My MacBook Pro Hard Drive recently gave me the gray folder with the question mark of death. Even as

My MacBook Pro Hard Drive recently gave me the gray folder with the question mark of death. Even as a Mac Newbie/Novice, I successfully installed a new hard drive and the OS (10.6.8) software from my installation discs. I have, however, lost the ability to play video using the spacebar and I have no idea on the steps necessary to correct this seemingly simple technical blip. .Here's my system overview:Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2 Processor Name: Intel Core i5 Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 4 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s.
I am using the Premiere Pro CS5 NLE (with the 5.0.4 updates), and I have tried to reinstall the software (which is actually the Production Premium package) several times, but I still cannot use the spacebar (or any method) to play any of my imported videos.
PLEASE HELP in any way you can!
Prior to having to replace my hard drive, my software was working just fine. No problems at all. But now, it seems that I can't get it to play whatever type of file I import.
Again, I am a newbie to the Mac, so any and all correctional/repair assistance needs to be expalined as if I were a child : )
I would hate to try to revert to considering the sophmoric Final Cut Pro X editing software package, but I've got to do something to be able to get back to my editing activities.
zionhall
[email protected]

Jorge242 wrote:
@FatMac the internet recovery doesnt work. It goes into recovery mode and then when i try to reinstall it cant find a disk to install it to. So what would be a good choice to take now?
Recovery Mode presents you with, among other things, Disk Utility. When you open that, if the internal shows up at all, first try to "Repair DIsk." If that doesn't work but if the "Media" line is present, try to format and partition it with a GUID partition table (understand that you will be erasing the contents of your internal). Then try to reinstall the OS. If that doesn't work, and since your Retina MBP didn't come with a DVD drive or DVDs, you'll need to try a hardware test using these instructions from Apple (short version: shut down, press the power button and hold down the "D" key). If none of those things work, let's hope you either have AppleCare or your warranty has some life left because the SSD in your rMBP is proprietary and expensive. You'll need to bring it to an Apple Genius for evaluation.

Similar Messages

I have a problem with lion. My MacBook pro froze and now I get a gray folder with a question mark.

I recently upgraded to lion but my screen just froze. I had to shut it down by holding the power button down. Every time I tried to start it again I got a grey folder with a question mark and couldn't do a thing. I' ve been told to restore snow leopard but I dont want to loose my files or email. What can I do?

Boot from your recovery partition. Check and if necessary repair your startup volume with Disk Utility. You may need to reinstall Lion.
OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery

I hard closed my MacBook pro and ow there is a flashing what folder with a question mark on it.

I have a blinking white folder when I turn on my computer with a question mark in it.

Read:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

My Macbook Air 2011 got a white screen and a folder with a question mark. I tried to press option+r and try to install the OS X Lion but it didn't show the disk Macintosh Hd

My Macbook Air 2011 got a white screen and a folder with a question mark. I tried to press option+r and try to install the OS X Lion but it didn't show the disk Macintosh Hd

You are using Snow Leopard so you have no OPTION+R shortcut. You need to boot the computer from your Snow Leopard DVD or USB flash drive.
Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard 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 Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

My Macbook pro 13 inch is stuck on a gray screen with the apple logo, how do I fix this?

Sooo, I was using my laptop for a while and the charger was kind of broken, it was dip in and out, and slowly I got a "Service Battery" notification. I updated my system and now everytime I try to boot up my computer it'd show a gray screen with the apple logo and a loading bar with a circular loading icon but it never actually boots up. It stays stuck at that loading screen. I don't think it's because I uploaded my system that it happened, but I'm wondering if it's because I didn't change my charger/battery, and I'm wondering if I have to get the harddrive changed or is there a way for me to recover my files and whatnot without having to whip it. Please help, and thanks in advice to any help offered.

Dwaniej,
you can try this: boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it get past the grey screen now?

TS1440 When I start up, there is only the flashing folder with a question mark on it. When I tried to reinstall snow leopard, there is no hard disk to be found.

After rebooting my computer, there is only the flashing folder with "?" on it. I tried several things like PRAM resetting and whatnot, but nothing worked. I then tried to reinstall Snow Leopard, but it appears there is no hard disc to be found to install it. I also wanted to repair the disk first but it wasn't present in disk utilities. Did I lose my hard drive, or is this still salvagable?

That is evidence that your hard drive has failed and needs to be replaced.

Macbook pro hard drive transfer to new i7 Mac Mini with new SSD

I've seen some of the threads on drive transfer but wanted to get more input. I currently have late 2008 Macbook Pro with 750gb hard drive running Lion latest version. I bought a new Mac Mini i7 with dual 500 gb drives. I also have new SSD 512gb. I want to use SSD as boot drive for Mac Mini and install 750gb drive as 2nd drive. I know how to remove and install the drives. What is best sequence, software and procedure to execute the exchange? Any help would be greatly appreciated in advance.

Hello,
Not clear on your circumstances, but...
Best way to get an exact bootable copy of your old drive to the new one is with Carbon Copy Cloner...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

New MacBook Pro Hard Drive Slow

On Monday night I was browsing the internet when my mid 2012 MacBook Pro started running slowly. I have never really had an issue with my Mac running slow and, so, after a particularly long spin of the rainbow wheel of death, I manually shut my computer down. When I tried to restart, all I got was the grey screen with the flashing folder-with-a-question-mark. I looked online with my phone to find a solution and I proceeded to try a number of suggestions from the support community, including trying to manually restart in safe mode, but as I didn't take my OS X installation disk to school with me, there wasn't much left for me to do (especially because I'm just over 3months outside the 1year warranty and live over an hour away from the nearest apple store). The next morning I took it to my college's OIT help desk and was later told my hard drive had failed and I would need to replace it. Thank god I utilize google drive for my work. Thank god. Today, after paying the $122.49 (no pitance on my part-time minimum-wage school salary) for the "apple recommended" hard drive, as opposed to the $55 amazon alternative, I find that my computer is running slowly again. Not even internet slow. 10-minutes-to-adjust-my-dock-preferences-slow. Writing-this-post-took-almost-an-hour-slow. Also, in the middle of writing this the spinning wheel of death reappeared for at least 10mins, and not wanting to manually restart given what happened last time I tried simply shutting my laptop and giving it a little nap. When I opened it I got a blue screen and (after a few minutes of silent sobbing) was forced to manually restart, which luckily brought me to the login. Why is my once-beloved Mac doing this to me? Is it the expensive new hard drive to blame? Has the issue from before held over and may soon kill this new drive? Any explanations or advice would be greatly appreciated as I have final exams and papers due next week and cannot afford to get to the apple store before I need to research and write two 15-page papers.

Remove the Symantec security software > Remove Symantec software for Mac OS using RemoveSymantecMacFiles
About Norton / Symantec > Viruses, Trojans, Malware - and other aspects of Internet Security: Apple Support Communities

When i boot i get a flashing folder with a question mark. disk utility doesnt work or read my harddrives to boot with. i installed a new SSD and its not reading that either. i have a macbook pro 2011, any help?

So I came to this problem a while ago. M ycomputer basically froze so I was forced to shut down by holding the button down. When I started it up I got the flashing folder with a question mark. I started it up holding down the command and r keys which brought me to disk utility. Although my computer doesn't read that I have a hard drive to start it up. When I click on the disk utility app, I cannot verify or repair anything either. The buttons won't allow me to click on them. It also shows "Mac OSX Base System" which shows I have files and what not saved. I had been told that I need a new hard drive so I bought and manually installed a OWC SSD 240GB drive and when i booted the computer up it booted up yo the operating system fine with all my files and what not on there. After about twenty minutes, it froze again. I forced a shut down, restarted and the same thing happened. I am not able to choose my SSD to boot up, although thats probably because it doesn't have an operating system installed on it??
i have a Macbook Pro 13" 2011
any help would be great, I'm overall confused.

ryansaint11,
this isn’t Apple support; this is a user-to-user forum. We’re just fellow users of Apple products here.
If you want to boot from your SSD, then you should put the SSD where your HDD currently is, and put the HDD into the optical bay. (That setup will also get you the best performance.) At the moment, you’re still booting from your HDD. Note that you will need to format your SSD in Disk Utility [with the “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” format] so that you can install OS X onto it.
Since you have an Early 2011 model, it might or might not have originally come with grey installation DVDs. You will be able to find out whether it did or not by trying to use OS X Internet Recovery to install OS X onto your SSD. If it does not work, or if the installed OS turns out to be Snow Leopard, then it will have originally come with the DVDs, and you should purchase a replacement pair of DVDs from Apple or iFixit; those discs will have your MacBook Pro’s Apple Hardware Test and its iLife apps. If the installed OS turns out to be Lion, then it will not originally have come with the grey installation DVDs, and your Apple Hardware Test will be installed along with Lion, and your iLife apps will be downloadable from the Mac App Store.

Macbook Pro hard drive failed, data recovery possible?

Hi everyone,
I have a 13 inch MBP i purchased in 2010. Late last year I experienced some issues with the computer generally slowing down and one day it would not start up, getting to the gray screen with the apple logo and loading wheel. Contacting apple support I was talked through the process of copying my hard drive contents onto an external harddrive, re installing the operating system, and then copying the contents from the external hard drive back to my internal hard drive. Then after up dating the operating system (I think to snow leopard :S) I took it to a genius bar appointment and the guy did a few tests and said my hard drives looks ok and suggested upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb, which I did with no noticable improvement. But seemed to work ok for another 8 months or so.
So last week after using my MBP alot during end of semester, it suddenly turned off while using google sketch up. I tried restarting a few times which did not help. Then I searched through apple support to find an answer. I managed to get into disk utility, which told me the disk was OK. I then tried to re install my operating system which took a very long time and failed twice before getting no response at all I booked another genius bar appointment.
The guy did some tests a very quickly came to the conclusion that it was my hard drive that had failed. He gave me the option to replace the harddrive for $200, which I think I will do, however as STUPIDLY did not have any of my data backed up, I am desperate to try and recover a few important documents and my iphoto library, so have put off replacing the hard drive until I try to recover my data.
So the apple guy gave me two programs to try and recover my data. He said its a confusing an tedious process especially with no experience but I am willing to give it a go. The two programs are DISC WARRIOR and EASEUS. I know disc warrior costs money and easeus is free. He should me how to boot my MBP into target disc mode, and sold me the appropriate cable (initially a firewire cable, but then told me a thunderbolt cable would be more efficient and was cheaper.. Im sure they are right but can anyone confirm that a thunderbolt cable can be used for what I am trying to do) to connect my MBP in target disc mode, to another macbook pro, and it should connect as an external hard drive. Then with one of these programs try to recover some of my files
He said what I can recover just depends on the extent of the damage to the hard drive and what sections have failed. I am waiting for a friend to use their MBP in a few days to download one of these programs and connect my MBP.
Does anyone have any experience or advise with using either of these programs recommended by the apple guy or anyother programs that I could use? Or any advice at all in how I should go about trying to recover my files by using another Macbook pro and target disc mode? or anything else that might be helpful?
ANY help would be much appreciated guys!

If you think you can handle your own repair. your welcome to check out my User Tips on the subject
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?
Most commonly used backup methods
Gray, Blue or White screen at boot, w/spinner/progress bar
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Folder with question mark issue
Why is my computer slow?
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's
How to reformat a used Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/?p er_page=50

Help with 2009 13inch MacBook Pro Hard Drive!!!

My hard drive recently died on me and I'm new to everything about hard drives. To replace my old hard drive, I purchased a Seagate Momentus Laptop 320GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache. Is this the right one to buy for basic usage?
Also, when I turn on my computer, there is a flashing folder with a question mark in it, this happened initially when my hard drive died. Is this happening because I need to install the installation CDs?
Please, any help would be great!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
That hard drive should work on your MacBook Pro. A question mark appears when your MacBook doesn't find any bootable partition to start, so you can't use your MacBook. To fix it:
1. Replace the hard disk, insert the OS X disc and press C key while your Mac is starting.
2. Go to Utilities > Disk Utility, select your hard disk in the sidebar and go to Partition tab.
3. Select Options and choose GUID Partition Table. Then, press OK, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in Format, and select Apply.
4. Install OS X. When the installation finishes, open  > Software Update and update to the latest version

Trouble re-formatting Macbook Pro Hard drive

I've recently had to reformat my 13" Macbook Pro Unibody and have been unable to do so. I've done it previous times before however now, I recieve a POSIX error as well as others regarding an "input/output error" or that it is "unable to allocate the memory."
So far I've tried booting from the disk and used disk utility (that's where I get the errors) and I've tried to format using terminal to no avail. I recieve the same errors. I've come across suggestions to use "gparted." I was able to create a partition however it is not recognized when I go into terminal or try to install OSX 10.6. Can someone walk me through or point me in the right direction to re-format my hard drive? I'd appreciate the help and would rather resolve the problem my self with the help of others rather than going to the Apple store and spending loads of money I don't have. Should you need more information feel free to ask and I will provide.
Message was edited by: CapKid

I found a ton of other threads and posts about this problem... most of them were talking about external drives connected via USB (which worked fine with FireWire for some reason), but I found one who had the same exact problem as you with a 13" MacBook Pro internal drive.
That guy said that he replaced the hard drive cable (the one that connects the drive to the logic board) and everything worked fine.
It seems to be some type of firmware issue. And now that I think about it, I had a client machine with a similar problem at one point. We ended up sending the machine to Apple (it was still under AppleCare) and they did in fact replace the hard drive cable due to "firmware issues."
I would give that a try. It seems to be most logical being that you had the same problem with two different hard drives.

Transferring files from MacBook Pro hard drive to Time Capsule

I recently bought a Time Capsule. I know I can use that as an external hard drive to save disc space on my MacBook Pro. How can I transfer files that are already on my MacBook Pro hard drive to the time capsule? For instance, I have videos of my daughter saved on MacBook Pro that I can view on iTunes or transfer them to either my iPhone or iPod Touch. Is there a way to either move individual files or the entire folder to Time Capsule?
Thank you!

Open the folder and drag the contents over.

Lost iPhoto when Apple replaced damaged MacBook Pro hard drive

My son and daughter-in-law recently had to replace their MacBook Pro hard drive. Apple did the replacement, but they got it back without iPhoto. Isn't that standard software when you purchase a MacBook Pro? Shouldn't it be part of the replacement, too?

If your computer shipped with Lion, follow the directions here to redownload the iLife apps:
Restoring iLife applications after Internet Restore of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion
If you erase install OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion on a new Mac that shipped with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installed, you can download iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand from the Mac App Store.
After installation, start (up) from OS X.
Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to complete installation of your applications.

New aperture library to ensure no space used on MacBook Pro hard drive

Hi
My laptop MacBook Pro hard drive is getting full (again). I mainly have photos on my laptop and iTunes. Using referenced files and having the raw photos stored on an external drive still eats up lots of GBs. If I create a new Aperture library on a portable external drive (that I can back up on Time Machine) is this the best way to ensure my photos are available to edit, but that no GBs of my hard drive are used up as I import to the NEW library on the 1TB portable external drive.
Are there any disadvantages or other ways to prevent any more hard drive GBs being used?
And should the new library NOT be referenced since the photos will be on the external portable until it fills up.
Many thanks
BW

Hi Kirkby
Appreciate your help and useful link. I think I have been doing exactly as you recommend to date, using my laptop internal drive to store the library etc. and a portable external drive FW800 for my referenced originals, together with iMovie clips for the same events/years. But my external is now full. And my internal drive is OK but I don't want to add more GBs to it.
It is the next step I am pondering. The main problem being to avoid any extra laptop internal GBs being used up.
I usually need access to originals and iMovie clips for the same event on one drive. My iMovie projects include both.
I could buy a 2TB portable drive and move all my originals to it, and even also the library but really I would prefer to have two externals and choose which one to connect, as required for Aperture and iMovie. And I would like maximum growing room on any new drive I buy.
(I back up my lap top and each external drive to time machine, and put my photos from memory card onto a DVD as unedited originals. I have usb2 and FW800 and FW400 only)
It's the best storage of new original photos and clips, and not eating up my last 50gb of my laptop drive, while enabling easy access to my most recent pics to enable more convenient editing, that are my issues. I don't want to have to sit at my desktop with a large external drive while editing.
Is anything daft or disadvantageous about creating a new aperture library on a new external portable drive to store and enable access to all my new photos from 2014 onwards? I realise I would have to switch to the old library and connect another external drive for pre 2014 access. And would this mean NOT eating up any more laptop internal drive GBs?
Thank you again
BW

My MacBook Pro Hard Drive recently gave me the gray folder with the question mark of death. Even as

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for