samsung plugs into the USB port, starts up OK then disappears from itunes, the desktop, Finder - It's gone. Can I completely disable the internal disc drive? Would that help? I appreciate ANY help.   I'm not skilled at these things so you need to spoon feed me. thanks

Thank you for your suggestion:
Hardware Information:
          MacBook (13-inch Late 2006)
          MacBook - model: MacBook2,1
          1 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
          4 GB RAM
Video Information:
          GMA 950 - VRAM: spdisplays_integrated_vram
System Software:
          Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549) - Uptime: 0 days 0:7:8
Disk Information:
          TOSHIBA MK6034GSX disk0 : (55.89 GB)
                    (null) (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 200 MB
                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 55.57 GB (9.75 GB free) (Low!)
USB Information:
          Micron Built-in iSight
          MediaTek Inc MT1806
          Apple Computer Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
          Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
FireWire Information:
Thunderbolt Information:
Kernel Extensions:
Startup Items:
          HWNetMgr: Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWNetMgr
          HWPortDetect: Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWPortDetect
          StartOuc: Path: /Library/StartupItems/StartOuc
Problem System Launch Daemons:
          [System] org.samba.winbindd.plist 3rd-Party support link
Problem System Launch Agents:
          [System] com.paragon.NTFS.auth.plist 3rd-Party support link
Launch Daemons:
          [System] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist 3rd-Party support link
          [invalid] com.Affinegy.InstaLANd.plist
Launch Agents:
          [System] com.Affinegy.InstaLANa.plist 3rd-Party support link
          [System] com.seagate.SeagateStorageGauge.plist 3rd-Party support link
User Launch Agents:
User Login Items:
          iTunesHelper
          System Events
          GrowlHelperApp
          Belkin Router Monitor
Internet Plug-ins:
          FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 12.0.0.44 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
          iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0
          Flash Player: Version: 12.0.0.44 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
          JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 13.9.8 - SDK 10.6 Outdated! Update
          QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.6.6
          Scorch: Version: (null) - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
User Internet Plug-ins:
          fbplugin_1_0_3: Version: (null) 3rd-Party support link
3rd Party Preference Panes:
          Flash Player 3rd-Party support link
Bad Fonts:
          None
Old Applications:
          None
Time Machine:
          Time Machine information requires OS X 10.7 "Lion" or later.
Top Processes by CPU:
              15%          PluginProcess
              12%          WebProcess
               3%          EtreCheck
               2%          WindowServer
               1%          ps
Top Processes by Memory:
          120 MB          WebProcess
          70 MB          Safari
          57 MB          PluginProcess
          49 MB          EtreCheck
          45 MB          WindowServer
Virtual Memory Information:
          1.88 GB          Free RAM
          588 MB          Active RAM
          293 MB          Inactive RAM
          266 MB          Wired RAM
          115 MB          Page-ins
          0 B          Page-outs

IMAC won't recognize external hard drive anymore

I am running snow leopard on my IMAC with all the latest software updates. I've been using a LaCie Quadra external hard drive with time machine for backups for awhile with no problems. From the beginning is was plug in the hard drive and go, the mac recognized it. Now, suddenly, it won't. When I turn on the LaCie to back up, the icon no longer pops on the desktop. It is also not listed in the Time Machine preferences anymore. I tried to open the LaCie from Mac systems preferences and get a message with something like "64 bit cannot recognize 32 bit" I am asked to close and reopen system preferences, which would change to 32 bit. I tried that and it did not work,and a report was sent to Apple. Has anyone else been experiencing this? Thanks

jraguseo wrote:
Thanks. I don't disconnect the drive, only turn it off with it's own power switch. According to LaCie, this should not be a problem.
No, it's not a problem for the drive, but neither is leaving it (and Time Machine) on. Most externals will "spin down" after a few minutes of activity, but even if they don't, modern drives are built to run 24/7.
Time Machine was designed to do quick hourly backups of changes, and will protect you best that way. Just leave both Time Machine and the drive on; they'll be fine.

Macbook Won't Recognize Internal Hard Drive

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