MacBook hard drive issue

MacBookIssue2021 Said:

"MacBook hard drive issue: My MacBook has decided to stop working. The screen lights up a dark blue snd the Apple logo lights up but nothing more. I need to get the files from the hard drive but snd unsure how. Can someone help?"

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Four Things to Try:

A. Mount the Hard Drive in Disk Utility:

While booted into Recovery Mode [Hold Down: command + R keys upon boot], go to Disk Utility> tap the Hard Drive, then tap the Mount button. See if you can then install it. If it is already mounted, then unmount it and then remount it. See where you can go from there.

B. Seeing your Your Hard Drive is Failing:

Run First Aid and see if things are fixed.

1. Boot: into Recovery Mode (Hold Down: [command + R] upon boot)
2. Select: Disk Utility
3. Select: the Drive
4. Click: First Aid button

C. Reset your SMC and your NVRAM:

Sometimes changes are made to the system and then settings (i.e. for Wi-Fi) become corrupted, in the meanwhile. So, reset both on your Mac. See where it goes from there. It’s worth a go.

• How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support
• Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

D. Try Safe Mode:

In Safe Mode, login items do not run, and corrupt system files(i.e. caches) are intentionally reset as a way to fix issues

1. Boot: in to Safe Mode: [Hold Down: shift key upon boot].
2. Log in: as same user
3. Wait: 30 seconds
4. Restart; your Mac
5. Log in: as same user

Get the data from a backup.

Hold the power button down until the computer shuts off or better yet try an SMC Reset which will also force the computer to power off. Wait 15 seconds and try powering on the laptop. Do you see anything besides an Apple logo such as progress bar or a blinking folder with a question mark?

What is the exact model of your laptop? You can get this information by entering your serial number here:

https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

You can try accessing the data on the computer by booting from an external macOS drive or by putting the laptop into Target Disk Mode and connecting the laptop to another Mac. This assumes the drive on the laptop is still healthy. If the hard drive is failing,then the more you attempt to do anything about it the worse the hard drive failure will become where even a professional data recovery service will be unable to retrieve any data. You must proceed carefully.

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Just because the diagnostics pass does not mean the drive is physically healthy.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and any external media that contains important and unique data.

TheLittles wrote:

B. Seeing your Your Hard Drive is Failing:

Run First Aid and see if things are fixed.

Boot: into Recovery Mode (Hold Down: [command + R1. ] upon boot)

Select: 1. Disk Utility

Select: 1. the Drive

Click: First Aid1.  button

FYI, This does not tell you whether the hard drive is failing. It only tells you whether the file system is corrupt.

Technically Disk Utility can detect a hard drive failure if the failure is extremely severe where the drive's SMART status has triggered a failure alert, but I have only seen this occur twice in 20 years although I have seen hundreds if not thousands of confirmed drive failures that Disk Utility and even the Apple Diagnostics never caught. Most hard drive failures never reach this point because the computer becomes unusable long before this happens. Use the Apple Diagnostics to try to detect a drive failure (again detection is very limited)