Q: Flashing folder with ? when I try to boot my MBP. Can't access HD through target mode.
I have a 13.3" MacBook Pro, the basic model, purchased in September 2013. It has been working perfectly fine, nothing has indicated that something was wrong. I used it last night and left it to charge overnight (in sleep mode, closed, not turned off). When I got to work this morning I was surprised to see the screen black, apparently it had turned itself off during the night. I turned it on, the normal "booting sound" came, but instead of the Apple logo followed by the logon screen I got a blinking dark gray folder with a ? on it.
I did some research online and learned it's probably a problem with the harddrive. I saw a forum post that suggested that I could try to recover data via target-mode, so on my lunch break I went home and grabbed a firewire cable and connected the MBP with my iMac. In the rush I forgot to push T as I turned the MBP on and I was pleasantly surprised to see it boot normally. I managed to log on and got to the desktop. I decided to copy my iPhoto library to Dropbox, in an attempt to at least save my pictures, and also wanted to copy some of the more important stuff on there to Dropbox. Unfortunately it froze within minutes and I had to force a reboot with the powerbutton. For the second time it booted normally and I got into the desktop again. With the same result. When I attemted to reboot the third time the flashing folder was back.
I decided to use target mode and rebooted the MBP. The normal target mode screen appeared and it registered being connected via firewire (the thunderbolt symbol vanshed from the screen). But the target disk didn't appear on the iMac, it couldn't find the HD. Is there any hope of recovering the contents of the harddrive? What should I do next?
Posted on Nov 9, 2015 9:58 AM