I had this same question mark folder flashing problem.  I would hear the disk every time I turned my Macbook off and back on.  I tried that about 8 times, and had the flashing question mark folder every time.  I turned the computer off, and slapped the bottom of it a few times, (NO JOKE), and turned it on again.  It worked, and I have had no issues since.  I figured the disk just got jammed up or something. 

tthanks a lot double wire.....as silly as the recommendation might sound it worked for me as well. I really appreciate your post.

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.

Urgent help please:(

so my Mac died with that stupid flashing question mark ,now it is with Apple authorised ppl ,firs they said it might be the drive(utility and all that stuff wifi and so on not showing any hard)after they took it out seams still working,then 2 days later they change the cable from m.board to hard as second thing and saying still not working,now they want to run next diagnose to see what it is .can someone tell me please what can it be since they are saying they will need to look at it for next 7 days ,can I trust them or they just going to s... things up?

Can be perhaps the logic board or just the chip on logic board or shall they just try to plug in a new hard drive ? Help pls

I have accidentally deleted all the contents on my iMac late 2012, with no CD Drive. The folder with the question mark has come up, and I have tried to put it in Recovery mode, Target Mode, and even had my hard drive attach to see if it could recognize the external hard drive. The folder is still coming up and flashing. Not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

hello. Help me please.

I just got at macbook pro (mid 2012) from a friend. Going to use it in addition  to my mac mini on recordings music in church. I was following disk utility - erase to start fresh. Now I only get the question mark. I get it - I erased to much. But how can I get the macbook to start up again.

hoping for help.

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...