Flashing folder with question mark, Macintosh HD not showing up. HELP?!

How old is your MBP? If it 2 or more years old then your hard drive may be failing and you are lucky you could even boot to the Recovery HD.

If it less then 2 years old the drive could still be failing. Can you post a picture of the Disk Utility screen from the Recovery HD.

Easy fix, OS X just forget it.

Reboot holding the Shift Key down, a progress bar should go across the screen and finish.

When you get in, set the Startup Disk in System Preferences and reboot normally and test.

Step by Step to fix your Mac

If that doesn't work, then look at the further steps in the above link #8 and #4 etc or...

Create a data recovery, undelete boot drive

Before you do Step #20 Zero Erase and install OS X 😢

If the hard drive isn't showing up at all in Disk Utility, that's a bad sign. Note that the hard drive and the volume are two separate things. Here's what I see in Disk Utility:

The top item, "500.11 GB ST.... Media," is the physical hard drive. The item underneath it, "Hyperion," is the volume that shows up on the desktop. If the hard drive is there but the volume is not, then the hard drive probably became so badly corrupt that it lost the volume. In this case, though, some of the data may still be recoverable by software. See Recovering deleted files. (Note that my pages contain links to other pages that promote my services, and this should not be taken as an endorsement of my services by Apple.) Once you have recovered what you can, you'll need to repartition the hard drive and reinstall everything.

On the other hand, if the hard drive itself is not showing up, that's almost certainly a hardware issue, probably a failed hard drive. If the drive has failed, there's no way to recover data from it other than sending it off to an expensive (ie, 4 figures) data recovery service, where they will pull the drive apart in a clean room and read what they can off the platters using specialized equipment.

Before you do Step #20 Zero Erase and install OS X 😢

There is no benefit in this situation to doing a zero erase. It is common misconception and myth that doing a secure erase maps out bad blocks, but that is not true on a modern drive. Modern drives map out bad blocks at a very low level in the course of normal, everyday operation.

Thomas A Reed wrote:

Modern drives map out bad blocks at a very low level in the course of normal, everyday operation.

Yes I'm aware how it works, but it doesn't do it well enough for some reason still, likely because it only occurs on reads and not writes.

I'm suspecting some parts or operation of OS X, the driver is not functioning correctly to adequately perform the operation, or OS X is not reading the files back to confirm they are properly written, thus activating the driver low level bad sector checks.

I put the theory to the test by accident recently when trying to format a BootCamp partition, after several tries and cancels, which I had to repair the drive afterwards, the partition would not form.

However, I Erased Free Space with Zero's and lo and behold it formatted correctly the first time afterwards, so something is wrong, I don't know what it is, but it's not working on the "low level" as intended.

Bad sectors

Bad sectors are the result of problems with the magnetic media used to save data on a hard disk. While generally rare, bad sectors can develop at any time. Bad sectors usually reveal themselves by a repeating series of sounds that are heard during an attempt to read-from or write-to a disk. These sounds can be roughly characterized as:

• Chug, chug, chug, chug, pause.
• Grind, grind, grind, grind, pause.

The series will usually repeat multiple times until the system abandons the attempt to read-from or write-to the disk.

Bad sectors are bad news:

• Bad sectors can corrupt your personal data, operating system files, or space on which the directory of a disk, partition, or volume has been written. Data in bad sectors is generally considered irretrievably corrupted.
• If bad sectors develop on your startup disk and corrupt either operating system files or the startup disk's directory, your Mac will not start up.
• Bad sectors can be an early indication of a hard drive that will eventually need to be replaced.

If bad sectors are suspected, Micromat TechTool Pro includes a Surface Scan function that can identify and confirm bad sectors. If bad sectors — sometimes called bad blocks — are identified on your startup disk, then you must follow the procedure specified

in "Reinstall Mac OS X on a zeroed startup disk."

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html#Anchor-Bad-11481

Reinstall Mac OS X on a zeroed startup disk

This section details the method for resolving either bad sectors or irreparable directory corruption on your startup disk. However, note that while this procedure may address bad sectors currently on the disk, additional bad sectors may develop in the future. Detailed instructions on reinstalling Mac OS X can also be found in our book Troubleshooting Mac OS X.

Otherwise:

1.

Create a new backup of the affected Mac's startup disk using your comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution. If disk problems prohibit creating a new backup, attempt to recover data from the disk using the advice in our "Data Recovery" FAQ.

2.

Start up from your Mac OS X Install Disc and erase the Mac OS X startup disk using Disk Utility. Use the Security Options to Zero Out Data or Zero All Data, depending on the version of Mac OS X you are using. Detailed instructions for zeroing drives or volumes can also be found in the "Zeroing Volumes" chapter of our book Troubleshooting Mac OS X. Note that Disk Utility under Mac OS X 10.4 is the first version of Disk Utility that permits one to zero out data on a specific partition or volume if the affected hard drive has multiple partitions. The versions of Disk Utility included with Panther and Jaguar only permit one to zero out data on an entire disk. The process of erasing a disk, partition, or volume by writing zeros to every bit on such is called zeroing. Zeroing finds bad sectors and maps them out of service, also known as sparing. When an attempt to write zeros to bad sectors fails, the bad sectors are both marked as occupied in the directory and added to the bad blocks file of the file system. Once the bad sectors have been spared, no attempt will ever be made to read-from or write-to them again. For details, see Apple Developer Connection Technical Note TN1150, "HFS Plus Volume Format."

Hello,

I am helping a friend with this same issue....only interesting that it is NOT the hard drive.

My friend has two Macs...so he swapped the HDs and the working Mac boots up fine with the HD from the non-working Mac.

Tried resetting PRAM

Not sure what else it could be....could it be a bad connection between the HD and the motherboard??

Then it is the cable that goes from the HDD to the motherboard that has failed. This is a known failure point. Replace the cable and all should be working again.

Good Luck.

If a different machine can boot fine from the same hard drive, then it's hardware. As you and Shootist007 have suggested, it could be the connection between the hard drive and the logic board. However, it could be other hardware issues as well. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try running Apple Hardware Test.

You could also have your friend try putting the drive in an external enclosure. (Those can be obtained fairly cheaply from a lot of sources... Best Buy has some, and though I'm not a huge fan of the ones they stock, they're cheap.) Hold down option at startup to choose the startup drive. If it works that way, it points more firmly to a problem with the connection, while if it doesn't, that indicates there's probably a problem somewhere else.

Thanks! We will try that...and also try swapping out the cable (if it is not soldered)....I think it isn't though.

It's not solder. So it can be changed fairly easily. But you may have to get one for the exact model MBP you have.