MBP stuck at gray boot screen with apple logo, loading wheel, and loading bar

What backups do you have?

The only way it to take the hard drive out and connec it to another Mac using a SATA to USB or firewire adapter.

He can also access the hard-drive and files by installing MacDrive in a Windows PC. Just take the drive out of your Mac place it in a SATA to USB enclosure, install MacDrive ina Windows based PC and connect the drive after it installs.

You can find more information here:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/standard/

Hope this helps!

Spaghettipopsicle wrote:

Today i was using my mac book pro and it was working just fine, and i shut it off and when i tried to use it later I get stuck at this screen.

Your Mac is attempting to fix your drive and it's not succeeding, you can let it go for some time and see if it clears up.

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS3148

Do these steps.

If on 10.6 stick a clean and polished 10.6 disk into the computer and reboot holding the c key down.

If on 10.7 hold the command and r keys and boot, you'll enter Lion Recovery Partition.

Under the Utilities Menu is Disk Utility, use it to Repair Disk (note any failures!) and Repair Permissions (ignore list)

See if your computer boots, if not repeat the above steps and use Disk Utility to format a blank external drive, Partiiton Tab, Option: GUID, format OS X extended (J) and click apply.

Next quit and install 10.6/10.7 onto the external drive, when that completes, hold the option key down and you can boot from it. Retrieve your files off the internal drive to the external.

If you cant' see your internal drive in Disk Utility, it's likely failed.

Sometimes you can software like Data Rescue, installed on another Mac or a external boot drive and "read" the failed drive for any salvagable data, provided it's still working mechnically. Good thing about DataResue supposedly is you don't pay unless it's sure it can recover some of your files. I never used it as I make many backups, or bootable clones.

Mechanically failed drives data can only be recovered by platter dissection, a very expensve process.

There is several ways to read the drive, take it out and place it in a enclosure or use a IDE/SATA to USB adapter cable with another Mac or PC (with MacDrive) or use another Mac and Firewire Target Disk Mode (hold T on the sick Mac)

https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661

If the drive works and you got your data off of it, you can erase it (use the Zero option, GUID/OS X Ext.J) and reinstall OS X, same user name as before, update, (Repair Disk from disk if on 10.6.8) install programs and return files last (and in that order exactly) your machine will be as close as possible to the way it was.

Lastly, consider making a clone, this way you can simply option boot and use that.

http://www.bombich.com/

If the above is too much for you, please let a local Mac/Pc specialist assist you to prevent data loss.

Don't try to repair the volume, boot from it, or do anything else until you've backed up as much data as you can.

You can install the Mac OS on an external drive, boot from that, and copy the files from the internal drive. Or you can boot the MBP in FireWire target mode by holding down the key combination command-T at startup, then connect it with a FireWire cable to a working Mac with a FireWire port.