Q: Flashing Question Mark Icon when Macbook Air starts

NautGames wrote:

 

Hi Apple community,

 

I recently purchased a Macbook Air 13" 1.3Ghz Intel i5 and 4Gb ram, 120Gb hard drive for school. A few months after that, I heard about OS X 10.10 Yosemite. And of course, I went to the dev preview and got it. After installing it, it was working perfectly! Great interface and smooth.

Did you take note of Apples advice and make a complete backup before installing pre-release software?

But then my silly brain had to go off and make my Mac even better, so I partitioned my Hard Drive, and installed Linux Ubuntu for dual booting. I had Ubuntu on a 8GB USB, and tried to install it on the partitioned drive. After that, the installer wasn't working so I decided to give my mac a reboot. After shutting down, I took out the USB, and went on to boot my normal OS X Yosemite.

 

Then the flashing icon appeared.

I tried resetting PRAM, holding Option at start (Holding option returned no hard drives to select from), And trying to boot into recovery/safe mode. But all of them didn't work.

 

Any solutions?? Please dont tell me my data is lost, and I have to purchase another.

Your data is probably toast, but if you want to try and save it turn your Mac OFF now. Then purchase data recovery software and attempt a recvovery.

You boot from it, what else?

And then get a proper backup and use it.

Maybe, you will find out.

ProSoft Data Rescue3

There is a free trial available.

Attempting data recovery is pointless until you know what state the disk is in.

Ubuntu may have partitioned and installed OK or it may have used an existing partition, but if the bootloader is hosed or if it mangled the EFI partition you could have a tough time getting it to boot. It's also possibe that Ubuntu used the whole disk & wiped out your data, in which case try Disk Drill?

Do you have another Mac to connect this one up to? You may be able to use Target disk mode to edit/ recover/ fix your disk if you have suitable leads (Thunderbolt or Firewire).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

You can also make a bootable USB installer which can be used to look at the internal disk. Disk Utility may be able to repair the Mac partition if it exists.

This seems to be the simplest way to make a bootable USB stick, but Apple don't take time to explain so also see the krypted for the full command…

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5856

http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/create-mavericks-installation-media/

Or use diskmakerx.com

The installer can also be used to 'reinstall OSX' which should overwrite the system files on a disk with it already installed, it may not damage your data & leave you with a working Mac. I have no idea how this works on 10.10, cross your fingers & hope it is not buggy.

The other option is you boot to a Linux LIVE distro (I don't trust you with any other type ) & look at the state of the disk in Disk Utility or GParted.

P.S. A word of advice, when Linux installers look like they are not working, leave them for twice as long as you leave OS X before hard resetting. Linux installers usually go into a state of 'not looking busy' for a long time, waiting with Linux installers always pays off.

Drew Reece wrote:

 

Attempting data recovery is pointless until you know what state the disk is in.

So don't use Recovery Software?

try Disk Drill?

So do use Recovery Software?

Which is it?

Good luck.