How to fix Flashing Folder with Question Mark on Mac

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I encountered the same problem today. Tried to open an app, went grey screen, and then when I had to manually restart, I got the flashing question mark folder.

I'm on an iMac (2012? It's one of the curved back ones with no disc slot) running Mavericks.

I was able to use Command-R to get to the Internet Recovery utility upon restart. Disk utility originally gave me the green text when I ran Repair Disc - but I either forgot to do Repair Permissions or it wasn't activated (greyed out).

1st attempt was to Restore from Time Machine Backup - fortunately I had backed up just prior.

But that only gave an error that said "Error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disc." Tried it again - same error.

Then I tried reinstalling OSX from Internet Recovery (in this case, Mountain Lion). After 2 hours or so waiting for that to reinstall, it came back with an "Error while trying to install Mountain Lion" message. Tried it again, no go.

Then after re-reading these instructions, I realized I hadn't run "Repair Disc permissions" - so I tried Disk Utility again, and this time got the red lines: "Volume MacIntosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired" and "Disk Utility can't repair this disc. Back up as many files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore from backed up files"

I'm guessing this means the HD is walking dead and I need to get to the Apple Store to get it looked at ASAP. But is it worth trying to reformat the disk?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Yes it sounds like a dying hard drive.

If it were me, I'd try erasing (reformatting) even if there's little chance of success - as a troubleshooting step.

(someone here recently had similar issues and it turned out to be the drive ribbon cable - replaced free at the Apple store.)

I reformatted the HD (erased) and then I tried to reinstall OSX. Much to my surprise, it actually started to install (I received error message before), but now it seems to be stuck. The progress bar is about 1mm in, and it says "time remaining: about 20 minutes" but it's been stuck there for about the past 45 minutes.

I'd wait another 20 minutes, and if it doesn't progress, I'd conclude the hard drive (or cable) has failed.

Have you tried creating an external bootable drive and restarting from that?

If boot is successful, that confirms the internal has failed.

So anyways. I had this same issue in the morning. I'll explain it a bit more so you get an understanding of specifically what went wrong.

I got the question mark in the middle of the folder. Following the tutorials, I used Command + R to go into recovery mode, but my HD was not there so I could not use disk utility or reinstall mac OSX Lion.

Given the absence of my HD, I realized that most likely my HD is not damaged as I have fixed my friends macs and if it is damaged, disk utility usually gives the pertinent error or at least shows the HD.

After researching I found you can have a few things that might need tweaking. So I opened up the macbook from the back and pulled my HD out and put it back. That will most likely do nothing, but if your SATA connection is messed up at the HD end, it will resolve that issue. The SATA Connection is the black clip that connects to the HD. PS: To take the HD out, you need to take out the 2 screws adjacent to the HD (BLACK BRACKET WITH 2 BLACK SCREWS).

That did nothing for me either. Anyways. If you continue tracing the sata connection, it extends towards the middle of the macbook where it connects to a chip. There are 2 more connections above this one. I removed the connection and then clipped it back firmly. (JUST THAT ONE). Turned the computer back on and it was as if nothing ever happened.

Thus, from this I can conclude that if your HD is not showing up, and it is properly connected at the HD end there can be 2 issues:

1) The other end of the SATA wire is not connected firmly; or

2) The SATA connection is damaged, which you can either go to apple and get for $60 or from amazon for $34 (subject to very long delivery date)

Hope it helps.

Same thing happened to my Macbook Pro (mid 2012). I tried rebooting and disk repair which worked the first time, then the flashing folder with the question mark came up again the next morning and the reboot would not work. I took it to apple because I could not use it. They told me it was either my hard drive or the hard drive cable. Luckily for me it was just the cable so all my data was still there. Apparently this has been a very common problem for this era of Mac so if it keeps happening, take it to mac because they kindly fixed mine for no charge even though it was out of warranty because they believed it was a faulty cord.

For everyone who experienced this problem here is the answer.

A few days ago a took a plane and I took my MacBook Pro with me. In the plane I opened the MacBook and I got the question mark folder appearing. I thought it was because we were flying. On the ground I started it up again and the same thing happened. I had read al the forums about this problem but nothing worked for me. Luckily my little brother has the same MacBook Pro as I do so I could perform some hardware tests. First I mounted my HDD inside of my brothers MacBook and it worked! So then I thought the cable was broken. And I made a backup asap. Then I mounted my brothers disk in my MacBook and it worked to. So then I was really confused. Everything worked except my own HDD in my own MacBook. So then I thought I could swap my disk for his disk and swap data on the disks. The only down side was that my MacBook with his HDD was REALLY slow. I did some research about this problem and everyone says it is because the RAM, HDD to SSD etc. After al these problems I decided to buy a new HDD cable. I replaced it my own because it's cheap and so easy! And that was it! The MacBook worked perfect and fast again. I think this problem can't be fixed by software repairs. If the Mac will work again with a software fix your Mac will be really slow. It took the Mac 5 minutes to start up finder. I hope I could help some people with my story.

I just encountered this problem. I don't think it will work for everyone, but for for some reason when I plug in an external hard drive it will boot up correctly. I have a solid state, macbook pro (late 2013). After two days of my computer not working and every time it would give me that question mark folder I went to the mac store, they had no idea what was happening, they just thought it was corrupted; I plugged in my external hard drive and for some crazy reason it booted back up. Its done that to me a second time and sure enough, when I plugged the external in, it started up correctly. Hopefully that saves someone from thinking they've lost everything...

FIX

I had this problem upwards of 7 or 8 times, and I fixed it by replacing the defective cable. The more times I did this, the shorter the fix held for. I have now found a workaround by using a hard drive caddy. They are available of amazon for less than £10. You remove the optical drive (for CD/DVDs) and put the caddy in its place. The hard drive is then connected to the computer via different route, bypassing the defective data cable. It does mean you no longer have an optical drive, but that's a small price to pay to have a functional computer!

Caddy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keyword s=macbook+pro+hard+drive+caddy&sprefix=macbook+pro+hardd%2Caps%2C196&crid=1LO0SS SEKI47V

After starting recovery by pressing command+R, I opened disk utility to repair, but my hard drive isn't in the list on the left.

Startup – Question Mark

Startup Issues - Resolve

Startup Issues - Resolve (2)

Startup Issues - Resolve (3)

You're HDD is absolutely failing, I also experience same problem, just replace the HDD with a new one.

Also, with your HDD -- it is absolutely failing, try replacing it.

Thanks. This worked out fined.

I bailed on the stalled OSX installation. Now attempting to restore from backup. Seems to be restoring - so far. 40% of 2TB according to the progress bar - 5.5 hours to go.