stuck in recovery mode, “examining volumes”

Question

stuck in recovery mode, “examining volumes”

i have 2 macbooks, one mid 2012 and one late 2012.

(the mid-2012 is getting crabby for its age and right now keeps stalling out loading the latest update, whatever comes after catalina, so i’m avoiding that update for the moment, but it might become the subject of a future question)

the late-2012 macbook, running catalina, was urging me to update but it needed more storage space on the hd to do it, so i was going to start clearing HDspace shortly, when it stalled out (i have adhd, and had too many tabs open, some of you know all about that surely). i restarted, but it wouldn’t reboot, kept stalling. it wouldn’t restart in safemode, so i reset the nvram, and, and again, still wouldn’t restart, so i tried to enter recovery mode, and so now it’s stuck in mac os recovery “examining volumes”, and my other option under the apple menu is “startup disk” which if i choose that i get the spinning rainbow ball.

i don’t have any backups for this computer (i couldn’t afford an external backup for this one just yet; reeeaaalllly short on cash right now, among other current disasters i just had to replace my phone . . . ), but i’d really prefer to get this computer back up and running

so, any ideas on what to do next?

please?

(i’m not particularly computer savvy, so please go easy on me twch-talk-wise)

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Dec 22, 2020 4:14 PM

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Answer 1

steve626

Level 6

13,545 points

Dec 23, 2020 10:56 AM in response to zuul’s_keymaster

Unfortunately, what you are describing is very consistent with failure of the internal drive hardware. Not being able to boot into recovery leaves you almost no options other than to try to boot from an OS on an external drive, but I think the likelihood of being able to repair your failed drive is low. Here are some instructions that when followed enabled success in such a recovery, but I think the odds are low, and doing this requires some tech savvy. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251215822

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,150 points

Dec 24, 2020 6:43 PM in response to zuul’s_keymaster

If you have a non-Retina MBPro 13" (mid-2012) laptop, then there is a possibility the hard drive SATA Cable is bad which is very common with this particular model.

Also the hard drive on a non-Retina model from 2012 is most likely beginning to wear out or the drive may actually be starting to fail. To check the health of the hard drive run DriveDx and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Check for file system issues run Disk Utility First Aid on the drive. Even if First Aid reports everything is "Ok" click on "Show Details" to see if there are any unfixed errors which can cause issues. If there are unfixed errors, then it will require erasing the whole drive and restoring from a backup or clone.

To look for possible software issues run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

You should always have frequent and regular backups since mistakes happen and hardware can fail (sometimes without warning). Also it is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD plus an SSD can fail without any warning signs.

Without a backup your options to fix this will be extremely limited.

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stuck in recovery mode, “examining volumes”

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