Please help! Macbook internal hard drive not detectable.

Dear all,
Hope this post finds you well.
I have a very old Macbook and one day the hard drive started making skipping sounds and the system froze. Upon restarting, the machine would not boot and displayed either a white screen or a flashing question mark folder. I used a USB to boot and tried to use disk utility to repair the hard drive. However, the hard drive is not visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. I have also tried inserting the hard drive into another Macbook while booting with a USB, but the result was the same: No HD in Finder or Disk Utility.
Is it possible to recover the files from the HD? Any help would be much appreciated.
Kind regards
Xierong

Well that hard drive is most likely toast. You'd need to place the hard drive in an external enclosure or use a USB "dongle" like here:
http://www.amazon.com/USB-SATA-5-25-Cable-Adapter/dp/B000YJBL78
Plug that into a working MacBook (You'll have to get a new hard drove or use that other one. Run Data Rescue II, or III and there are some others reviewed here::
http://data-recovery-software-review.toptenreviews.com/mac-recovery-software/dat a-rescue-review.html
It used to be you could run II for free to see what it found. Mt only experience is with II. Usually if I can get the drive to spin up I can recover most things. There was one time I jiggled the drive and got it to spin up and had to hold it very still until it finished recovering all my files!

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Please help, which internal hard drive is best for a MacBook Pro mid 2010?

Hello,
My hard drive on my macbook pro is done for it's 3 years old and I am getting the beach ball constantly, with loads of page outs. I can't afford a SSD so other than that whats the fastest drive I can get? I am guessing a 1TB 7200? Can anyone recomend any? These are the ones I found so far, any thoughts/ advice would be really apreciated.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MacBook-MB470LL-Laptop-Internal-7200rpm/dp/B00DF2GKO0/re f=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1381746696&sr=1-6&keywords=MTXtec
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Seagate-inch-5400RPM-Drive/dp/B007NVGWV0/ref=dp_ return_2?ie=UTF8&n=340831031&s=computers
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC729ZM/A/1tb-sata-hard-disk-drive-kit-for-mac -pro - this is so much more expensive and doesn't give the spec. I would like to avoid that markup if poss, without having an inferior product.
Many thanks.

My personal experience is as follows. I initially installed 1 TB HGST 5400 rpm HDDs and then were replaced by 1 TB HGST 7200 rpm HDDs. Both performed satisfactorily.
Currently I have 1 TB Seagate SSHDs (Hybrid) in my MBPs and they have reduced the boot and shutdown times by over 50%. They are also satisfactory.
Note that there will be cheerleaders and detractors for all brands of HDDs. I merely report my empirical results.
Ciao.
Note that I also have a 2010 MBP as well as a 2011 MBP.

Incredibly slow MacBook, Internal Hard Drive issues...

Good morning everybody! I'm apologize if this post is extremely wordy...
I am extremely baffled by a particular issue with a MacBook 2.0GHz C2D which belongs to a friend of mine. The warranty is expired.
_Brief history:_
Several months ago, this MacBook could not find a bootable volume. The drive would not mount when booting from an external FireWire hard drive. It would not mount when the MacBook was put in Target Disk Mode and connected to another Mac. When booting from an external USB hard drive or with my MacBook Pro connected to the MacBook via Target Disk Mode, the MacBook booted up quickly. I came to the conclusion that the internal hard drive must have failed and needed to be replaced. Ultimately, the data was not recoverable from this drive.
I then proceeded to swap out the defective Apple OEM Seagate hard drive with a known working Apple OEM Fujitsu hard drive. When booting from the Leopard Install DVD, the MacBook would boot incredibly slow, but would finally reach the Installer Language screen. When proceeding to install Leopard, the drive would take a very long time to have data written to it, and ultimately the install failed. I removed the new hard drive from the MacBook and placed it in an external USB enclosure, attached it to the MacBook and booted from the Leopard Install DVD. Leopard would install successfully. I removed the hard drive from the enclosure and reinstalled it the MacBook. When booting from the freshly installed OS, the MacBook would take a very long time to boot. The MacBook is extremely slow!!!
I checked the Activity Monitor to ensure CPU & System Memory Usage was not going crazy. All Processes where normal with adequate CPU & Memory headroom.
I took the MacBook apart thinking that the SATA Controller Cable might be loose. No, it was firmly in place. I reassembled the MacBook and booted it up again. Still incredibly slow!
Finally, after several reboot attempts, the MacBook would book up quickly and operation was perfect. I applied all updates and continued testing the MacBook with great success. Gave my friend his MacBook back and he was grateful.
_Now for the kicker..._
My friend brought me his MacBook a week ago complaining that the MacBook was operating extremely slow (much like when I was initially testing it before). I verified the MacBook was slow when I tried using it. I tried several reboots and then it would get stuck on the gray Apple with spinning gear.
I tried booting into Single User Mode, but it gets stuck on "Waiting for root device"
I put the MacBook in Target Disk Mode and connected it to my G5 2.0GHz Dual Core. The hard drive would mount quickly on the G5 and I used Disk Utility to create a Restore Image. The disk operation would perform normally and the image would be created successfully.
I then partitioned the MacBook's hard drive when connected to the G5, ejected and proceeded to attempt OS reinstall. No dice! The hard drive is not even detected by the Disk Utility on the Leopard Install DVD.
Finally after several reattempts, the hard drive is recognized, but is extremely slow when trying to reinstall...and again, ultimately install fails. Using Disk Utility from Leopard Install DVD, the hard drive fails to unmount when I try formatting.
I don't have Apple Hardware Test disc for the MacBook or Apple Service Diagnostics disc for this model. Running TechTool Pro shows hardware to be okay, disk controller onboard the Fujitsu drive is okay, but running SMART & Surface Scan takes a long, long time (which I'm certain will ultimately error out). Running Drive Genius takes a long, long time as well.
Conclusion:
I think the SATA Controller Cable is defective. I can't think of anything else that would cause disk errors or performance issues like this. Your input is truly appreciated!

Even though no one responded to my post, I thought I'd share the resolution with the entire Apple community. I hope this information will be helpful to some of you with MacBooks or MacBook Pros that may be running painfully slow or may be exhibiting hard drive issues because your machine won't recognize the boot drive or fails to properly boot on a perfectly healthy S.M.A.R.T. verified hard drive. It just might be the hard drive connector/cable. Here it goes...
I visited my local Apple Retail Store and asked a "Genius" at the Genius Bar about this issue and told him my thoughts about a possible failed hard drive connector/cable. First, he didn't even know what a hard drive connector was! Then, he arrogantly stated that he never heard of such a thing and that these cables never fail. Finally, he blatantly dispelled this as a possibility.
On the contrary with my experience, I have had many failed PATA controller cables that required replacement when supporting the desktop PC's at work. I have personally owned and supported many Apple manufactured laptops and desktops and have never encountered this issue on a Mac...until this MacBook!
So, after looking at the Service Manual for the MacBook, I went over to my local Apple Authorized Service Provider and purchased the Hard Drive Connector Apple Part #922-7579. I replaced the original cable, reassembled and proceeded to boot the MacBook with the Leopard DVD installer. The Fujitsu drive was immediately recognized and was able to be formatted and Leopard installed without incident. The MacBook boots off the internal hard drive as normal again and works nice and fast again.
Thank you all for your time!
:D

Hard Drive Not detected after replacing DC In Board

So after more than a year of jiggling an easliy bent AC adapter in the port to get my ibook G4 to charge it just quit and would not charge. I suspected it was the slightly loose DC in port (having no idea what was behind the little hole) so I took it to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store where they confirmed it was likely the DC in board. I was told that just sending my little old ibook away to get fixed would cause an exorbitant $330 just to ship it out, never mind any parts, etc. It was suggested I just buy a new macbook and be done with it. But we've been through a lot and I didn't want to just toss her away so I found a DC In board and replaced it myself. Parts and directions courtesy of ifixit.com
So the part is working well enough that it detects the new AC Adapter (this one new and unbent), which is great. Now I have a slightly larger problem and that is the dreaded little finder/? flashing icon that comes up when I start the computer. It won't start in safe mode. I can't find the original disks (Panther OSX) that came with it. I popped in my Tiger Install Disk and that (Thankfully) came up so I was able to open Disk Utility and lo and behold no hard drive was detected. Just the optical drive and the Tiger DVD.
I was so careful! Did I poke the Hard Drive or something? Is she mad at me for opening her? If anyone has any advice on how I can repair this myself please let me know. I'm desparate to have my baby back.
Message was edited by: alemicia

It's possible that something was disrupted during the repair. You might go back to the ifixit site and look at the instructions for replacing the hard drive. You want to try and see if somehow you disconnected it or something like that. There's a good chance that it is something simple that you can fix. Looking at the pictures might trigger a memory of maybe something taken loose and not reconnected. And try to find your original discs--you will need them.
Good luck!

New hard drive not detected.

Hello all -
I've spent the better part of the last hour searching this forum, and haven't been able to find a solution, so I hope you folks can help me out...
After five years of dutiful, uninterrupted service, the original internal hard drive on my G4 QuickSilver 867 finally went kaput. Everything I really need is backed up offsite, so when the Apple Store Genius told me I'd need to start over with a new hard drive, I wasn't really upset. The Genius informed me that they'd be happy to replace my hard drive and get me up and running again for nearly $300, but then leaned over the counter and said that to save a ton of money, I should really just run out to Best Buy, pick up a new ATA hard drive and pop it in there myself. I happily followed his instructions.
Now I have a new Samsung 80GB ATA hard drive in my machine (set to Master and properly connected), but when I boot to my OSX install DVD, the computer evidently cannot see the new Samsung drive. When it asks for a destination volume on which to install the OS, there are no options available to select.
In searching the forum, it seems like everyone with a similar problem was trying to 'add' a drive, so I'm not sure the other information applies to me (since I have no OS installed, I can't use Disk Utility). Please note that I'm starting from scratch here... Just one hard drive in the machine, straight out of the box.
If there's something really simple that I've failed to do, please forgive this novice and lend a hand! Thanks in advance for your help. It is very much appreciated.

Thanks for the input, Rodney! Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to reformat it. Here's exactly how far I get...
1.) Boot up the computer to the OS Install DVD.
2.) Installer asks me what I wish my primary language to be. I select English and hit Continue.
3.) Installer shows OS description and tells me to hit Continue if I want to install. I click Continue.
4.) The license agreement comes up and I hit Continue and then Agree to move forward.
5.) I am asked to select a destination volume for the OSX installation. There are no options to select. The only button I can press is 'Back'. There is an 'Options' button as well, but it is ghosted.
Any ideas?

Help! Internal hard drive has disappeared

I just realized that one of my four internal hard drives is gone. I opened the machine and switched the bays and all was good except that drive did not show up and when I go to Apple System Profiler it shows that that bay is empty, nothing mounts. Can anyone Please Please help me give me some direction on what to do? I am literally freaking out and I try to be pretty calm and think things out. I have already reset the PRAM, done the SMU and have moved the drives to different bays which leads me to believe it is a hard drive failure. What can I do to or what software will help me mount this drive and find it. Dyin here. Sorry for the drama.

You have not changed anything about that hard drive in its Spotlight Comments, have you?
That can make it disappear from the Finder. However, you should be able to see it using Disk Utility.
You might also check to see if some of the contacts / pins in the rear of the drive have been bent or broken. If it does not show up in any slot / bay, that could be the problem.
If you have heard repetitive metallic clicks and / or scrapes, then the drive has probably crashed.

Hard-Drive not Detected load sata drivers

Hi everyone I have a G6-1189sa notebook, I had a faulty harddrive so replaced it with the exact same drive 750GB WD, Thing is I could not save anything from the original drive ? so no recovery partitions are anything I even lost all my family photos and software.
Ok so I done a straight swap over and went ahead installing my fresh Windows 7 x64 disk, then I got an error message saying no device detected please install driver etc etc.
I know I need to install the sata driver for the harddrive to be detected, so I extracted the HP sata control driver to a USB pen the tried to load the driver, with the load driver option on the install disk.
Error message saying driver is not signed !!!! So after some reading on google I learned I had to disable the naitive sata option in the bios settings for the harddrive to be detected.
Thing is there is not a option for this in my bios ? unless Im missing something like an advanced bios setting.
I even went to the Intel site and tried some of there drivers but I get the same error message driver not signed.
So my question is ? how can I disable the native sata option if Its possible , If not how can I load the HP sata driver if its not signed.
Its very anyoing someone even said I have to slip the drivers in and make a new home made W7 disk myself to get my pc working again what the hell, where would I start.
Maybe I should put the laptop in the post and send it back, Ive never had so much trouble before making simple memory and harddrive exchanges.
Any advice please people Im at my wits end, my laptop is only a few month old and its now a door stopper lol

Hi,
Boot into the bios and be sure that the hard drive is detected.
Sata drivers are included in Windows 7.
Return the bios to its default settings and use the HP Recovery Disks. If you don't have the Recovery Disks then order them from HP. Order HP recovery Disks.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

Internal hard drives not mounting on startup

Problem: I recently did a clean install of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on my Early 2008 Mac Pro. Since then, one or more of my four internal hard drives will not mount at startup, and it's seemingly random which ones will or won't mount; it differs from one startup to the next. Obviously, the boot drive starts up, but the remaining three drives are hit-or-miss.
Troubleshooting So Far: I can open Disk Utility and mount the disk(s) manually, and when I click Verify Disk, the hardware checks out okay. After my most recent startup, I brought up the System Log in Terminal (sudo syslog -B) and found this entry for one disk ("Media 1") that did not mount:
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: event logs in /Volumes/Media 1/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (454 0 68038)
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: Had metainfo
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: UUIDs match!
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: log dir: /Volumes/Media 1/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 1D55396E-183E-42AA-B788-FEFFF8694C10
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: Events arrived for /Volumes/Media 1 after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: creating a dls for /Volumes/Media 1 but it already has one...
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home SecurityAgent[147] <Notice>: User info context values set for dangreene
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Thanks for your help!

Is "Media 1" the name of the volume, or is it just "Media"?

How do I make an internal hard drive not mount at startup?

I have an internal hard drive hooked to an ACARD ATA RAID controller that I use for backup purposes, and I would like to mount and unmount it manually. Disk Utility in OS9 and earlier had an option not to mount a disk at startup, but I see no such option in OS X.
I can manually unmount the drive in Disk Utility, but it always comes back up when I reboot. How can I keep the drive from mounting upon reboot?

I discovered this in a quick internet search.
http://www.macseven.com/files/20070719how_to_prevent_a_drive_volume_frommounting.html
Please note that I have never personally done this and am not recommending it. But maybe it will give you some guidance.
Regards,
Steve M.

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Have you access to DiskWarrior or TechToolPro? Either of those might fix your problem otherwise, try booting from the Apple Hardware Test on your install disc and see what it says.

Internal Hard Drive Not Appearing in Finder

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etcetera25 wrote:
The drive is a goner otherwise though. Since I was solely using this failed drive recently, I may have just worn it out, which is too bad, even though I worked with an identical 2 TB WD internal drive earlier this year and never had problems with that one.
Drives shouldn't just wear out from use, at least not in a reasonable number of years. They are designed for that. Drives however do fail. However, that drive is more likely to be badly corrupted than it is to be mechanically failing. When you are finished grabbing the data off it, use Disk Utility to zero it out. If it can successfully be zeroed out then it is most likely fine to continue to use.

Time Capsule internal hard drive not visible

I have one of the older 500GB TC. It worked fine for a year then I decided to wipe the hard drive to erase the contents. I stopped the process in the middle of clearing the hard drive because it was going on about 8 hours. Every since then the TC works fine as a wireless router, but the internal hard drive is not visible. It won't do any back ups and it's not visible in the Airport program.
Any suggestions?

See Pondini's TM FAQs.
iMac refurb (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

Pavilion g6 internal hard drive not working , Can I use WD internal hard drive ?

I have pavilion g6 series laptop . I don't know RPM .
HP internal hard drive is looking very costly.
Can you tell me whether I can use WD internal hard drive or not . If yes then How much RPM hard drive I need to buy?

Hi,
We won't concern about RPM, faster (more rpm) is better. The HDD's are much, much, much, much cheaper now. They were more expensive during a flood in Thailand few yours back. Yes, you can use WD HDD for your computer. You can pick one from the following list:
http://www.newegg.com/Laptop-Hard-Drives/SubCategory/ID-380
My suggestion:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136835
or this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178340
Regards.
BH
**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

Please help Installing new Hard Drive. PLEASE HELP

I know this topic has been posted before and I have read all the reviews but still nothing ..
I m trying to install a new hd. I put the screws where there needed to go, plugged in all appropriate SATA plugs into new HD, went to dicl utility and no new HD shows up to initialize or format. Please help me .. I have purchased a 500 gb Seagate HD from ramjet.
Item:
Seagate 500GB SATA II 7200rpm 16mb
Specifications:
Capacity: 500GB
Performance
Rotational Speed: 7200rpm
Buffer Size: 16mb
Transfer Rate
Serial ATA (G/s): 3.0G/sec
Average Seek: < 8.5ms
Average Latency: 4.16ms
I have installed and uninstalled the new HD about 5 times already. Please help me

On older ATA drives there are little plastic tabs that, depending on configuration, designate a drive as "Master" or "Slave." If both drives are configured as "master" it can sometimes cause one not to be seen by the computer.
I only mentioned it because:
A) I had it happen 2x with my old G4.
B) Most new drives are shipped with the jumpers in "master" position, I'm guessing because they assumed most people were replacing their primary drives, not adding them.
Check out these links for more about jumpers on drives.
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ref/jumper_settings.html
http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/43/
Good luck!
-K

What are the symptons of macbook pro hard drive not running fast enough

what are the symptons of the hard drive not running fast enough

Physically the drive will be as fast as any other of its class, and if not then it's experiencing a mechanical issue that should prompt a warning or two in the system, especially if you use a drive management tool like Disk Utility that checks the drive's built-in "S.M.A.R.T." diagnostics.
As for "logical speed," if there are bad blocks on the drive where sectors cannot be read or written to because of a breakdown of the storage medium, then this can result in a program or the entire system crashing or hanging (generally the latter is the case), where it usually pauses for a number of seconds at a time. This is usually accompanied by messages that state "I/O Error" or other similar warning in the OS X Console (in the Applications > Utilities folder).
Beyond this, drive formatting errors such as might happen after a crash or power outage can result in similar hang-like behavior, though this is usually not as distinct of a hanging behavior as is seen with bad blocks.
Finally, if the drive is simply full of files or highly fragmented (not as much of a problem in OS X, but it can happen), then this can reduce access time for reading and writing files, and prevent the system from optimizing the use of RAM, which can result in overall slowdowns. Heavy drive use can also cause similar bottlenecks, but this is ususally only an intermittent issue during a time when you are performing a heavy file transfer or copying process, or other task that occupies access to the drive's index and formatting (e.g., if you check it for errors with Disk Utility, then you may see the system pause or slow down during the check).

Please help! Macbook internal hard drive not detectable.

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