Possible hard drive problem with MacBook Pro? PLEASE HELP!!!

MacBook Pro loads to login screen with my personal account (which shows a grey silhouette) my student account(shows custom pic) and guest account(same grey silhouette) there is no feedback when I click on anything. I have restarted it multiple times & don't get anywhere with it. I just updated stuff on the macbook prior to this incident. I need help because I have all of my business, school, and personal things on this machine. What could be the cause of this? Why is it happening? I need it fixed ASAP as I have work that needs to be completed
P.S. I am unsure of the exact operating system but it was the Mountain Lion that it came with. I was planning on upgrading to Mavericks tonight until this problem arose

"Any drive can fail at any time."
Don't update anything until you have a large-ish external drive and Time Machine or other backup working.
You dodged a bullet this time. Next time, maybe you will not be so lucky.

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External hard drive compatible with macbook pro 10.5.8

external hard drive compatible with macbook pro 10.5.8, i need a hard drive that will work with 10.5.8 to back everything up before upgrading to 10.6. a hard drive that is compatable with 10.5.8 has been impossible to find, a hard drive that works with both opperating systems is what i am looking for, any information that can help is appreciated

You can buy just about any USB2.0 hard drive and use it with your MacBook Pro. Many older external drives come pre-partitioned and formatted FAT32 for use on Windows. Your Mac can use that file system as well, but it has limitations on file sizes. You can always re-partition your external drive and re-format it as HFS+ (MacOS Extended Journaled) then your old Mac OS version and your new one should both be able to access it just fine. One thing to keep in mind is that many older OSes don't really handle drives larger than 2TB well, so you would probably want to try to keep your external drive to something smaller than 2TB...

Recurring hard drive problems in MacBook Pro.

Hi all,
This will be a fairly long post, so I apologize beforehand. I feel as though I should share as much information as possible in order to try to nail down this problem as best as I can. So, here we go...
About 6 years ago I purchased a 15" MacBook Pro. I had been using it just about nonstop for about 5 years, only closing the lid when I transport it, even in 3 hour car rides, and had no problems. I was using snow leopard for the duration of those 5 years. In August of 2012 I decided to take a year of study in Denmark so I could spend time in Europe. I wanted to make sure I was set for the year, so when mountain lion released, I purchased it and upgraded from snow leopard to mountain lion while skipping lion altogether. I also purchased a charger consistent with European outlets and power supply upon arrival. I used the computer just fine between the time I upgraded in early August until about the middle of October when the dreaded grey startup screen appeared with the folder and the flashing "?". I took the computer to the premium, certified Apple reseller in Copenhagen to have them look at it. i ended up paying to have the hard drive replaced because I was out of my warranty period. They fixed the computer and everything seemed to work fine.
Two weeks later the hard drive failed again. I brought it to the guys at the service desk again and they said "Yeah, it's the hard drive. We'll replace it for free since you were just here 2 weeks ago." So I let them fix it. When I received it a couple of days later I brought it home to restore everything from my backup and during the restoration process the dang hard drive failed again. At this point I had some friends coming to visit me so I got the computer repaired, didn't use it, and sent it home with them. Then, my parents went out and bought a newer 13" MacBook Pro and sent it to me.
This computer was wonderful. It worked great...for a month. Then the battery went out. Still under warranty, the computer hospital patched my little guy up and I was able to use the machine again. However, two weeks later, guess what happened? You got it! Another hard drive failure. At this point I was like "Ok, this has to be a user error." So I did some digging on the Internet and found that just closing the lid and hauling it around is not the way to handle the computer. So I started being more conscious about it, not running for trains, etc. I got the computer repaired again, this time under warranty and everything was great for another month when the hard drive failed again.
When I took it to get repaired again I asked what the heck was happening, why the same problem had been affecting two separate machines. They essentially told me to make sure the machine was powered all the way down. That makes sense considering what I had read previously. So this time I took all the necessary precautions and turned it off before I moved it anywhere. This method worked fine for two weeks. Today the hard drive has failed again.
The weird part about this story is that my dad has been using the old machine I sent with my friends ever since the end of December and has had zero problems with it, meanwhile I'm still having hard drive failure after hard drive failure. I just don't understand what's going on. Is this a user error? Am I doing something blatantly wrong with my machine that would cause this problem? Is it the fact that I've upgraded to the mountain lion OS? Is it merely the fact that I'm in Europe trying to use American products, even though I've gone out and bought the proper charger for the part of the world I am in? It's starting to become a huge annoyance, especially considering my finals are all next week and I have papers/presentations to prepare. Other than the obvious remedy of getting another repair job, is there anything I can do differently to make sure this doesn't happen again? I find it hard to believe that this is a fluke with 7 or so problems in two completely separate machines...
Sorry for such a long post. I figured that in order to get help people would need to hear the whole story. It's kind of unique and there are a lot of factors at play here. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your help and your time!

Well that's a tricky thing - I guess I should have said that it wasn't a completely new charger that I bought. The Apple certified store had just the wall outlet portion available. You know where you unplug it from the box and you can either make it a short plug or a long one? They gave me the long portion for the European outlets. The model number on the box on the charger from the old portion of the charger is - A1344. It's a 60W MagSafe power adapter. The guy at the store told me the box automatically converts so there's no need for a converter, you just need to plug it in. Can't find anything denoting a model number the half of the European charger. Both are Apple provided - the old portion is from my old computer of 6 years ago that is working at my dad's house and the newer half from Europe was from this Apple certified store. Hope that helps you out. I just want to make sure I don't make the same mistakes if they are my fault once I get back home. The Apple store is a 2.5 hour drive from me as opposed to a 15 minute train ride.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ISSUES WITH MACBOOK PRO 13"

My new macbook pro 13" is unable to read my new Toshiba Canvio 3.0 plus 1 TB hard drive. I have the new OS Lion that came with the computer. The computer is up to date. I am not sure what is causing this issue. Is this problem caused by a software issues or is my new Macbook deffective. Please some one help me or give me some advice. I am thinking about turning my MacBook in for a new one.
Clem

Did you format the external drive for use with OS X?
Open Disk Utility. Does Disk utility see the connected drive?
Format it to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Is there a faulty hard drive issue with MacBook Pros recently? (I say recent, mine was bought about a year ago)

The reason I am wondering is because previously my MacBook Pro crashed and failed to load past the white screen with the logo and a spinning disk.
So after googling the problem, fiddling about in recovery mode (which is pointless given I know next to nothing about computers), I went to an Apple Dealer
and they very kindly re-installed OS X Lion for me, because the hard drive had decided to play up.
Now, I am again facing problems with my hard drive, after both Safari and iTunes crashed. After this Safari refused to open and I restarted several times before a loading bar appeared at the white logo w. spinning disk screen, and after the loading bar filled my mac finally managed to open Safari, albeit minus the close tab 'x', only now, it is also claiming there isn't enough memory to open iTunes (there is, almost 7 GB of free RAM) and after installing ClamXav and Sophos and finidng no viruses, I ran Disk Utility which informed me after I had verified the disk that I need to run in recovery mode using another disk (which, I don't have. My family has another mac running Snow Leopard and I have no disk for OS X Lion... or would an external hard drive do?) and that I need to repair the disk using Disk Utility.
Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated
Additionally, a program that I have called Sibelius also plays up at around about the same time that the disk keeps crashing. Could this be the cause...?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
As far as I know, I haven't noticed any problem with the Mid 2012 MacBook Pro about their hard disks. All hard disks fail with their use, but it looks like the hard disks you had on your Mac were defective (at least, the last one). If the hard disk was replaced recently, you should be able to take it and they should repair it for free, or at least, that's what Apple does on Apple Stores

New hard drive problems in Macbook Pro

So, I recently bought a new hard drive for my early 2011 Macbook pro. I bought a 1Tb hgst internal hard drive. I installed the hard drive and everything and I bought a mountain lion os disk from apple to install. Unfortunately, when I start up my mac it goes to the apple logo and makes a repetitive 3-beep sound. I tried holding down option and installing from the disk but it still does the three beep sound and wont start up. If anyone can help, it'd be greatly appreciated!!!!!

Reinstalling OS X on those models is done via Internet Recovery:
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks without erasing drive
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. 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 then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Reinstall Mountain Lion or Mavericks
OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
     Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
                 if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Or to do an Erase and Install:
Install or Reinstall Mavericks or Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
OS X Mavericks- Erase and reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Erase and reinstall OS X
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.
To reinstall Lion you do this:
Install Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your external hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion. Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
            if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Erasing hard drive problems on macbook pro

My brand new macbook pro was working very slowly for about a day and then just froze so I restarted it. But then when it was trying to turn on it was just a gray screen with a file and a question mark on it, which I read means it can't find the hard drive or operating system or something. So I then held down the option key and waited for internet recovery to connect but now I don't know what to do. I clicked disc utilities and I am trying to find my hard drive to erase and restore it (my computer is so new I hardly have any files on it). My only options are 500.11 GB APPLE HDD HTS545050A7E362 Media and then under that it says disk0 with a subheading of "OS X Base System." The only thing that is giving me the option to erase it is the 500.11 GB APPLE HDD one but I'm not sure if I should do that because I don't know if that's technically my hard drive or what. Based on the things I have read there should be a subheading under that with their personal hard drive but mine does not have that.
MacBook Pro

When you open Disk Utility>Erase, the HDD on the top of the list on the left is the one you want to select. Look at this example:
However with that said, I suggest that you first select the re-install OSX option and see if that works from the 4 option menu>
Ciao.

What is the "best" internal hard drive compatible with macbook pro 13.3" product number: MD101LL/A that does not damage OS?

I'm looking for an upgrade in space ( 750gb - 1 TB) and performance on the hard drive, but I have read in many forums that many "compatible" hard drives may damage the OS. I plan on installing bootcampt with Windows 7 and the latest Mac OS. I'm wondering if anyone has updated their HD and if they've experienced any problems with it, or if anyone has any suggestions. Thank you for your advice in advance!

rchu89 wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone has had any particular experience with the Seagate 1TB solid state hybrid drive (found here: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid-Hybrid-2-5-Inch-ST1000LM014/dp/B00B99JUBQ). It boasts SSD-like speeds at a fraction of the cost, and its right around my budget, but perhaps its too good to be true?
I have two of those Seagate SSHDs, using one as the internal drive in my primary MBP. Boot and shutoff times are dramatically less than before (using 7200 rpm HGST HDDs). In other respects, I have no complaints regarding the drive performance. I can recommend them based on my limited experience (~3 months). The $99 price does look very attractive.
Note that when you install a HDD of larger capacity in a MBP, it should be reflected in your backup strategy. Do you have a backup drive to accommodate the additional data that you will be able to store on the new internal HDD?
Ciao.

FireWire 400 External Hard Drive problem with Macbook

I have been using the firewire 400 connection of my macbook (2 ghz Intel Core Duo, OS X 10.4.11) with a LaCie 320 GB 7200 RPM with no trouble for over a year now. Suddenly, the drive is really slow to mount. Sometimes only one of the 2 partitions mount (which never happened before). And it takes considerably longer to access files, let alone load one up.
I tried the external drive with the same fw 400 connection on a G4 running 10.3.9 and a PC running XP and both mounted fine (with, as expected, only the windows compatible partition loading in the latter case). Data was quickly accessed and loaded on both machines.
So, thinking it was a problem with my macbook's fw port, I tried another fw external drive, which mounted very quickly and was quick to access and load data.
What is going on?

Hi George,
Have you had a look in the system.log file in the Console application? It sometimes a good start to check to see if its reporting any errors when you plug the drive in. Note the exact time that you plug in the drive. This will make it easier to find the part of the log you should be looking at.
Another thing you can do is run a disk utility such as Disk Warrior on the drive and optimize the directory. Directory problems can also cause drives to mount slowly. On the other hand it doesn't really make sense that the drive will mount quicker on other machines. Hope this helps.

Video card or driver problems with an N200, please help!

I have a lenovo 3000 N200, it is really cool, runs even games quite well, including newer ones.
But, is it normal to for the display driver program to freeze out in Warcraft 3? It always does that, when accessing the list of maps in the game and after 3-5 mins during an actual game. It sets the resolution down to 640X480 (from 1280X800) and in 16 color. I have to reset it in order to make it work. Also it does the same in Spore - though after having the driver written for Spore installed, ( which I downloaded from lenovo's site ) I haven't encountered that problem so far. Also Second Life shuts down - thankfully it does not freeze the drivers. I understand that the model I have is not meant for gaming but if it can run Warhammer 40k: Soulstorm at meduim graphic settings (on widescreen) without a lagg I can't understand why it wouldn't be able to handle warcraft 3 - that even an ATi m200 express can handle. I mean an X3100 from Intel must be far more powerful. (Said ATi card laggs with older games like Unreal Tournament)
I have the latest driver - official - and a Win Xp pro Sp2. I always keep my system up to date - save for opsys but so far driver did not need sp3 - and virus clean.
Please help me?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Well, Unreal Tournament 2004 runs flawlessly on max graphics - though simple Unreal Tournament laggs like hell with all possible settings - also, as I said Dawn Of War and it's expansions run well on med graphics. The Suffering Ties That Bind runs also good on highest settings - though there is a bit of degradation compared to my tabletop pc's performance. Disciples 2 ran - of course - well, there were some texture problems with it but Heroes 5 ran quite well even on higher settings (as I mentioned it sometimes blunted down the textures but not always and it ran without a lagg). Alien Versus Predator 2 ran on max graphics, and there was no trouble, save for the aliens' special vision (that white thing that looks as if inverted colors) didn't work - aka was only a black screen - and that the crosshair of the smartgun was only a blank red/green block on the middle of the screen.Oh, and Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour works on highest settings without a lagg, along with Quake 3, and Jedi knight : Academy. It even runs Perfect World on high settings and only laggs in bigger towns - but that also might be because of the tremendous bandwidth usage that occurs. Even Red Alert 3 was able to run, but I would only advise that for RA fanatics, on low settings it was playable. Also, C & C: Tiberium Wars runs better than RA 3 , if you like that it is quite playable and worth a try. As you can see I have put it to it's limits to see what it can endure. Unreal Tournament 3 ran, though was gruesomely degraded and then it gave me the blue screen of death; so I quickly uninstalled that. Other than the forementioned program I had no real problems with the card, but the existing problems are a pain in the ... well we all know how bothering it can be when one is unable to play his/her favourite game (that should really run flawlessly).
Doesn't vista eat up too much of the system resources? A friend of mine was complaining about his n200 that vista is too slow on it and it eats up too much processor/memory.
Also, still no new on videocard front... Asked around if anyone knows, but I am guessing that maybe even Blizzard - referring to my Warcraft problem - shows more compassion to their forums and users than Lenovo, so I'll ask around there too.

External drive problems with Macbook Pro

Hey guys, I'm not sure if this is the exact place for it so apologies if this isn't it.
On my last computer and this one as well, whenever I delete something off of my an external thum/harddrive/whatever, the memory literally disappears to the point where there is only a few megabytes left unless I reformat it. This was cool until I started using an external hardrive, in which case it's becoming a little more difficult to just transferring and formatting.
Does anyone know about this problem and any possible solution to it?

In addition to putting the files in the trash, are you also emptying the trash as well, with the thumbdrive mounted?
If you don't, the files are still there, and NOT being deleted at all. All you are doing is moving the files to the thumbdrives's trash folder. Always make sure you empty the trash after deletion, and with the thumbdrive still mounted.

Sound problem with macbook pro! help please

hi guys!!
my mac sound is not working also the headphones however if i plug the hdmi cable it works on my tv !!!!! I think it is a hardware problem!!
what do you think guys !!!!

Hi a,
Have you checked the settings in System Preferences > Sound?
There is a switch inside the audio jack that may be stuck. Try gently inserting an audio plug, gently wiggling it, and then removing the audio plug.
See if this discussion helps: https://discussions.apple.com/message/16201033#16201033

I've lost the use of Appleworks in 10.9.2. Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other?

I've lost the use of Appleworks by upgrading to 10.9.2.
Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other? I'd like to be able to boot to the older OS when I need Appleworks and few other applications that aren't available on OS 10.9.2.
Any suggestions?
Thank you for your help.

Hello again, WZZZ,
Here's an update. I was successful in creating two partitions on my internal drive, and in installing OS 10.6.6 on the second partition, as per your guidence. I now have it up to 10.6.8 with all the security updates and AppleWorks. A great thing.
Some thoughts:
• The partitioning had one hitch; it failed at first. But once I "repaired" the disc with Disc Utility the partitioning went thru.
• The partitioning took a long time in 'resizing the partition.' A few hours I think it was. Lots of progress bar watching.
• If I had it to do again, I'd size the two partitions differently. My original data was occupying about 230 Gb of the 320 Gb disc. I made the new partitions share the space, about 230 and 75Gb. That left very little available space for the main disc. I ought to have put some breathing room in there. As it is, it's an incentive to clean up all those files, especially all those iTunes files. I now have about 10% of available space there and mean to continue deleting.
So, all in all a good project that got me where I wanted to go. Thank you for your help.
Appreciatively,
wallah

I see that i have a problem after installing my new hard drive on my macbook pro mid 2009 version. I put a new hard drive, with all of my information from my old drive installed on it, into the computer. but now have the blinking question mark folder

i see that i have a problem after installing my new hard drive on my macbook pro mid 2009 version. I put a new hard drive, with all of my information from my old drive installed on it, into the computer. but now have the blinking question mark folder. I see that it means that it isn't reading the new hard drive.
did i miss a step between transferring all of my information from my old hard drive to the new hard drive and installing the new hard drive into the computer. I believe that i installed properly. it was quite easy.
thanks for your help

It means there is no bootable system on the drive. If you still have access to the old drive, then I suggest you boot from it then clone it to the new internal drive. Use OPTION boot to boot from the Recovery HD on the old drive:
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Source means the external old drive. Destination means the new internal drive.

Can somebody please advise urgently... I backed up my entire hard-drive of my macbook pro - just prior to installing osx mountain lion. I put everything into a folder on my desktop - then backed it up onto an external drive. Once this was done - i deleted

Can somebody please advise urgently...
I backed up my entire hard-drive of my macbook pro - just prior to installing osx mountain lion.
I put everything into a folder on my desktop - then backed it up onto an external drive. Once this was done - i deleted the folder off my desktop - and following this - things started to go all weird...pages hanging, the coloured 'wheel of death' appeared for ages. So i had to employ a 'hard-boot' restart - as i had not other options.
I'm pretty sure i made copies of of files/apps/folders etc - however not so sure now as i cant even start up my laptop!!!
Can somebosy please help me urgently??!!!

Got the exact same problem, and I also did this operation many times before, from 500Gb to 750Gb, and then from 750Gb to 1 Gb. Not My HD got a little such complaining about bad sectors when in windows bootcamp, but still runs fine though.
So I bought a new 1Gb drive exactly same drive as the one thats getting sick. I did the clone thing, with super duper, CCC, DU, but no matter it will not boot when i move the new drive inside the macbook…….**** thing exuse me, but wasted so much time.
Now I get this strange feeling that something must have changed in the macbook itself. Just wondering if this could be a EFI "mac bios" prevention thing, they made just to sell more new computers, when you can't improve or fix your old one.
If so, then its pretty scary. If not then I simply can't figure out why this suddenly becomes a problem for so many people, as I see so many posts about this!!
BR Pete

Possible hard drive problem with MacBook Pro? PLEASE HELP!!!

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